Did you know that you can choose blog posts related to the one you're writing? It's really quite simple: When you're creating a new blog post simply head to 'Settings' (the cog icon) Select the Advanced tab. Then, under 'Related Posts', select the posts you want. If you don't set this then Wix will set the three most recent in that category.

What a week! Definitely our busiest (many 1am finishes!) and most successful ever and one we definitely want to reflect in a post. New clients We've been so lucky to gain many really loyal and lovely clients and this has snowballed into many more new referrals. It's lovely to meet so many more new businesses and charities and helps us feel we are doing something right. We've had many 'feel good' moments, from Google Reviews to gushing voicemails about how well we've revamped client websites. Websites We've worked on such a variety of sites this week, ranging from full builds to short reviews and improvements. Clients have included gift and jewellery retailers, health products, a fundraising website for a worthy cause, a beautician and a construction company. We also had the amazing news that two bids we'd supported clients with have been successful. Both are tourist businesses and we can't wait to get started in delivering their website projects. Design We've delivered a range of design work this week including a logo for a wellness business, a brochure for a florist (a funeral brochure - surprisingly difficult to get the feel right!), and event documents (slides and programmes) for a membership association. Launch We've just launched our Wix on-call support service which provides access to exclusive to our Wix resources and regular support from us. Payment is taken each month to save all that time booking and paying each time you want our support. We're also excited to launch our printing, binding and laminating/encapsulation services. You can learn more here: https://www.esmeconsultancy.com/printing-swadlincote . Please contact us to discuss your needs. Charity work Tracey is delighted to be rejoining South Derbyshire CVS as a Trustee (if there's no objections at the AGM next week!). Monday will be a volunteer day so that we can match hours of web work in our community. Monday will be spent revamping a room at our local village hall so that it can be used as a hire space and pop-up shop. We'll be shunting work into the evening that day so there may be a short delay in email responses that day. We're hiring We'd love to hear from UK-based Wix designers and developers interested in working with us on a flexible, associate basis. hello@esmecreative.com (updated: hello@findbookpay.com) Have a great weekend!

We recently had a lot of fun designing these signs for our local Village Hall. We do all of their marketing and website work pro-bono. The sign designs were for a variety of media including PVC banners, canvas banners, di-bond aluminium and foamex signs. We tend to work with a Kent-based printing partner who we’ve worked with previously and find really reasonable and super-efficient.

You can now manage your Google my Business account from your Wix Dashboard. We've long asked our clients to ensure they have a Google My Business account for their business, not least because it helps Google to establish you are a real person/business - a big credibility marker. Wix have made it even easier to manage your My Business account. How to: Head to your Wix Dashboard Go to 'Marketing and SEO' Select 'Google my Business' You will be prompted to sign in to your Google account Once logged in you'll be able to respond to reviews and see your Google My Business analytical data. If you don't collect reviews on Google then it might be a good idea to explore this further. Here's a great article on why: https://www.theleverageway.com/blog/do-google-reviews-help-rankings-seo/ If we can support you to get your profile up and running then do let us know. #wix #googlemybusiness #wixwebsite #wixhelp #smallbusinessmarketing

Building your website is not simply the case of making everything look pretty on a page. There is a long list of activities that we must do to get your site perfect, make sure it is accessible and to get it found. Unless specified, we undertake the following checks before handing over your website: Ensure it looks great on mobile and optimising it for mobile users Checking your site across a range of browsers and devices including iPad and mobile devices. Ensuring SEO data is set across the site including page data and images. Ensuring your site is accessible to an extent, exploring aspects such as optimum colour contrast and alternative text on images (for those with screen readers for instance). Setting a favicon (the little square image in your browser bar)(for premium Wix plan holders only). Setting a 404 page (the page someone reaches when they hit a broken link)(for premium Wix plan holders only). Advising you of legal wording your site should have for your business type. We'll send a feedback link for your site before handover which allows you to mark-up any aspects of your site that are not quite right for you so that we can explore and resolve. #wixwebsite #websitesupport #wixwebsiteflaw #fixmyfixsite #newbiz #smallbiz #bizsupport FindBookPay are website and graphic designers based in Derbyshire. We are Wix Icon partners which means we are on level 4 of 5 of the Wix partner ladder. We've built a range of sites including booking platforms, online courses, online stores, and more simply brochures sites. We've worked for clients in retail, universities, floristry, coaching, wellness and the charity sector.

