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Boost Your Hairdressing Business with a Stunning Website

duda@tribesquared.com (GetOnline Agency) — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 11:58:45 GMT

Why does a

Welcome back to our blog series! We're focusing on how various businesses can flourish with the help of a well-designed website. Last week, we covered garages, and this week, we're stepping into the vibrant and stylish world of hairdressing.

As a hairdresser, your work is all about style, transformation, and personal touch. A website is an excellent tool to showcase all these aspects. Here's why:

Showcase Your Work: Your website can act as a digital portfolio where you can showcase your skills, styles, and transformations. Potential clients can see your artistry and be confident they're making the right choice.
Online Appointments: With a website, clients can book appointments at their convenience. This streamlines your scheduling and provides a seamless experience for your clients.
Marketing and SEO: A website helps your business appear in local search results when potential clients are looking for hairdressing services. Coupled with SEO, your business becomes more visible to a larger audience.

Why GOA ?

Now, let's talk about how GOA can help you create a website that reflects the creativity and professionalism of your hairdressing business.

1. Customisable Templates: GOA provides a variety of attractive, customisable templates. You can choose one that matches your aesthetic and customise it to reflect your unique brand and style.

2. Easy to Use: With its intuitive, drag-and-drop interface, GOA makes website creation accessible to everyone, even without any technical skills.

3. Mobile Optimisation: More people than ever are using their smartphones to search for services. GOA automatically optimises your website for mobile, ensuring a smooth experience for all users.

4. Online Booking and eCommerce: GOA supports features like online booking and the selling of products, such as hair care items, directly from your website.

5. SEO Tools: With built-in SEO tools, GOA helps your website rank higher in search engine results, increasing visibility and attracting more potential customers.

Ready to give your hairdressing business a digital makeover? Start your free trial with GOA today and transform your business. Our next post will discuss how another industry can reap the benefits of a strong online presence.

Until then, no matter your trade, having a website is an asset that connects you with clients, showcases your services, and grows your brand. Kickstart your online journey today with GOA!

Why does my garage need a website?

duda@tribesquared.com (GetOnline Agency) — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 11:47:23 GMT

Every Business Needs a Website: From Garages to Hairdressers

Welcome to the first in our series of blog posts designed to help you understand why your business, irrespective of its size or industry, can significantly benefit from having its own website. We’ll explore specifics of different businesses and how a digital presence can help them thrive. This week, we're putting the spotlight on garages, and next week, we'll dive into the world of hairdressing.

Why Does a Garage Need a Website?

If you own a garage, you might wonder, "Why does my business need a website?" The answer is simple: visibility and accessibility. In today's digital age, people often turn to the internet first when looking for local services. Having a website makes your garage easier to find and lends credibility to your business.

Not only can a website share essential information about your services, location, and hours, it can also provide an opportunity to showcase your workmanship and customer testimonials. With features like online scheduling, customers can book appointments at their convenience, creating a smoother experience for both you and them.

Why GOA

Creating a website may sound complicated, but it doesn't have to be. That's where GOA comes in. GOA is a user-friendly web design platform designed for businesses just like yours. Here's why GOA is your go-to solution for building your garage's website:

1. Easy to Use: GOA's intuitive interface makes it easy for anyone to build a professional-looking website, no technical skills needed.

2. Mobile Optimization: GOA automatically optimises your site for mobile, a must-have in our smartphone-dominated world.

3. SEO Tools: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is how you get your website to appear in search results. GOA offers built-in SEO tools to help potential customers find you when they search for garages in your area.

4. Online Scheduling: With GOA, you can include online scheduling right on your site, making it simple for customers to book their next service.

With GOA, creating a website is a straightforward, accessible process that can drive significant benefits for your business.

Stay tuned for our next blog post where we'll discuss how hairdressers can similarly benefit from having a robust online presence.

Until then, remember, no matter your business, a website is an asset that can help you connect with customers, showcase your services, and grow your brand. Start your digital journey today with GOA!

Key factors to consider when assessing your website

duda@tribesquared.com (GetOnline Agency) — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 18:14:43 GMT

Is your site ticking all the boxes?

