How will the EU Cookie Laws affect you?

Today is EU Cookie Law Day, as the extended deadline for putting cookie compliance procedures in place has arrived.

Each website in the UK and EU has to give their visitors the option to accept or reject cookies used on the website. This is usually in the form of a pop up which demands acceptance of cookies before the visitor can continue, or a clear disclaimer explaining which cookies are used on the website, what they are used for and how they will affect the visitor if they continue using it.

This controversial phenomenon has arisen because consumers have finally got fed up of spam. It is through the use of cookies that web-users are tormented with advertising and spam that is related to their past surfing activities.

If you’ve been searching for a swimsuit online, you will probably find you will be bombarded with advertising for bikinis from Next, Debenhams or wherever. This is because a website you visited in the past (not even identifiable) deposited a cookie onto your PC or laptop which hung around gathering data about you. Having obtained the information it needed (swimsuits) it then waited for you to visit a suitable website where it could popularise the advertising slots with information about bikinis, as that is what it thinks you are interested in.

This is Enchilada Digital‘s definition of a cookie:

A Cookie is a text file that browser places on your computer’s hard drive on behalf of the website being served. The Cookie usually contains information, such as a user or session ID, that allows the website to remember who you are across multiple page views or browsing sessions. Most websites have 10 or more cookies. See this website for more information on cookies.

The legal powers that be then decided that enough was enough, and that cookies were bad news and should be stopped. Unfortunately not all cookies are bad: a bit like some bacteria are not bad for you. Some cookies are vital for the day-to-day running of a website, and without their presence your surfing experiences would be very dull indeed.

The web developing world have tried their best to explain this to our law-creating personnel, but, as is usual with internet-related things, they do not fully understand. They have managed to grasp that any e-commerce that happens on the web, shopping carts, paypal and the like, need cookies to be able to operate, and these have been given a class that determines them as ‘vital’ and are exempt from the EU Cookie Laws.

But there are still other cookies that are not detrimental to website users and do not create annoying spam. These cookies do collect data about the visitor, but the transaction is short-lived and usually has an immediate purpose, like sharing a blog post on your Facebook profile, or retweeting it on Twitter. Any sign up form to subscribe to a blog or newsletter list requires cookies where user data is collected, but again without this the transaction would not be possible, and the outcome is carefully controlled, especially if there is an opt-in mechanism required.

The greatest impact this Cookie Law has is on analytics. I collect data about my visitors via Google Analytics, so I can find out how many visitors I’ve had, where they have come from, which pages they visited on my site, what made them leave, what information they gathered and how often they return. This does require a lot of cookie use, and the data collected is quite extensive, but without analysing visitor use and understanding what its audience likes and wants, how can I improve my website to make it better for my visitors and advance my website’s purpose?

Meanwhile, to comply with the new laws, I have had to upload a plugin that produces an acceptance box for every page, and I have included a Cookie Compliance disclaimer at the top of my sidebar just in case. You would think surely is it really necessary to do all of this? Nobody would really be interested in every single little blog and website out there, all dealing with non-spam related cookies only used to enhance the website’s performance – but it would be disastrous for those who were ‘caught’ and had their sites taken down.  And I reckon little outfits are easier to target than the big corporate boys who have legal teams poised ready to react should the law enforcers come knocking on their doors.

Can I really trust you? How to build trust online and offline to get referrals

Trust makes the world go round and we should all have faith in it, as Alice Elliott explained recently. Nobel Prize winning Israeli-American psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, found that people prefer to do business with a person they like and trust rather than someone they don’t, even if the likeable person is offering a lower quality product or service at a higher price.*

When building a network of trusted partners or advocates, trust is the magic ingredient that takes away the psychological resistance to buying from you or referring you to others. When people really trust you they want to do business with you because they know and feel that it is the right thing to do.

But it can take time to build that level of trust because it has to be earned and you usually earn it through the way you communicate. Here are some suggestions to build trust in business, both offline and online:

