Work has changed a lot over the last 20 years as computers, the Internet and mobile devices have taken over almost every aspect of our lives.

And it’s not standing still. The continuous improvement process means that every online service is continuously being updated and improved and we all need to keep up with these changes.

Jerry Lame understands this from his experience in the Corporate World but loves the pace and flexibility of running his own online business.

These online services are used because they are faster, more systemised and more effective and often cheaper than doing it the old way, the usage of online business software has grown faster when significant events change the way we work.

• In the early 2000’s the Internet spawned some of the large technology companies and Internet adoption,
• The 2010’s caused major disruption in advertising and marketing with companies like Google and Facebook standing out as leaders,
• Covid made us all learn how to work remotely, and
• AI is making us ask better questions (prompts) to help computers do more for us.

With such rapid change comes a need for both business owners and employees to learn and adapt to new ways of doing things in all aspects of business administration, including:

• Marketing
• Sales
• Customer Service
• Operations and Administration
• Technical support
• Accounting and Finance

Jerry knows that by selling online courses in how to use these software programs he can talk to lots of different people about their businesses and help them do a better job.

Learn about bank reconciliations

When Jerry buys his online business he focusses on selling online courses. He uses his small business marketing skills to pay for Google Ads to get his new website discovered by potential customers.

Like many small business owners he gets distracted by all the other different ways he can make money online.

He knows he can sell digital products like courses and earn a commission from the sale of each course but realises he can use his website to sell all sorts of things.

Jerry needs some consistent income to replace his corporate wage. He still has a young family to feed so he starts promoting his “professional services” to help other businesses with their bookkeeping and administration.

Although he loves business admin tasks his new business is showing him how much he loves talking to people, finding out what they need and then selling things to them – and he even wants to do that for other businesses – like a selling agent.

You’ll get to see how his business looks financially in our bank reconciliations courses in Quickbooks, MYOB and Xero.

Things get messy for Jerry

This is when things start to get messy for Jerry as he makes sporadic decisions about what he wants to do with his business.

He takes on so many different things that he loses track of his focus.

He doesn’t have a plan and as a result his bookkeeping is all over the place and he needs to get it back into some order. He needs to make better business and financial decisions and you’ll learn how to help him.

Learn about Jerry’s Messy Startup

Jerry learns about Digital Business

The digital business course explains the terminology used in digital aspects of a course (digital business literacy) and how and where these are visible at the website and online services you use every day. It includes:

• Domain names
• Website hosting
• Website builders like WordPress
• Keywords and Key phrases to get discovered by Google
• Website Goals
• Online customer service

Here they are explained in more detail.

Website Domain Names

Domain name registration is the first step in starting an online business or setting up a website for a physical business and it’s relatively cheap.

• Domain names
• Domain registration
• Sub-domains, sub-folders
• SSL Certificates, and
• Nameservers

These sound complicated and you’ll rarely need to perform any technical work relating to them but some of these terms are used very often, particularly if you are performing sales and customer service jobs.

Website Hosting

Website hosting is similar to the rent that a business pays. It enables your website and email services to work and if you operate an online shop, have a restaurant booking system or simply a form on your website you’ll realise that it is very important to have good quality hosting and hosting support.

There are very cheap hosting plans available that seem attractive until your business begins to depend on it’s website you’ll realise why Amazon’s Web Services is such a massive part of the Amazon empire – some companies spend thousands of dollar per month!

Course topics include:

• Hosting types (shared, dedicated etc)
• Hosting services
• Verifying a website for Google Analytics, Search Console and other important “free” marketing tools
• Website security
• Hosting Dashboards and getting support
• When can things go wrong
• Safety and security

Website Builders and WordPress

Once you have a domain name and website hosting you’ll want to setup a website.

Some business spend a lot of money designing a beautiful website and then launch it while others create a minimal viable website with important information and slowly improve it and update it as they discover what their website visitors want from their website.

Course topics include:

• Wix, Telstra Online Essentials, Shopify, SquareSpace
• Site builders versus Content Management Systems
• WordPress, Drupal and Joomla
• Pages and Posts
• Plugins for extra functionality

Keywords and Keyphrases

So much traffic to business websites is generated from Google searches. Search engines like Google “index” a site to understand the words and phrases used at the website. They then determine which website is the most relevant for a give search word or phrase and show those website in the free search results.

This is why it is important to know what words your customers use when they are search for the products and services you provide.

• Keyword
• Keyphrases and combinations
• Website titles, page names and meta information
• Heading structure and importance of menus
• Google Search Console

Website Goals

Some goals are simple – get more visitors, while others are more important – get customers to contact us. It is important to understand what you expect from your website because it might not happen straight away but at least you’ll know where the website can be improved.

Put more simply, you’ll need to know your website goals when you start paying money for online advertising.

Topics include:

• Website visitors
• Common Analytics measurements
• Lead capture
• Engagement
• Conversion rate optimisation

Learn more about the Digital Business Course

 

Jerry learns about Online Customer Service

When website first appeared they were very static and contained information and contact details but now they are much more interactive.

Website chats, popup offers, subscription forms, time based offers and all sorts of animations appear at most websites to let you know that someone is available to help you in your search.

Just like there is a shop assistant in a retail shop to answer questions, make recommendations and help you buy their products.

If you are going to get serious about your website and online marketing there are some basic things you need and other more complex things you’ll want.

Course topics include:

• Tools used to promote and validate your online profile (website, social media)
• How to build credibility
• Understanding how to navigate around your website
• Knowing where to direct customers
• Understand customer goals
• The customers stage in the buying cycle
• When to use offers and why
• Analysing data to improve the customer service experience
• Using what you know to create promotional offers
• How to introduce an offer to a customer
• How to get a new customer into your sales and marketing funnel

Learn more about the Online Business Customer Service Foundations Course

 

Small Business Marketing

The EzyStartup Course is relevant to start ups as well as people who’ve been in business for years but want to introduce new products or services and find ways to “pivot” their business into new or different directions.

This small business marketing course is relevant for normal brick and mortar type businesses like cafes and restaurants and trades business like plumbers, electricians and carpenters.

The online business startup course was developed by the Australian Small Business Centre Pty Ltd and has helped thousands of students start and run their own businesses.

To some people the skills you’ll learn in this course seem natural but to anyone who hasn’t had experience owning or managing a business it will introduce you to great skills and knowledge that will make you invaluable as a business manager too.

Topics Include:

• Originate and Develop Concepts
• Business Planning and Market Research
• Establish Legal and Risk Management
• Intellectual Property and General Law
• Product Packaging and your Unique Digital Marketing Message

One of our case studies includes how Aldi sell toilets for $299 – installed!

Retailers are always coming up with new ideas about how to sell more products to more people and this case study is a great example of how a retailer, with a National (infact International) footprint can work with plumbers and product manufacturers to supply AND install almost anything.

The key to business is combining several things in one package and even small businesses can do this using Joint Ventures. It all starts with an idea and we’ll show you how to formulate ideas and turn them into reality.

Learn about the Online EzyStartup Business Course