User experience: A website should be designed with the user in mind. The layout should be easy to navigate, with clear menus and links that make it easy for users to find what they're looking for. The website should also be visually appealing and use colors, fonts, and images that are easy on the eyes and create a cohesive and attractive design.
Content quality: The content on a website should be well-researched, accurate, and up-to-date. It should be presented in a way that is easy to read and understand, using headings, subheadings, and bullet points to break up text and make it more scannable. Additionally, the content should be relevant to the website's audience and purpose.
Functionality: A website's features and functionalities should work properly and be easy to use. Forms should submit data correctly, search functions should return relevant results, and interactive elements such as sliders or dropdown menus should work without any issues. Broken links or features that don't work can lead to a frustrating user experience.
Performance: Website speed is a crucial factor in user experience. Users expect websites to load quickly, and a slow website can lead to frustration and even abandonment. The website should also be responsive, meaning it should work well on all devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
Security: A website should be secure to protect both the user and the website owner. HTTPS encryption helps keep user data safe and prevent unauthorized access to the website's server. A website should also have measures in place to protect against malware, viruses, and other threats.
Accessibility: Website accessibility means ensuring that all users, including those with disabilities, can easily access and use the website. This includes following accessibility standards such as using alt text for images and ensuring that the website is compatible with assistive technologies such as screen readers.
Social proof: Customer testimonials, reviews, or endorsements can provide evidence of a website's credibility and reliability. Displaying positive reviews or endorsements from reputable sources can help build trust with users and increase their confidence in the website.

In summary, a good website should provide a positive user experience with a well-designed layout, high-quality content, and easy-to-use features that work properly. It should be secure, accessible, and perform well, while also displaying social proof to build trust with users.

Instagram's Chronological feed is back!

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 08:33:03 GMT

How to Use Instagram’s New

Chronological Feed

Instagram is giving back users the highly requested chronological feed!

Back in 2016, Instagram decided to remove the chronological feed that shows posts in the order of the latest published content. It switched to the algorithm-based feed that shows posts it thinks you would be most interested in.

This new feature gives you more choice and control over what you see and lets you view posts as per your interests and favourites .

“Don’t forget to add getonlineagency to your Favourites!”

Here's a step by step guide to do so:

Download the latest version of Instagram on your device
Open Instagram on your device, In the top-left corner click on the Instagram logo.
You will see a drop down menu with two options: Following and Favourites.
Choose “Following” from the drop down menu.
Once you have done this the newest posts will show up at the top and the oldest ones at the bottom.
To change to Favourites click back on the Instagram logo.
Choose “Favourites” from the drop down menu
You should add people to your Favourites list to see their posts first.
Tap “Add Favourites” to pick the accounts you want in your Favourites list. It’s worth noting that you should be following the person to add them to your Favourites list. You can add a total of 50 accounts.
To switch back to the current Instagram feed, select “Home”.

There is one catch though. If you switch to either the favourites or following feed, you cannot see Stories. You will have to go back to the current feed for that.

Can the Chronological feed be set as default?

No, Instagram currently doesn’t let you set it by default so you will have to switch to it manually.

How do you manage your Favourites on Instagram?

You can manage accounts you have added to the Favourites list from the Favourites tab on Instagram.

To Blog or not to Blog

Tue, 22 Mar 2022 11:41:21 GMT

If you’re thinking about your first website, or a replacement website, you might be asking yourself this very question.

We’re going to be bold here and commit to a decision from the outset. Yes, you should. And we’ve written an insight article about getting started with Blog writing which you should definitely go and read.

However, we need to spend some time thinking about what a Blog is, how to use it and what benefits it can bring.

Firstly, let's not get too hung up on the term “Blog”. From our perspective, we consider a Blog to be a catch-all term to cover a wide range of content of a certain type. That is to say that we consider a Blog to be a regular monologue with a noticeable personality that speaks to the visitor directly. It's not uncommon to call a Blog a different name, like ‘News’ for instance, but we would argue that a Blog is essentially a personalised type of content, whereas News is (hopefully) more factual. The type of content is the same but the tone of writing is different.

Let's consider for a moment what the benefits of a blog are, both to you and to your visitor (ie. your potential customer).

To your visitors , a Blog is something that provides them with knowledge and insight whilst at the same time giving a sense of who you are as a business. These are two distinct benefits.

Showing your knowledge and insight proves that you know your stuff. It adds credibility and authority to your website. It doesn’t matter if your topic is low-brow or highly evolved, showing that you know your stuff in a Blog gives an insight into your competency and quality.

Offering a sense of who you are adds character and personality. This can be really important in some sectors. For example, in financial sectors it helps to carry a degree of confidence and gravitas to show that you can be trusted with investments. Alternatively, in health and care services you can demonstrate your empathy and positivity so that visitors feel that they will be treated sensitively. Every sector has an appropriate tone .

To your business , a Blog can be used for an SEO benefit, creating pages that address specific topics that might link more directly to a common search phrase (e.g. how do I do X?). It's also a way of creating content that doesn’t require design or technical support because Blog sections are often designed to follow a template structure. Creating a non-Blog page may require the help of a designer but creating a Blog only needs you to write something worthwhile.