• Always share your knowledge freely; always give what you can to help people, to become the trusted expert. Support networking groups by becoming a speaker, writing articles or blogs, or giving people one-to-one networking time and sharing a tip or two. You telling me that you are a good accountant, business coach or sales person may not be enough for me to trust or buy from you. It is better to demonstrate that you really know your stuff.
• Be consistent in your actions. Always do what you say you will do, as people will have expectations and you don’t want to disappoint.  If you say you send a monthly newsletter, one every three months won’t do. Showing up at a networking meeting or on social media once in a blue moon and then making up frantically for lost time, is inconsistent and can make you seem unfocused, non-committal and unreliable.
• Be transparent, be authentic. Let others get to know a little about the person behind the business. Let’s face it, if you are a solopreneur, then you are your brand, not your business. This means, for example, that it is not a good idea to hide behind your Facebook business page whilst ignoring the personal side of Facebook. If I can see that the two are hugely different (or just suspect they are), then which one should I trust?
• Listen carefully and pay attention to other people’s needs. People like to be heard and by trying to understand them, they will both come to respect and trust you. So hold back with your latest special offer or the product you are hoping to sell. Being sold to can create resistance, in my experience.    
• Be honest and communicate openly. If something isn’t going to plan, don’t ignore the problem or sweep it under the carpet. There is nothing worse than not communicating in the hope that the problem will just disappear – you may find that your customer will disappear instead! Honesty and your desire to put things right will help your customers to continue to trust you; after all, nobody is perfect.

All of these tips work both offline when networking and online when connecting with your contacts via social media, and they work best in conjunction with each other. Always remember that all networking is about investing into strong relationships with people and referrals will often happen naturally when you have earned a person’s trust.

PS. If you would like to make your networking more effective and receive more referrals, please check out our “From Contact to Advocate(TM)” training manual.

Ute Wieczorek-King helps busy women to be well connected, visible, effective and profitable in business. You can connect with her via Twitter, the Success Network Community on Linkedin, or Success Network Recipes on Facebook. To sign up to her monthly newsletter, please visit the Success Network website.

Copyright 2012, Ute Wieczorek-King

* http://www.forbes.com/sites/keldjensen/2012/04/12/intelligence-is-overrated-what-you-really-need-to-succeed/

The importance of keeping your promises in business

There have been many instances when I have been let down as a customer. I’m sure you have a large amount of memories you could contribute, and you may have complained about them, got redress and even eventually gained from the situation!

As a business, it’s not a good thing to fail to provide your customers with a satisfactory service. This phenomenon starts from the very beginning, like turning up on time for a meeting or discussion, or to provide a quote for a job. Failure this early in the proceedings does not position the company favourably in the customer’s mind, and may even contribute to distrust and rejection.

It is also generally acceptable that the business representative knows something about the job in question, and can talk sensibly and knowledgeably about it. When the customer asks questions to satisfy their confidence in the business and its ability to complete the job satisfactorily and effectively, it is more reassuring to be provided with suitable information that proves the capabilities and expertise required will be supplied. Here honesty and transparency will stand you in good stead, rather than a slick, fancy, jargon-filled spiel that bamboozles and distracts from the matter at hand.

Knowing the processes for the job or service provided, so a suitable timeframe can be offered for completion, or even the various milestones that are required to be achieved as the job progresses, will help towards customer reassurance. Vagueness and dismissal of this portion of business management will not provide a sense of organisation, skill or effectiveness. Customers like to know what is going on, do not take kindly to being fobbed off or given a load of excuses, or being left stranded or abandoned in the middle of the process.

Of course all best laid plans don’t always go as hoped, and there may be delays or changes in the situation. The best policy is to come clean, and explain to your customers the problem you’ve got, and if possible what you are going to do about it, or the processes you have put in place to sort out the situation. Leaving them in the dark will undermine their trust in you, your business and your ability to deliver the goods. It causes resentment, distrust and confusion, and distraught and neglected customers aren’t going to speak highly of your services, or refer your business to their friends and associates.

It is a shame that so many businesses have these problems. It is a result of lack of planning, working out adequate processes, creating suitable schedules and having an appropriate customer communication strategy in place. This also goes for payment procedures, and allocating services to outsourced facilities to aid the functionality of the business. This proves you can’t run a business on a wing and a prayer, especially if you wish to grow and flourish properly.

When losing sight and vision is not an option

Photo credit: Sophia King

I was in my thirties with three young children, when I got ill with a recurring eye infection that made my eyes so painful and sensitive to light that I was effectively blind for several days.

During the worst attack I was admitted to an eye hospital, on New Year’s Eve! My husband couldn’t find a babysitter and so I found myself alone not being able to see, with just one other in-patient, an old lady, for company. During the night, the nurse who looked after me told me that there was a chance the antibiotic eye drops might not work and that I could go blind. How kind of her to warn me!

I recovered of course, but not fully until I came off the hamster wheel that I know many women are on when life is really busy and yet their sense of self is quite blurred. My own ‘self’ desperately needed a personal space to develop and achieve a truly meaningful personal and professional vision!

