If you are in the exciting position of running your own small business you probably wish you had more than 24 hours in a day to do all the work that comes with it. Being a small business owner requires mucking in and turning your hand to many tasks that might not be your forte. When you find yourself spending more time on peripheral tasks rather than business-driving tasks, this can become a problem. A simple solution to this problem is starting to work with a Virtual Assistant (VA).

What is a Virtual Assistant?

A “virtual” assistant is so-called, because they are located at separate premises, and communicate with you using email, phone and online instant messaging. VAs are hired as contractors either to work on a specific project (event organisation) or a set amount of hours to complete ongoing tasks (diary management). Most clients usually retain good virtual assistants for months and years.
Your virtual assistant can complete tasks similar to any administrator, secretary, PA would do in an office environment. This can cover any aspects of business administration from phone calls handling, book-keeping, data entry, scanning to email and diary management and writing reports. Some VAs have specialist skills in marketing, IT, web design or publishing. Some VAs specialise in working with certain business sectors like coaches, speakers, associations or IT consultants.
Many virtual assistants work in teams to cover for each other and serve many clients worldwide. Around the world today, there are an estimated 35,000 VAs, most of them women working in the comfort of their home to help people in business achieve their desired goals.

Where do you find a VA?

It’s important to find the right VA for the role you are looking to fill. If you are looking for a more general support with a variety of business tasks look for someone who’s an expert in your niche market. If you need to outsource a specific project – look for someone with specialist skills and a solid track record.
Remember, that the actual location of your VA has no relevance to the quality of work or adhering to deadlines. However the principle “you get what you pay for” would stand true in many cases so be careful before using a VA who sounds unbelievably cheap. You can look for VAs on Twitter (Twellow), in online directories like UK Association for Virtual Assistants, Society of Virtual Assistants, Alliance of UK Virtual Assistance, VA Support Group.

How does a VA work?

A good VA will have an initial consultation with you to identify your business goals, your requirements and the level of support you require. It may be that the VA will actually prefer to refer you to someone else who, in his/her opinion, would be better suited to assist you.
After the consultation you will receive a proposal detailing the requirements, fees and main T&Cs. Once you sign the contract the VA will establish online system for sharing documents, managing your diary and email, project management, time tracking, reporting. Most of the communication will be done via email, IM (Google talk, Skype, MSN), sms or phone.

Why should you use a VA?

Many people engaged in offline and online businesses have recognised the great benefits of having a virtual assistant.
1. Expert knowledge on hand – when working with a VA you gain a real specialist on your team who can provide advice and guidance to your business. Virtual assistants invest in their own professional development so as a client you will always be using the best technologies and systems available at the time.
2. Cost effectiveness – you don’t have to pay for the overhead associated with hiring an employee. You don’t need to worry about NIC, PAYEE costs, office space and equipment, training or managing someone all the time. VAs only work for you when you need them so you don’t have to pay for idle time or holidays.
3. Convenience – VAs can work with you 24/7, regardless of your time zones or state holidays. You don’t need to keep on monitoring them on a daily basis. A good VA will focus on your business goals therefore you will see some positive results in your business very quickly.
4. Business efficiency – a good VA will be focused on your business goals and is a fast worker.
5. Continuity – unlike some employees who could join your company, receive all the training and work experience and then leave to work for your competitor, your VA is here to stay for as long as his/her business is up and running (provided there are no payment or other issues between you). The longer you keep on using the same VA – the more work you will feel confident to outsource and the more impact of the previous four benefits you will see in your business.

What sort of tasks can I give to a VA to do?

• General administration: call answering, scanning, data entry, business cards processing, receipts processing, sourcing the right suppliers for your business, printing & posting letters of your behalf.

• PA services: email and diary management, travel arrangements, typing, transcription, document formatting, spreadsheet creation, presentations design and formatting, expense claims, mailshots, research.

• Financial: book-keeping, invoicing, credit control, VAT.
• Events and conference organisation.

• Marketing: copywriting, graphics design, desktop publishing, lead verification, scheduling appointments, PR.

• Web support: creation and maintenance of your website, social media profiles creation and optimisation, online networking, blog maintenance, creation and sending of e-newsletters.

• Design: graphics, logo, templates, website, artwork.
  Customer service, handling email and phone enquiries, managing an online ordering system or a shopping cart, telesales.
  And many more!

So if managing your business is becoming stressful to you, consider getting a VA to do the minor tasks or even just the tasks you don’t like to do. This way, you can focus on what you love to do and get on with running your business.

Tamara Baranova is a managing partner in TJConsulting Virtual Assistance, specialising in executive PA support for IT professionals and Internet entrepreneurs: social media coaches, Google PPC professionals, IT and SEO consultants. TJConsulting also offer extensive social media maintenance services for profiles, blogs and e-newsletters including Wordpress template customisation and newsletter design services.

