Selling Celebration Cakes Online: How to Prevent Customers Ordering the Wrong Thing

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A birthday cake can become a customer service emergency before anyone has cracked an egg. One customer expects a towering three-tier masterpiece for twelve people. Another thinks a photograph of a pink cake guarantees precisely the same shade of pink. Meanwhile, somebody has requested “Happy Birthday Brain” instead of “Brian”, and nobody has noticed. Selling […]

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Why Your Loft Might Be More Attractive to Pests Than Your Kitchen

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Your loft could be running a thriving wildlife sanctuary without anyone downstairs knowing about it. While homeowners carefully wipe kitchen counters, seal food containers and sweep away crumbs, an entirely different collection of uninvited guests may be enjoying comfortable accommodation directly above their heads. And unlike the kitchen, nobody checks whether the loft needs cleaning

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The Hidden Cost of Making Customers Think Too Much on Your Website

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A customer should not need the problem-solving abilities of Sherlock Holmes to buy a replacement garden hose. Yet some websites manage to turn the simplest purchase into an intellectual expedition, complete with mysterious menus, contradictory instructions and a contact form that appears to demand a full autobiography. Every additional decision a visitor must make introduces

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How To Do An Office Redesign Without Bringing Business to a Standstill

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A perfectly ordinary Tuesday can become an expensive adventure when someone arrives at the office carrying a power drill and announces that the meeting room is being demolished. Suddenly, the sales department cannot hear its customers, the accounts team has lost access to its printer, and the managing director is conducting a video conference beside

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Why the Smallest Handyman Jobs Can Be the Most Profitable to Advertise Online

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A curtain pole hanging precariously above a living room window might not look like a promising business opportunity, but somewhere nearby, a homeowner is searching Google for somebody willing to prevent an impending domestic catastrophe. That search could be worth considerably more to a local handyman than an expensive advertising campaign promoting every conceivable household

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The WhatsApp Plumber: How Messaging Apps Are Changing the Way Plumbing Businesses Handle Emergencies

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A burst pipe has never cared whether its owner is wearing pyjamas, attending a wedding or halfway through cooking Sunday lunch. Plumbing emergencies have a remarkable talent for arriving at inconvenient moments. Fortunately, the way homeowners contact plumbers is changing, with messaging apps increasingly replacing frantic telephone calls and vague descriptions of mysterious puddles. WhatsApp,

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How Driving Apps Can Help Automatic Learners Practise Between Lessons

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A learner driver can spend Tuesday afternoon mastering roundabouts and, by Friday morning, remember little beyond the instructor saying “mirrors” with increasing levels of spiritual exhaustion. Driving is unusually difficult to practise because most learners cannot simply wander outside whenever they fancy and borrow a road. They need a suitable car, appropriate insurance and usually

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Why Your Online Store Needs Artwork That Can Change Size Without Falling Apart

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A logo can look perfectly respectable on a laptop screen, then turn into a tray of dropped Lego bricks the moment somebody asks for it on a shop banner. This is not bad luck, nor proof that the printer has developed a personal grudge against your business. It is usually a file problem. Many online

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The Quiet Asset Library: Why Every Growing Business Needs a Bank of Useful Images

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A business can spend years becoming recognisable, then present itself online with a photograph of a handshake taken somewhere in 2014. This is not a crime, exactly, but it does leave visitors wondering whether anyone is still at the premises, or whether the whole operation has quietly relocated to a filing cabinet. Useful images are

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Why Small Fixed-Price Tasks Can Be the Smartest Way to Test a Freelancer

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A modest task can tell you more about a freelancer than a magnificently polished portfolio ever will. A portfolio is a shop window: everything is clean, well lit and carefully positioned so that nobody notices the coat stand is holding the building up. Real work begins when somebody has to read your brief, ask sensible

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