Ever since then, ‘seeing’ for me has meant, quite literally, ‘seeing’. I’ve become very visual and as a careful observer, I now see people and nature consciously and mindfully. I like train journeys so I can gaze out of the window. I marvel at art and nature, especially rainbows, sunsets, full moons, starry skies and storm clouds as if I’ve not seen them before. In business I see words, nice logos, presentations and websites, and some can seem like works of art.

When it comes to your own business, seeing things as they really are is so crucial! If we don’t take the time to observe and see then what may be staring you in the face will be blurred and we won’t take the right action. And unless your vision for the future is crystal clear, it will be just another pipe dream.

To achieve a strong future vision, it really helps to have roots in the here and now, being underpinned by who you are as a person, what you believe in and what you aspire to.  I see when people don’t have a personal or a business vision because they can’t see the wood for the trees – just like I didn’t! But now, I never lose sight of where I am.

If you can’t see where you are going, try first to visualise where you are and see it like someone who is experiencing it for the first time!

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PS. If you would like help with clarifying or designing your business or personal vision please email me to arrange a complimentary 30-minute mentoring session. My name is Ute Wieczorek-King and I help busy women to be well connected, visible, effective and profitable in business. You can connect with me via Twitter, the Success Network Community on Linkedin, or Success Network Recipes on Facebook. To sign up to my monthly newsletter, please visit the Success Network website.

Copyright 2012, Ute Wieczorek-King

What is the point of Pinterest?

A new phenomenon has swept into the room and has taken us all by storm. The web-world has suddenly been fixated with image-fever, and Pinterest, the third largest social network after Facebook and YouTube, is the most pictorial of all!

If you value a perfect picture, then you’re in for a treat. Here is somewhere you can post your favourite images to show them off to the world. It is an environment of imagery, an atmosphere of impressions, a representation of appearances. Anybody can create a mood-board, a story of artistry that reflects their tastes, appreciates beauty and shares their creative aspirations.

But enough of the rhetoric, I absolutely adore this new medium. We visited a new National Trust garden last weekend, and there was a world of true Spring beauty, with perfect presentations of plants responding to the sunshine after so many weeks of rain. I had a field-day with my camera, there was so much colour, shapes, collaboration of growth and expansion of flora I easily filled up my picture-card. If you want to see some of my snaps, visit my Pinterest picture board.

So why is this necessary? Just like all social media, Pinterest can act as an intermediary, a middle man if you like, towards allowing your customers and followers to get to know you better. The old adage: people buy from people, can be appropriately applied here, and if your Pinterest followers like and appreciate what you have posted, these can be suitably linked back to your website, blog or Facebook profile or page (depending on the nature of the content). This becomes another method of promoting your true self and personality, and expressing your passion, which is of entrepreneurial importance if you are going to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Business-wise this may be an opportunity to show off your products, but remember, social media does not tolerate selling. Think of a method to promote your business that shows your inspiration, enthusiasm and personal points of view, ultimately more interesting than a sales pitch. Another old adage: a picture can say a thousand words, can be truly exploited here, precisely, pertinently and even provocatively, to encourage the viewer to click through to find out more.

But what about copyright? How do you prevent cyber-theft of your images, especially if your business uses them to make money? Don’t worry, a free application called PicMonkey will enable you to create a watermark on your images (if you haven’t got Photoshop or similar software), and this can be cleverly adapted to promote your business name and website at the same time, providing the necessary information for interested parties to contact you to request permission for reuse. It shouldn’t hinder any repinning practices – something you will want to encourage, as similar to retweeting and sharing, it allows your images to reach a larger audience than they would encounter otherwise.

How not to fail in business this year

Image credit: N King

Our regular guest blogger Alice Elliott wrote one of our most popular blogs in 2010 “How to stop your business from failing”. Her original tips included to have processes in place; to have a clear message; to know how to sell your service; to manage your time; to look for solutions to your business problems and to manage your resources.

Whether you or your business have been affected by economic uncertainty in recent years, it isn’t always easy to steer your business through any year without hiccups along the way.

Here are some additional tips to help you this year:

“Don’t lose heart”, says Catherine Sutton from Waterloo Brown, events and conference management

Many businesses are weathering these tough economic times, others are struggling.  It would be so easy to give up and become a statistic.  Each day you need to start with optimism.  To achieve this, it might well be worth the investment in a mentor or coach.  We all need someone outside our immediate circle who will look at our businesses and our strengths and weaknesses.  Together you will be able to come up with a realistic plan that should help to put your business back on firm foundations.  Then the hard work begins.  Keep smiling!

