November Blog

Nov 28, 2014 | Uncategorized

Black Friday

We have seen a lot of news in the past week focused around ‘Black Friday’ but what is ‘Black Friday’ actually all about? Black Friday, initially adopted in the US, is a day of sales following the Thanksgiving holiday. Many in the US believe this day kicks off the Christmas shopping season.

Interestingly, before the term Black Friday became associated with shopping it was a commonly used term in the 1800s, used to refer to stock market crashes. Could this be the link between the term ‘Black Friday’ and the plummeting prices seen in the Black Friday sales?

Black Friday was initially adopted in the UK four years ago by Amazon as people shopping online noted the big deals given in the US on this day. As a result more and more UK stores are adopting this tradition, thus lengthening the UK shopping season.

This is said to benefit stores by lengthening the sales season, customers will buy earlier rather than later to reduce spending on December expenditure and as a result, people ‘forget’ what they’ve spent and buy more nearer Christmas.

Fancy picking up some cheap deals on Friday? Here’s a guide to the best deals on Black Friday

http://tinyurl.com/lthc7gx

This day is also having an impact on small businesses too. Independent shops have to plan for the next year in order to match deals on offer in the larger stores.

However smaller businesses are trying to respond to Black Friday by importing Small Business Saturday, encouraging consumers to shop locally and support small local businesses. So why not support the small businesses and shop locally.  More information on Small Business Saturday can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/nz8f8a8

Bad TripAdvisor reviews  

A couple recently fined by a hotel for giving a bad review on TripAdvisor have brought attention to the detrimental effects a bad review can have on a hotel, and highlights how these reviews are a powerful marketing tool which, when abused, can break hotels’ reputations.

Dealing with these bad reviews can be hard for hotels and B&Bs, here are a few tips on how to handle these reviews:

1)   

Consider the truth behind the review, be proactive and resolve situations before it results in a negative review or respond to the review offline via email or telephone.

2)   

Do not allow blackmail; Report the threat to TripAdvisor and do not respond to the blackmailer’s bribes. 

For more information please follow: http://tinyurl.com/mfxtoue

 

Healthy Habits

Small business owners are known to be busy, determined and driven people, therefore it can be hard to find the time to focus on other activities. However recent research by E.ON shows 41% of business owners are dieting, keeping track of their weight and participating in exercise.

Here are some tips on how to keep healthy and increase productivity, particularly with Christmas coming:

  • 1)    Eat a healthy balanced diet. Eating healthily is vital when working long hours; cutting out things like caffeine can improve productivity.
  • 2)    Keep Hydrated. Caroline Keighley, a nutritionist maintains keeping well hydrated is vital. She states “About 70% of the brain is water and as little as 1% dehydration can begin to affect cognitive function.”
  • 3)    Participate in extracurricular activities. Having a hobby is good at helping shut down business related thoughts and help broaden your mind.
  • 4)    Exercise. Doing exercise has been shown to improve productivity and memory function. Fitting in exercise into your day helps oxygen flow to the brain and get you prepared for the day ahead.
  • 5)    Get a Dog.

Ginny, 3 year old labrador.

Problems with printing at GOV.UK

H M Revenue & Customs’ movement of some tax service to GOV.UK has not come free of complications.  Some subscribers are having problems printing information. Some guides on GOV.UK have shown problems when downloading as PDFs and printing results in jumbled text.

A helpful tip to resolve this:

Find a free text converter online and use this to make the pages on GOV.UK printable and storable as a Word or similar file.

Follow to download ‘where to find free text conversion

Free Xero Data Conversion

A good number attended our recent Xero workshop and we will be repeating it in the New Year. Xero are currently offering free data conversion from Sage or QuickBooks until the end of the year. For more information contact us as soon as possible.