Dr Tracey Wond, Lead Consultant talks about her strategic and business management support. Something I haven’t talked about so much over the past year is my business support and virtual business manager services - yet it makes up a fair proportion of my work. I wanted to showcase some of this work through this post: Membership Organisation A: Working with a UK-based membership organisation, I joined them, on their journey of embracing digital tools and upskilling. This included, training their staff/volunteers in readily available comms tools to aid day-to-day messaging, supporting them to evaluate their value proposition, introducing decision-making tools to support them to recognise the viability of certain opportunities, and leading the recruitment of an online business manager. Membership Organisation B: Working with their team to assess and improve the customer journey and making value/cost-benefit judgements about the improvements identified. Whilst at the same time managing their website and supporting client bookings. Charity A: Reviewing the entire working model of the charity to identify possible cost savings and growth opportunities. We were able to reduce outgoings by 35% and secure an envious VAT rebate. We also led the digitisation of the charity included the development of online invoicing and fundraising, website and social media. Through the changes we introduced, their monthly revenue increased fourfold. We also supported the charity to win significant funding for capital projects. New business support: I’ve worked with dozens of new businesses - above and beyond our popular design and website services. I have since took up Director roles for three of them. Support includes acting as a sounding board, exploring key aspects of the business planning process, identifying and engaging with opportunities to streamline or enhance processes and the customer journey, and providing advice on business process and comms. If you're looking for fresh ideas, a digital insight or someone who is a systems thinker then do get in touch. h ello@findbookpay.com

Introduction Taking control of your own learning and development is not a one-off exercise. It requires continuous cycles of reflecting and acting. The world and your goals are constantly changing - for instance, as you reach one goal you'll need to plan on where you go next, and how. The fact that you are reading this means you're likely to be keen to invest in your personal development and to keep learning new things. Whether you are employed, self-employed, volunteering, or in another career 'state', learning can be valuable and fulfilling. Whilst many of us like to jump straight to action, planning is an important first step. In this article we'll explore ways to plan your development using development theories and principles. Meet Inglis (1994) and ERSI Scott Inglis identified the concept of the 'Extraordinarily Realistic Self-Image' (ERSI). ERSI involves you reflecting on yourself from various perspectives and using different sources of information. There are various other models that have encouraged individuals to reflect on their work and life experiences to find meaningful ways forward. So what perspectives might you consider when reflecting ahead of action? - The current situation and what is demands - i.e. the existing pressures of your work ('the now') - Your own feelings, ideas, and sense for where to go next and how ('the hunches') - Feedback from other people - perhaps those you work with (colleagues, clients)('those around') - performance indicators - for instance, an online influencer might take account of data relating to their followers and impressions ('the data') (be cautious - there are flaws to such simple stats). Performance indicators might occur at different levels - organisation wide, departmental, specific to your sector (aligned certain professional standards for instance). Megginson and Whitaker (2015) suggest pitching your reflection on a 2 x 2 matrix that assesses these perspectives and their feedback on an individual-organisational axis, and a specific-general axis. There's a certain degree of information gathering involved, but ERSI helps you consider diverse feedback from yourself and others, and helps you think beyond your current work position (whether you're self-employed or employed). The four positions in the grid help you to balance dreams with some realities. Time and Space When we reflect we make time and space to think about where we want to go. The exercise of reflecting in itself is therefore valuable. Task Put together your own ERSI grid. Whilst doing so: Reflect on data and feedback about yourself and where you want to get to. When you reflect on feedback that's bad it can feel uncomfortable. Be honest with yourself about how much of this feedback is a true reflection on your ability and performance. Be cautious that positive feedback isn't overly positive - we've a tendency to seek positive views and sometimes don't ask what could have been done better.

Regardless of our employment status, or whether we're talking about our personal or work lives, we're all faced with problems we must solve. Being faced with problems can be challenging and overwhelming, super-charging our emotions. To help counter this it's worth understand the process of thinking we must go through to overcome our problem. Knowing how your brain acts and must act in such situations can help you feel in control. Let's look at the stages of the problem thinking process. To help us let's use the example of Jamie whose customers don't appear to like the taste of his cakes. Awareness: You become aware that there's a problem. In Jamie's case, he becomes aware that people are not happy with his cakes. Problem Identification/Definition: We learn more about the problem and understand where it starts and stops, what it is and what it isn't. This can be quite complex. Jamie learns that people thinks Jamie's cakes are too dry. Appraising Approaches: This can often include sub-stages of thinking about high-level approaches, researching approaches and solutions further, weighing up various options (perhaps weighing up pros and cons or costs), considering the order of things we might need to put in place to solve the problem. In the case of Jamie, he might research why his cakes might be dry, how he can resolve this, and go through some testing of new ways of making and storing them. Re-assess and rejig: Is the solution working?