“Learn to think how your customers think”, recommends Alice Elliott from Fairy Blog Mother

If your customers don’t understand your business, then they won’t buy your products or hire your services. Research your customers to find out as much as possible about them, and then adapt what you provide accordingly. Make the process of doing business with you as simple as possible. Provide added value with worthwhile incentives and extra add-ons that make them return for more. Communicate and form relationships with them to make them like and trust you before they commit to buy.

 “Form virtual teams and strategic alliances”, says Catherine Osborn, Freelance Copywriter and Editor

When I started out as a freelancer, my first clients were previous employers and I pretty much did what I’d done for them before. But as new customers came along, they were looking for a complete solution to encompass areas such as graphic design, marketing direction and website development. You may well have the skills to deliver extra tasks, but there’ll be people out there who can do it more quickly and cost effectively, and to a higher standard. By forming alliances with the right people, you not only draw on their expertise but you also have instant access to an established, warm client base.

“Integrate social media into your overall plans”, recommends Karen Livingstone from Little Acorn Marketing 

For some of us, social media has become part of our daily lives whilst for others there is still some scepticism as to what it can do for their business.  For me, it is has been key in raising my profile and perfectly complements my offline activities. However, before embarking on the social media journey, it is vital that you have a strategy, clear objectives about what you want to achieve and some measurement.  Remember there is no financial cost to take advantage of the many social media platforms but it will cost you time so you need to be able to judge if you are getting a ROI.

Finally….“Plan more effectively”

Few female solopreneurs have a long-term, strategic plan and if they do, it can feel so remote that it can be hard to translate goals into the right actions. As it may not be easy to look very far ahead these days, it can be useful to start with a detailed 3-month plan to provide focus and guidance. This plan needs to be a working document which you can tweak as you go along. But once it is working and you can assess what is being accomplished, you can then look forward to the next 6-12 months.

Please feel free to contact any of the above mentioned experts via their websites.

To benefit from confidential business support, please check out Success Network’s new Summer Circle, a collaborative business growth club. Or contact me if you would like to arrange a complimentary 30-minute mentoring session. My name is Ute Wieczorek-King and I help busy female solopreneurs to be visible, effective, well-connected and profitable in business. To sign up to my monthly newsletter, please visit the Success Network website.

Copyright 2012, Ute Wieczorek-King

Have you scheduled your work to your customers’ needs?

We have some dining room chairs that are badly in need of upholstering. After a bit of searching we found the names of the upholsterers who did our sofa about 15 years ago.

Luckily they still had a shop in Reading, but it never seemed to be open whenever we passed. There was no details on the door about opening times, or a telephone number or website to find out how we could make contact. It seemed to be very difficult, if not impossible, to make an appointment.

But we persisted (though goodness knows why), and finally we saw signs of life when we passed the shop during one afternoon (there was a van packed outside with the same logo). We entered and spoke to the proprietor who said, quite laissez faire, ‘Oh, pop them round on Monday and we’ll have them done by Wednesday.’

We chose some suitable fabric that went with our curtains, he photographed its information with his iPhone, and scribbled out a confirmation sheet with our details. We agreed that I would bring the chair seats around on Monday, which I did, and left them with his associate who was busy upholstering a large sofa.

On Wednesday I phoned his mobile number (which had been scribbled at the bottom of our copy of the confirmation sheet) to find out how far our seats had got. They hadn’t. I said I would have to collect my seats as they were because we had nothing to sit on at our dining room table.

When I arrived at the shop he was there. I asked where our seats were in his work schedule. He looked blankly at me. I asked if had he ordered the material yet. Oh yes, he had, but it was coming with another order so he wouldn’t have to pay for extra transit charges. Certainly I appreciated his logistics criteria, but this was something he should have told us when we paid our deposit, and we would have arranged to drop off the seats to coincide with the material’s arrival.

As it happens, I don’t trust his ‘scheduling’ any more, and a call to his mobile is certainly in order to prevent a wasted journey to his shop once more.

The moral of this post is: he wasn’t considering his customers’ needs. It’s no good having seats wasting their time in his shop not getting upholstered for weeks on end when there is nothing for us to sit on at home. It’s no good saying ‘Oh, drop them off on Monday’ when he knows he won’t have the material by then. It’s no good not having a schedule of work sorted out so he can give realistic lead times as to when our seats will be ready. And it’s no good not having any contact details visible on his shop when it’s closed.

I asked my husband how he managed to get away with being so disorganised, and he suggested that as there was very little competition in his trade, he probably could do what he liked and there would always be work. Hmmm, I wonder for how long though, if he carries on like this…