Notes for people who run local service businesses.
Short, practical pieces about the problems that come with running a small service business in the UK: being found, being chosen, and keeping track of the work once it arrives. Where a piece quotes a figure, the source is linked at the bottom of it.
A quarter of UK sole traders still have no website. Here is what that costs.
Official UK figures show 24% of sole traders have no website. What that actually costs a local service business, and the smallest version that fixes it.
Your website is a phone screen, whether you designed it that way or not
Around three quarters of UK online time is spent on a smartphone. What that means for a local service website, and the five things to check on your own phone today.
A slow website loses you work quietly, and you never see it happen
What the research actually says about page speed and people leaving, plus the practical causes of a slow local business website and how to fix them.
What a local service website actually needs on it
A plain list of what belongs on a website for a cleaning, valeting, plumbing or similar local business, and what you can safely leave off.
The free Google listing most trades half fill in
Your Google Business Profile is free, takes an afternoon, and is often the first thing a local customer sees. Here is what to put in it and what gets ignored.
How to ask for reviews without it being awkward
Reviews are the thing a stranger checks before ringing you. A practical, non-cringeworthy way to ask, and what to do about a bad one.
The jobs you lose by not answering
More than a third of UK adults will hang up and ring a competitor within a minute. What to do about it when you are up a ladder and cannot answer.
Why jobs go missing when your bookings live in WhatsApp
WhatsApp is a brilliant way to take an enquiry and a terrible way to keep one. The specific failures, and how to stop them without buying anything.
£26 billion is owed to UK businesses right now, and chasing it is unpaid work
Government research puts late payment at £26bn outstanding and 86 hours a year chasing, per affected business. What small firms can actually do about it.
Do you actually know what last month made?
Most small service businesses know what came in, not what they kept. A simple way to find the real number without becoming an accountant.
The quiet cost of renting all your software
A booking app, an invoicing app, a storage plan, a website subscription. Each is small, the total is not, and you own none of it.