Thanks Google! G Suite for Nonprofits Tracey Wond shares her experience of using Google’s G Suite to help charities and non-profits get digital – all the more – it’s free! Being fit for the modern day is scary for many small charities. Yet, I’m of the view that this is essential and absolutely means getting to grips with web-based applications. I’m also passionate about these being intuitive and sustainable enough to hand over to organisations. Yet, working with the audiences that I do, the price point is very important. That’s where Tech Soup , Charity Digital and Google for Non-profits come in. Non-profits and charities can gain free or heavily-reduced rates to a lot of big-name software providers including Avast, Adobe and Google (yet none of our clients ever know this before we get to them!). Our particular favourite here is Google’s, ‘Google for Non-profits’, which provides unlimited users, and access to the usual suspects such as G Mail and Drive as well as Google Classrooms and Hangouts – for free! Let us illustrate what this means to a charity or non-profit: Through G Suite you’re able to configure your domain to work with G Mail which means professional, personalised domain-specific mailboxes for absolutely no cost. Voila! Email addresses for the Chair, Treasurer, President, Enquiries – all for free. Non-profits benefit from 30GB free cloud storage per user through their Drive application – meaning non-profits can retain and share their all-important files and ensure nothing gets lost when trustees handover (this churn can be a big problem in non-profits with documents getting lost over time). We’ve found Google Classrooms to be a great training platform for staff, volunteers, trustees and boards. For a charity in particular, there is a need to be on top of various legislation and codes of practice and we’ve been using classrooms to help Charities to ensure everyone is kept up-to-date. Google Hangouts is Google’s video conference application which we’ve found to be really reliable and helps reduce the number of face-to-face meetings – great if your non-profit’s members are scattered across the country. The hardest part is most certainly sign up - where, through TechSoup, Google need to verify your organisation as a charity which does take about a week we find. Aspects such as confirming your Charity’s email, registration number and mission are also required. We’ve tinkered with Microsoft’s Office 365 reduced-price-offering for charities but with the exchange license provided separately and user licensing restricted it didn’t quite cut it. There’s something about this offering from Google that just works. Bio Dr Tracey Wond, Director of ESME Creative specialises in supporting charities and SMEs to modernise and improve their ways of working to help them run more efficiently, improve and connect with their users and beneficiaries, and ensure compliance and good governance. This includes supporting organisations to develop policies, training, websites social media and booking platforms and seek grant funding. She has published books and articles on a range of topics relating to good management and governance in non-profit and small business contexts. She has a PhD in business and has worked with a range of organisations including several police forces, Rolls Royce, and with countless small/medium businesses. Twitter: @leadthemidlands Website: www.esmecreative.com Email: esme@thomaswond.com Facebook: @ESMECreativeUK

We all learn differently. The basis of Kolb's (1984) learning cycle was that we learn in different ways - through doing, feeling, watching, and thinking. Fleming and Mills' (1992) acronym is perhaps one of the easiest typologies to understand. VARK. Perhaps you recognise that you're better at watching and trying than listening to instructions? Or that you learn more when you read instructions instead of watching an animation? Visual Learners Overview: Visual learners learn best from videos, animations, illustrations, diagrams and other visual means. Characteristics: May close their eyes to recall/visualise things, may not like sounds at the same time. May be good at reading maps. Useful tools: Spider diagrams, YouTube videos, Slideshare to learn from presentations, flowcharts. Tools for more tech types: iPad Pro with Apple Pencil and Notes or Nebo app to draw diagrams on the ok. Auditory Learners Overview: Learn by listening. Characteristics: May read to themselves aloud to take in the message. May not look as though they are paying attention to visual presentations. Useful tools: Podcasts, accessibility tools that read out text, dictation apps. Tools for more tech types: Wireless earphones. Read/write Learners Overview: Learn through reading, reviewing and writing Characteristics: May take copious notes. May turn diagrams into written words. Useful tools: Note-cards, rough drafting of notes ready to re-read and write later. Tools for more tech types: Pen and paper may be better. Kinaesthetic Learners Overview: Learn through doing Characteristics: May use lots of gestures when describing something, 'potter' with tasks often. Useful tools: Embracing real life - opportunities to mentor others or learn on the job. Tools for more tech types: The tools that allow you to do! Task Reflect on what impact your learning style has on your work and personal life? How might this impact the way you respond to a complex question or problem? How might this alter how you respond to others who learn differently from you - perhaps in your team? Once you're able to embrace your learning style preference you can work in a way that's most effective for you.

