How personas lend a human touch to your website

Creating an accurate, insightful picture of the customers that are visiting your website doesn’t need to be a costly, time-consuming or complicated process. You also don’t need to rely on gathering (and trawling through) complex datasets.

To understand your customers on a deeper level, we take a look at how to develop website personas, which are fictional (or semi-fictional) characters that represent the several types of users (and potential customers) visiting and interacting with your website. These can lend a human touch to your website.

This guide is intended to help you get started researching and building effective website personas that can be easily updated and refined over time.

Cybersecurity

SMEs have always had to contend with fraudsters and thieves. Only now, in addition to separating you from your hard-earned cash, today’s cybercriminal is after your personal data, passwords and more.

Unfortunately, cybercrime is here to stay. In fact, you might say that it’s a booming industry that’s expanding every year as we continue to shop and conduct our business online. Research by accounting firm Grant Thornton estimated the total losses of cybercrime to the Irish economy at €9.6 billion in 2020.

The purpose of this e-book is to help educate you on the basics of cybersecurity, as well as provide relatively simple – but effective – practices and tips for keeping your business safe from the most common cyberthreats you may encounter.

Powering up conversion rates

Irish retailers are increasingly offering their products and services online and this trend has accelerated due to impact of Covid.

We felt it was timely to offer insights on how to turn website visitors into paying customers, a process known as Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO). We invited leading digital expert Ger Keohane of StudioForty9 to share his expertise and recommendations on best practice in this area.

This e-book provides a detailed breakdown of the steps an SME can take to increase conversion rates using the E-commerce Maturity Model framework.

Website costs - how much should you pay?

So how much should you spend on developing a website? It will of course, depend on the size and nature of your business, as well as the sophistication of the website itself in terms of the technical elements needed. It also depends on how the website is positioned in terms of your overall marketing strategy.

We take a closer look at the costs involved, and how to make the most of your budget when developing a new website. Our advice is broken down into practical and manageable tasks, showing you what you need to consider when going through the process.

We profile four typical Irish business scenarios for:

• Start-up (1 part time staff)
• Micro-business (less than 3 employees)
• Small business (less than 5 employees)
• Medium-sized business (up to 20 employees)

Choosing a domain name

A domain name is your address on the internet. You own that space and as a business, use it to promote and/or sell your services and products to customers. Your domain name tells people where to find you online, so they can search for your goods and services.

Your domain name is a crucial part of your online business. A good name could be the difference between becoming a known brand online or being lost in the vast ocean of websites on the internet. Not only is it your online address, but it also reflects who you are as a business and your brand.

This guide takes you through the process of choosing your domain name. We outline why it is important to secure the domain name that best fits and describes your business. At the end, you should have all the tools to brainstorm domain names and know how to register one.