Category: Business Insurance

This post was originally published on Jan. 8, 2015, and was updated on March 5, 2018, Jan. 17, 2019, Jan. 30, 2020, and Jan. 15, 2021. 

The above content should not be construed as legal or tax advice. Always consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation.

When I first started my business, I was naïve about a lot of things. I treated colleagues like competition, didn’t require clients to sign contracts, and charged way too little. But I was by and far the most naïve about taxes. Quarterly estimated taxes? What are those?!

For one, I didn’t get that I was supposed to pay my taxes four times per year.

Wait. What? If you just did a double-take, don’t worry. Many of us have been there before you. We get so caught up in creating our first invoice or picking a logo that … Read the rest

Employee development is a powerful tool for business owners. According to LinkedIn’s 2018 Workforce Learning Report of 4,000 professionals, 94 percent of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their careers. One great way to invest in your team is to coach them, stepping out of the training classroom and helping them learn day-to-day. Using coaching as a leadership technique can help you better connect with your employees — and help them become even better workers. Keep reading to learn more about what coaching involves and how to do it as a leader.

What is coaching in business?

Like all in-office learning, coaching is used in business to help employees learn and grow their skills. It’s not unlike in sports, where a hitting coach will help a baseball player get out of a slump or a shooting coach will work with an NBA player on their … Read the rest

Did you know that the overwhelming majority of time spent working on website projects is taken up with communication between the project manager and the client? It’s possible to read this statistic as an indication that project managers and website developers are aware of the importance of communicating with their clients, carefully listening to their needs, and taking the time to explain the process of website development.

In reality, however, this statistic represents the inefficiency of much client communication – instead of indicating the importance that website developers place on communications, it indicates the frustration that many of us feel when trying to talk to clients. Some of this frustration is unavoidable, particularly if you see yourself as an antisocial developer who is paid to code, not talk. But it’s also possible to make client communication a whole lot easier via some pretty simple techniques. 

Previously, we’ve shown you how … Read the rest

Why do people buy what they do, when they do? Understanding why the customer does anything is important in delivering the right product or service at the right time. That’s one reason learning how to anticipate needs with consumer psychology and micro-moments is key in building a successful business.

Business owners and marketers just like you have spent hundreds of hours — essentially days of their lives — trying to find ways to attract new customers, convert leads and build loyalty. They’ve spent millions of dollars on fancy campaigns with all the bells and whistles, short of a big neon sign that says, “Buy our stuff, please!”

So hold off on that neon sign until you know that your customer actually needs your products or services.… Read the rest

Goodbye 2020, hello 2021! The past year was definitely a memorable one. As increasing numbers of businesses turn to online store solutions, e-commerce sales have reached record highs. And there’s no denying that this has led to astronomical growth in the website design and development space. 

More than ever, clients demand beautifully designed websites, quick page load speeds, secure environments, and impeccable UX. 

According to Sweor.com, it takes about 0.05 seconds for a user to form an opinion about your website. These snap judgements are typically related to design aesthetics and performance, so you really need to make those milliseconds count. 

GoDaddy Pro has your back. To better support you, we’re releasing in-depth specs about the features you need to delight and engage your clients — and their audiences.

Work smarter with detailed specs.

Based on the documentation that our own care guides use, we’re exposing all of the … Read the rest

As consumers continue to turn to online to start building their dreams and ventures, it is more important than ever for entrepreneurs to find the right domain names. Yet, some of those domains might already be registered, but unused.  

We now make it easy for customers to list their unused domains for sale right where so many searches and ventures begin: GoDaddy. 

Every day, millions of entrepreneurs visit GoDaddy to start their dreams and turn them into ventures. And many of those start with a simple domain name. This makes GoDaddy the right place to list your unused domains for sale.  

Previously, when customers were interested in listing their unused domains for sale, they would find a cumbersome and confusing process with multiple steps.  

Today, we are making it easy to list … Read the rest

You may not know all the best practices for website navigation, but you can probably tell when they haven’t been followed. Have you ever landed on a website and been unsure of where to click in the top navigation? Or, felt overwhelmed by crammed stacks of links in the footer?

If you have, that confusion was likely created by a mix of communication, website design and site hierarchy problems, and it could all be fixed using best practices for website navigation.

What is website navigation?

Website navigation refers to the menus on a website that direct users to internal pages on that site. It includes the top menu bar, links in the footer and sidebar menus. But, website navigation design is much more than that.

Internal link architecture is a sort … Read the rest

A year ago, Elsie Russell watched as her home décor shop, 2 Chicks Home and Market, was heavily damaged by a fire that ripped through the 300 block of historic downtown Denison, Texas.

“I just stood across the street with a crowd of people, watching it burn,” she says. “I was thinking ‘I’ve lost everything. Maybe I just need to shut the business down.’”

Naturally, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to attend a boot camp for small business owners that was already scheduled for later that month. Still, friends convinced Russell to attend, and there, among other things, she learned the importance of ecommerce and online business.

She set up new services like curbside pickup and free local delivery through her website. And now, thanks in … Read the rest

How many hours each week do you spend emailing clients? Once recent study from CNBC suggests the average worker commits more than five hours a day to tapping away at emails. That’s a lot of time you could get back — and at GoDaddy Pro, we’re all about taking back those hours. It’s why we’re creating a series of free email templates that web pros like designers and developers can use to save themselves serious time.

For many of us, our primary money-making skill doesn’t have much to do with writing. It’s about perfecting a .CSS stylesheet or editing images until (as clients are fond of saying) they have that “pop.” Ask us to handle those techie tasks and we’re all over it. But ask us to write a simple message, say, asking a client to send in content, and it’s a delete-and-repeat ordeal to finally get that email out … Read the rest

As per the nature of 2020, many businesses downsized or have fewer full-time staff. On the bright side, increased online traffic led to other businesses pivoting to digital or offering more virtual products/services. No matter the case, business owners and entrepreneurs still need support, a gap that can be easily filled by working with freelancers or contractors.

In a complex digital landscape, you can’t do it all; it’s not sustainable for your health or sanity (business owner anxiety is on the rise, especially for females).

Moreover, it’s not practical for the growth of your business.

But working with a freelancer for the first time can be a daunting prospect.

I’ve managed freelancers for multiple companies and I’ve been a self-employed contractor, so I understand both sides of the relationship. As such, I’m … Read the rest