What's stopping you from being a star? There are a range of tools that we use in career and personal development, to be better in our careers, roles and lives. Do you talk yourself out of where you want to be? Often, we're our own worst enemies when trying to decide which direction or decisions that we should take. Here's some weak spots that could be holding you back, and solutions: Have you spent time reflecting? If no then it may be worthwhile making some time and finding some space to do this. If you've not reflected then it's likely you haven't set a clear vision. Our ERSI article might be useful to you. Do you genuinely have the skills that you need? Sometimes we unconsciously hold ourselves back for good reason. If we don't have the skills needed then how might you go about addressing that? To be the star you want to be. The emphasis here though is on need - don't let a lack of desirable or non-essential skills stop you moving in the direction you want. Too much negative talk? Do you talk yourself down regularly? If this is your weak spot then you could try writing down your negative messages and then flipping them. 'I'm not good at limiting time with clients' becomes 'I provide a quality, personal experience'. Do you lack accountability? For years I've had some great gym equipment that's gone under-used. 'I just don't have the time I told myself'. Then on a holiday I found myself twiddling my thumbs, finding something to do... I didn't use the gym equipment. I learned that although I blamed 'time' for years, the problem was not time - I'd used time as an excuse. Do you blame other people or factors? AMO can be good to appraise yourself in this situation - Ability - Motivation - Opportunity. The three aspects form a pretty good three-legged stool to take accountability. Are you able to exercise today? Are you motivated? Do you have the opportunity (a break from work)? Realising that the weak link (or leg in the stool metaphor) is your motivation might be an awakening. Have you defined your own version of success? Have you ever compared your home, business or family life to someones carefully curated life on social media? It's all too easy to lose sight of what our own version of success looks like. To overcome, think about what you want and what you don't want, explore the aspects of your life you enjoy currently and recognise where you might need support to maintain these (or give a little to find a balance between your current and desired state). For instance, Jane is a wellness coach and follows an online influencer who is also a wellness coach. Jane feels a failure that she hasn't 1 million followers despite putting a lot of effort in to her work. This makes Jane feel like she should give up. But, Jane is happy with her income and the flexibility her business affords her, she's grateful she can take her children to school. Jane helps dozens of people through her work. So why has Jane defined success by 1 million social media followers? Jane needs to define her own success criteria. What's holding you back?

We support many Wix site owners with their existing websites. Often they'll have asked us to make their website look a little prettier - 95% of the time though we find their site is not optimised for search engines and more often than not, it is not connected to Google. We can entirely understand why you want your website to look nice, and with social media it's great to be able to redirect your social media visitors straight to your site. But if it can't be found via search engines you could be really reducing your visitors. Wix have some great tools in 'Marketing and SEO' or we offer SEO services from £40 for a one hour review, right through to more thorough keyword research and optimisation. Is your Wix site getting found on Google? Have you optimised what's on your Wix pages? Have you optimised titles and descriptions that sit behind your Wix blog posts, pages and store items? www.esmecreative.com

You may notice that some of the fonts offered on Wix are a little bit boring. In this post we're going to explain why. Many of the fonts that Wix offer are what are known as web-safe fonts. This means that they're compatible across browsers and email clients. It's the same reason that the fonts are pretty limited in Wix's Email Marketing offering too. There's a fab overview of web-safe fonts here : https://www.hostinger.co.uk/tutorials/best-html-web-fonts - if you want to learn more.

I don't push my business coaching and support all that much so wanted to cover it a little in this post in a Q&A format. How did you get into business? I've been learning business since I was 13 and decided to take it up at GCSE, that lead to an a-level, a degree and even a PhD in business which I completed in 2012. That means I've studied business formal for 12 years! From 2007 (for 13 years) I started to lecture in business and became a Senior Lecturer in Business and Management (teaching MBA and professional learners mainly but also undergrads) and later worked my way up to Head of Research in a University business school (where I worked on many external projects). I'm lucky to have worked on some great business support projects, mainly from European and regional funding, delivering support to small and medium businesses on aspects of leadership, negotiation, communicating your impact, mentoring others and managing conflict. I've sat on not just university management boards but on non-profit and charity boards as a Trustee and Director. I've also supported my partner to build his own business (an industrial contract project management firm) over the past 7 years (I'm now in awe of his turnover!). What do you offer? I play to my strengths always - and I'm honest about my weakness! I see beyond boxes and boundaries - I see connections and links between processes and the knock ons decisions will have, where others might be too stuck with the task in hand (systems thinking). I'm not scared to suggest innovative solutions to problems. This supports my clients to save time and make efficiencies. I'm knowledgeable on business strategy and models, team management and supporting teams through change. I love undertaking reviews and research assignments to explore possible solutions. I'm don't offer email marketing - after one piece of junk mail too many. I sometimes get too excited about your awesome ideas and I'm a sucker for a coffee meeting! What makes you unique? First, I'm not screaming, 'I'll make you six figures in six weeks', like many coaches that keep filling my social media! I absolutely will not do that (and most likely neither will they). Second, my education background allied with my experience in a range of settings means I understand why things work as well as how. And if I don't know the answer, I'm curious and skilled enough to find out! How can I work with you? Business coaching, support and advice is priced at £45 per hour but discounted to £35 per hour to soletraderbs, partnerships and charities (correct at July 2020 but may be subject to change). Email us at hello@esmecreative.com

