Your business, creating your website & market presence

We started with the year with the reality of the UK possibly going into recession, Grant Shapps plans his vision for ‘Scale-Up Britain’ at the meeting in Davos. We see a great emphasis of businesses can both share and benefit from the digital vision.

Creating your website, some tips to consider

I think when we set out to build our business website, we need to understand and plan the contents and the structure of the website. Its ever important to understand your target audiences. Your website must have a purpose and those you need to set out.

It may be that you would like audiences to know more about your business, whether you are selling products or services or how to buy your services, giving your visitor the opportunity will help you.

Using our template drive website builder, you would be able to choose the most appropriate website template and start becoming creative. You can find more information by visiting us at https://retail.techics.com/ websites.

Website templates can be a very quick and useful platform to start with. It would let you move around the objects, add content and make it very personal to your business brand.

If you don’t have a domain name already, you can buy one at https://retail.techics.com.

Did you know, UK Government have announced £15M in grants for small businesses.

Once I have created my website, what next?

Good question, once you have your domain name and your website created, you need to have a space on the web, referred as webhosting.

It’s not a daunting task to have a webspace, costs for webhosting starts around £1.99 a month but as your business website grows, you will need to move to a more better hosting platform, to ensure your audiences can access your website.

At Retail Tech ICS we offer web hosting services starting from £1.99 a month and you can find more information on this on our website.

We know that the global webspace is congested, so search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, helps us to navigate to the wealth of information available.

I am sure most of you are bored of hearing about search engine optimisation, but we need to make sure that we are being found.

There are no quick fixes to this and using unethical methods, can hurt your domain and your business for the future. Building good contents, and information will ensure you are found by the right people looking for you. This helps you to reduce bounce rates on your website.

What can Tech ICS do to help?

We build our business on trust and creating good relationship. Technology is an everchanging process, which means, we want to be part of your growth. We will advise, plan, strategies and execute the help you need, whether that is a website build, software creation or growing your market presence, we can surely help.

If you need help and advice on creating your web space, reach us at Tech ICS. You can find more information of what we do at www.techics.com.

By Isabel Ramirez isabel@southwarknews.co.uk

two woodEn buildings are nearly complete on Old Kent Road, meaning they could be open to the local community in a matter of weeks.

The Livesey Exchange has been building itself a new home ahead of the demolition of the Ledbury Estate.

For the past five years, this grassroots community project for local creatives and entrepreneurs were using the garages beneath the estate’s tower blocks.

Their new home, LEX 2, near Curry’s, Old Kent Road, off Lovegrove Street, will feature two buildings with more scope for local people to benefit from the massive regeneration taking place in the area.

Livesey Exchange founder, Nicholas Okwulu, said the site’s location would help local people reap the dividends of the Old Kent Road regeneration: “It’s smack bang in the middle of what could be the future Old Kent Road high street. It’s smack bang in the middle of the gravy train and that’s what I wanted.”

The scaffolding is down at the new Livesey Exchange which means the building is nearing its end, and council leader Kieron Williams, who visited the site for an update, says he’s ‘convinced’ of its potential for the community.

Nicholas says the centre been made out of wood so it can quickly be demolished in the future. The site is earmarked for future development as part of the Old Kent Road Area Action plan so the Livesey Exchange only has the premises for the next fifteen years.

The buildings, which are due to open in the spring, comprise eight large hireable spaces. Some of these will be classed as ‘affordable’ to allow people to hire them for fixed periods.

A condition of hiring the ‘affordable’ space is that people will have to have a business plan and complete it by the time they have to move on.

There will also be a cafe with a seating area, two commercial kitchens, a dark kitchen (for food delivery work), and a spacious mixed-use area available for theatre productions, corporate events and much more.

Nicholas said they were not about helping just a few people - they’re trying to be a helping hand to anyone with ideas and a lack of opportunity or knowledge of how to achieve them. “It’s not about people coming into the space and staying here for good. We’ll get people in and then help them when they move on.”

He said there would also be job opportunities for young people to get experience, such as in the cafe, adding: “Something that small businesses