7 Simple Tips to Improve Your Website and Website Traffic

It seems that these days the importance of a business’s websites is taken light heartedly.  Owners aren’t as concerned about a website as they are of their store front. They should be concerned because I can tell you they are losing a lot of business.

When looking for products or services many people turn to their trusty search engines to find them. They often don’t look much further then the first page of results. Once at your website a sale is often determined in the first 10 seconds of browsing a website. If a user thinks you have an ugly website with confusing or very little content they will hit the back button and continue browsing other results from the search query.

I know that before I go into a store I check their website; if I find the site unattractive I normally lose trust and never visit the physical store. The website to me is the face of the brand and is the most important advertising a business can have.

From developing websites for many years now I bring this down to lack of knowledge from the client in regards to what they need in a website. Most clients believe that if they just have a website everything will be ok.

A New Green Office Space For Entrepreneurs Going Green

Change is a word that is thrown around A LOT! But what is actually changing…? Gas guzzling cars are still being produced and sold, the amount of garbage we produce through consumption is still on the rise and clean drinking water that isn’t out of a branded plastic bottle is getting harder to find.

A quiet revolution is happening in small pockets around the world. Around the world young people (at the tender age of 24 I guess I’d fall into that category) are beginning to rethink the way they work. The shift is not only about WHAT we’re working on (industrial chores to social innovative) but also HOW we’re working (9 to 5 ivory tower to virtual and sustainable spaces).

One such pocket of social innovation is Green Spaces in New York. Roberto Rhett, director and eco-entrepreneur, has spent the last 18 months building ‘work spaces to launch IMG_0409green entrepreneurs’. These spaces are generally used by 1-3 person eco-companies that see the immense value in working side by side with other creative thinking environmental start-ups. Simply put, the main value of this space to many is the ability to bounce ideas off each other, solve problems ‘out-loud’ and grow together. Here the days are numbered for the dreaded cubicals and silos of solitude that so many companies continue to build around each other. Instead these are replaced with vintage/reused desks, communal work benches and rooftop gardens.

The Best Pictures of SOCAP09 Day 1!

Ladies and gentlemen, without further adieu…the highlights of SOCAP Day 1!

Paula showcasing xsproject bags

Paula showcases the SOCAP09 conference bags! Every attendee & speaker gets one of these wonderful recycled ‘trash’ bags courtesy of XSProject.

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Couch area provided by the hub! These guys create a space for social innovators to work, meet, connect and inspire.

Show ‘us’ the Money! Can We Make a Career From Doing GOOD Business!?

The time has come to find out whether a career can be out of being a social entrepreneur! For those of you still unsure of what a social entrepreneur is Andrew Mawson sums it up very eloquently. Those individuals that are:

commited to applying business principles to social issues.

I’m really excited as tomorrow I will be voluntering for SOCAP09.

SoCap09 will bring together a unique mix of the world’s top social innovators, investors, donors, entrepreneurs, and thought-leaders, today’s leading catalysts of change from across the globe.

SOCAP09 appears to have attracted some of the biggest players in the social entrepreneur and social enterprise space so my mission for this conference is to find out if we, the gen y and z’s, can make a career out of this type of business!

60 Young & ‘wyze’ Entrepreneurs Under the Age of 30!

I recently stumbled across a couple of ‘Top 30 under 30′ lists which showcase some of the what can be achieved before you reach the age of 30.

Two I found particularly interesting were Matt Mullenweg (25) & Daniel Ek (26).

Matt Mullenweg

Location: San Francisco, US
Age: 25
Founded: Wordpress (2003) and Automattic (2005)

Matt started with a vision of making online publishing more accessible and user-friendly. The free blogging platform, Wordpress (which we LOVE to use) boasts nearly 4 million blogs worldwide, including this one. In 2005, Mullenweg launched Automattic to not only maintain WordPress, but to develop additional programs, like its Akismet spam-protection service.

This is one guy worth keeping a tab on! Which can be done via his blog or @photomatt

Cadbury Dairy Milk to go Fairtrade in 2010

My organisation, DayEight, has been working with the Salvation Army and Fairtrade Australia for sometime now. We have been looking at ways to encourage the large confectionery manufacturers to bite the bullet and go Fairtrade.

In recent weeks the Salvos and I met and it was mentioned in the meeting that “Cadbury is just refusing to budge, what more can we do to make them wake up and recognise their responsibilities to the poor”.

If Good Music is on YouTube and No One is Around To Tweet it Does it Still rock?

I remember watching Futurama and on the directors commentary when talking about the production of a song for the show, one of the writers asked why there isn’t better music now that the technology to make and record music is so cheap.

To be honest I kept asking myself the same question. Heaps of cheap technology for making it but, not hearing better music.

But then again you have to remember there are two parts to hearing good music. Firstly it’s creation, secondly its being listened too. The latter requires different technologies than the former.

So while procrastinating one night on youtube I found this. There it was, good music, and a place to listen. It makes perfect sense now. You need better technology in the creation of music and its distribution.

The new wave of good music, probably won’t come through the radio or the tv. It’s coming through Youtube, facebook, and twitter. Finally the technology that allows me to hear it has caught up with the technologies that allow it to be produced. My ears are eternally grateful.

‘Green’ is to Gen Y what ‘Peace’ was to Gen X

I have recently been involved in a number of discussions with gen Xers+ focusing on “what you young people stand for”. It has been pointed out that each generation had a central theme of concern that ran through their lives. There was the second world war for my grandparents, which was about fighting for the empire, for commonwealth. My parents had Vietnam, and the ‘Peace, Love and Brown Rice’ movement. It was all about anti-establishment, counter-government. But what is it that I, and my peers, stand for?

Are The Big Oil Companies Finally Turning Green?

Green Fuel

There has been a whole lot of talk recently about bio-fuels. There are those who think it is evil, and others who think they are the ‘Holy Grail of Green Energy’. The truth is probably somewhere between these two perspectives; bio-fuels will be necessary, but not sufficient, for the green economy of the future.

As a young person I am always skeptical about big business, especially when it comes to claims about their pro-environmental stance. In particular I have long wondered how genuine the big oil companies could really be about going ‘green’. BP is perhaps the one oil company that has chosen to market itself as being environmentally friendly. It has been running with the “Beyond Petroleum’ tagline for some time now.

Should Australia Have a ‘Cash for Clunkers’ Program?

The US has recently seen its hugely successful ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program close. This program gave $4,500 to encourage people to trade in their inefficient old cars for new, low emission alternatives. It was a very cost effective way to encourage a rapid increase in the nation’s fuel efficiency.

Australia spends many millions of dollars each year to give ‘first-home-owner’ grants to homebuyers, with grants designed to encourage home ownership and the purchase of newly built homes. If it is ok for the government to pay people to buy new homes, why arnt we considering paying people to buy fuel-efficient and hybrid vehicles? In a world where drastic CO2 omission cuts are needed, shouldnt all options be on the table? After all, Australian passenger cars account for 7.8% of total emissions. This is a number which can be dramatically reduced simply through encouraging greater numbers of fuel efficient car purchases.