Over the last week we've talked with clients a lot about the look and feel of their websites versus their price points, USP, personality and ideal client profile. So we've decided to put together a series of posts about the brands and sites we think portray certain things. Today we're focusing on sleek, classy and simple. Time of writing and research 11-13th July (we'll update this post later with more as well). First up: Katie Loxton. https://katieloxton.com/ This turned out to be expensive research since we ended up purchasing their gift sets! Logo: You'll see that many strong classy brands use word mark logos and simple really can be better. Katie Loxton Ltd aren't scared to present their logos in different colours (white, silver, gold) as it suits - many business owners get into a trap of thinking they need to stick with their single palette. Their branding pulls off something classy - the sale of their simple quote clutches are testament to this. Website: Their website is high on visuals and they've opted for a large photo strip which rotates on the home page - quite on trend and great for non-essential items. This homepage is absolutely buildable on Wix and we've designed similar over the past months (before even stumbling on theirs!). One observation some of their visuals don't offer enough contrast with their menu making some menu items difficult to read. Second: The White Company : https://www.thewhitecompany.com/uk/ Logo: We wanted to show this one because of its sheer simplicity. A basic font with white background and a thin rectangular border. Again, like Katie Loxton - how effective is 'simple'?! Website: Whilst we don't really enjoy navigating their site, we do like the simple presentation of text throughout their home page and the simple colour palette of white background, black text and red for emphasis (in the case of their sale banners). Third: DoodieStark: https://www.doodiestark.co.uk Logo: The white and grey logo on the dark banner looks really impactful. Website: The darker header banner really accentuates the menu options too. We don't like the pink Wishlist and cart notifications set against the red buttons though. Interestingly though, red call to actions buttons (like the 'Discover the collection' example) convert to sales better (read the Hubspot test on the blog link we've posted below for more on that). What's your favourite simple website and branding examples? Let us know hello@esmecreative.com We'll cover more colourful and creative sites in the future but to end we wanted to share two resources: 1) this colour generator tool from Canva. Simply upload your photo or image and it will suggest colour palettes from it. https://www.canva.com/colors/color-palette-generator/ 2) If you're interested in learning more about which colours convey what then this article is pretty neat: https://www.usertesting.com/blog/color-ux-conversion-rates Remember - we're here if you need us for websites, design or business coaching.

The University of Derby have this online course on GDPR/Data Protection for free . It's vital that small business owners understand these regulations and this course covers many aspects of it (legal, handling, roles of data protection officers). The course can be found here: https://www.derby.ac.uk/short-courses-cpd/online/free-courses/gdpr-data-protection-officer-skills/ Feel free to share with contacts.

We don't often talk about our writing services on the blog so I wanted to cover them a little more here. We're delighted to be working with Amanda Skyrtek of Word Perfect to bring you CV writing support. I first met Amanda when she was a student of mine at University, around 7 years ago. Her professional manner and critical thinking really set her apart from others, and we've had the benefit of bumping into each professionally over several years (she's worked a great deal in University and charity contexts) - and so it really is great to have her on board. We've experience in writing for a range of purposes, from CVs to technical documents, professional business reports and academic publications (such as books and journals). Some of these can be found here: https://www.esmecreative.com/writing . We've the benefit of being able to format these professionally through our graphic design background too. Our writing services are priced from £20-45 per hour (varying with technical difficulty of the task), although we do provide transparent written quotes for all of our work. Please do get in touch should you wish us to explore your needs further: hello@esmecreative.com

We've desktop published several documents and report front covers for this membership organisation, including their membership packs and guides. We've also support them with logo variations.

We developed and printed this design for charity collection tubs, using the charities brand colours.