And therein lies the flaw in the plan … ?

I meet so many people who worry about the writing part of blogging. They worry that it's not a natural skill for them, or that they don’t have the time. I’m not going to blow smoke here and tell you that you are a secret wordsmith waiting to be found if you only had the confidence to flourish! No - sometimes we need to be honest about our weaknesses so that we can make the most of our strengths.

One answer to the challenge of writing a Blog is that there is a very healthy network of people who love to write, and will be happy to write for you if you don’t want to, or don’t have the time . They will sit and talk to you, form some topics and write some words. It will be your voice, your expertise and your insight… but written by someone who knows their apostrophes from their footmarks, and why ‘they’re’ is not ‘their’ and is definitely not ‘there’.

Yes of course, it's an added cost to employ a writer.. But it doesn’t have to be beyond your budget. Most copywriters and bloggers are open to conversations about bundling a total amount of words over multiple writings, so you can work out a plan that delivers a lot over several months. And there is some sense and benefit in writing a series of related blogs, so planning ahead is a good thing anyway.

Another option is that if you are happier with talking more than writing then you could try dictating your article first. Many modern smartphones can be used as digital voice recorders and will even write a document for you as you speak. You still need to set a limit and have a point to your monologue but you might find this to be a good way to overcome writer's block.

So whether you choose to write it yourself or reach out for help from a professional, keep in mind that the result is essentially the same. With a Blog in place, and a regular stream of content to engage with, your website will possess a sense of personality which might otherwise be missing.

You already know you are a great company to work with, so this is just one more way of getting that message out to your potential customers.

What the heck is ‘above the fold’

Tue, 22 Mar 2022 11:41:20 GMT

No it's not a reference to my latest diet plan, it actually comes from the print industry (tabloid and broadsheet papers in particular).

You know how a film or TV series about the turn of last century will almost always feature a newspaper seller, normally with a faux cockney accent, selling papers on a street corner? Their papers are bundled and stacked ready to be purchased for a single coin by busy commuters rushing past. How do these commuters choose their paper? Quickly!

The papers are folded for convenience (easier to carry a folded paper than when unfolded) and the name of the paper and its main headline (and picture, if it's a fancy paper) are visible on top… above the fold of the paper.

Ahhhhh……..

In print design (in the days where papers were printed in extraordinary numbers) the above the fold section on the front page was the prime real estate. It made the difference between a good day of paper sales and a bad one (as did rain, but that's a different problem).

But wait… what does that have to do with a website?

Well in web design terms, the section of a homepage that is visible before any scrolling is the part that we consider to be ‘above the fold’ and therefore of maximum impact to the initial impression given to new visitors.

But wait…. doesn’t the position of that lower edge change depending on the device?

Oh you are a good student aren’t you? Yes it does. Well done and have a gold star!

Whilst there are conventions of sizing, the number of variations of a screen size is actually quite large. So the bottom of the screen (the ‘fold’) can be anywhere across a wide range. Specifically, modern website design considers the different needs of different screen sizes and orientations. A common approach is to consider: Desktop, Tablet, Mobile Landscape and Mobile Portrait (others are available). This is called Responsive Web Design.

So how on earth do we know what's ‘above the fold’ and what isn’t?

This is potentially quite tricky and the simple answer is that we need to focus less on the precision and more on the concept.

Whilst it is possible - though with a great deal of effort and therefore potentially a great deal of extra cost - to design a website that measures the screen size of the visitor and lays out the content accordingly, this is an approach limited to only the biggest website designs (for the most part). The simple reason being that testing this approach exhaustively is a complex and never ending task.

A more practical approach is to use the basic 4 device sizes to give a good guideline of where everything should be.

But wait… surely smartphones are a nightmare to design for?

You are full of questions today aren’t you? Well yes and no. It's true that there are considerably more size and shape variations in smartphones than in Desktop or Laptop PCs. Practically speaking, we can’t accurately cater for all of them, so we shouldn’t.

We have the tools if we need them

Websites can be designed with screen size in mind, to a greater or lesser extent. We can apply rules that selectively target certain screen sizes. Practicality dictates that we keep it simple and design for 3 or 4 common sizes but thats enough to cover a lot of variation!

Like that pirate said, this is more a set of guidelines

Don’t fret over this topic but do use the concept to your advantage. It's a helpful guiding principle that will lead to a more effective way of handling new visitors to your home page.

So let's answer the question fully - why should you even care about Above the Fold?

Keeping this concept in mind helps you make better design choices for your website by making that first impression more impactful and concise. It will make it clearer to your visitors who you are, what you do and how to get in touch. It makes for better websites.