I explained that at the core of every service, our focus is on maximising revenues through commercial performance optimisation and conversion rate optimisation.

Richard made an extremely valid point; that in the online industry, online marketing services particularly, are described using alienating jargon; self-congratulatory titles and pretty meaningless three letter acronyms.

I cannot help but agree. SEM, SEO, MMO, SMM, SMO, CRO, CTR, CPM, PPC, GUI… (I could go on) might be the stuff of a geek meet-up. However for most small to medium sized businesses, who are seeking to expand to the web, these terms mean nothing.

I wanted to walk through all the steps, to explain in particular – Conversion Rate Optimisation .

What the hell does that mean?

Quite simply; I’m in Marks and Spencer, all the packaging is gorgeous, the products are clearly priced and labelled, everything is laid out in an order that makes sense and the shelves are always full. Once I walk towards the till, every irresistible treat I could ever desire in a moment of weakness sits beside me as I move forward at a brisk pace towards the payment point of my choice (of which there are many).

Gorgeous packaging, clear pricing and labelling; an intuitive store layout, full shelves, additional treats, fast payment process and multiple payment options: none of which are there by accident.

Online, offline, mail order, whatever… it matters not the physical medium to purchase. Every purchase medium has multiple variables, and the tweaking of these variables will affect how well my product sells. That’s conversion rate optimisation.

So why ‘conversion’ not ‘sales’ optimisation?

Websites can make money through advertising, selling physical goods, selling virtual/digital goods (like gifts you see on Facebook, or downloading a ringtone); providing a service (e.g. insurance) or by providing qualified leads to service providers. Soooo many different online business models exist and not all of them are direct sales models. Hence the term ‘conversion’ is used to cover any activity that results in revenue.

Conversion rate is therefore the percentage rate at which revenue actions occur, compared to volume of unique or total visits, for the same time period.

Where Do You Start?

We start by identifying all of your conversion metrics, and ensuring that each one is tracked. We then take the user journey, imagining we would like to buy your product, fill in your lead form, or download your e-book. We do this in multiple browsers and we’re paying attention to usability, functionality and technical performance.

Then What?

Data analysis… Lots of it… Tonnes in fact!

Not everybody’s cup of tea; but we love it. We analyse every single metric and every single variable available.

We establish average’ behaviours’ across types of traffic, types of browser, types of visitor (new or returning), we then look at specific deviations of a percentage greater than ‘normal’ deviations.

We look for anomalous patterns and data points and compare this with error logs and visitor by browser/OS data. (Oooh look. I’ve done it again! OS = operating system.)

We compare all of the data findings with the online user journey and seek to identify holes, low performance areas, broken areas of the site, poor trafficked areas, high bail-out pages, low conversion rates.

Then We Make Our Bespoke Recommendations

Data and research is presented and recommendations are made, which may often include A/B testing different layouts, changing colours here and there, tweaking the layout of landing pages. Cross browser errors and other technical corrections will be listed, and we also look off-site too. We make recommendations for optimising the route to site, for commercial intent. Recommendations for more relevant keywords, keywords with more purchase-intent, optimising external profiles in social media and such-like.

No Matter What Site These General Rules Should Help…

1. Your site needs a search box; which should be top and centre or top right, for highest engagement (on every page).

2. Your search box should be 50 characters wide minimum.

3. Don’t put any text in the search box (users scan the page for the big white stripe, and I’ve actually seen “Search here” appear high in site search logs for brands that should know way better).

4. Any actionable item needs a rollover state (be it a link, a button, whatever…)

5. Any call to action should be above the fold, or designed in such a way that highest performing items are prioritised on list-style landing pages.

6. Red can work as a colour choice for sale prices or cheap goods prices, otherwise avoid.

7. Make your content font size at least 12pt or risk losing 2MM (UK) visually impaired users (RNIB).

8. Make sure your error page is commercialised.

If you would like to know more about conversion rate optimisation and commercial usability, we’d love to hear from you.

It is good practise to have your own customised error page, which is in your own template look and feel, as this provides a consistent user experience and allows you to communicate a suitable message; whilst being in control of that message. Additionally if you don’t create a formal process for errors of this nature you may risk how well your site is perceived by search engines.

Most search engine optimisation and usability experts will recommend you have a customised error page that makes some apology to the user, explains in basic terms what has happened, and suggests some useful and popular content or pages to visit as an alternative. Tip: Don’t reference “404″ in the page content as it is meaningless to the user.

Here’s what we do, which seems to work for us :

Example of a customised error page

Whilst all of this is professional and does something to rescue a poor user experience; for a commercial website, this is a missed opportunity. Make the most of your error pages by turning what could have potentially been a poor user experience into a commercial opportunity by creating a commercial error page.

Tips for Creating a Commercial Error Page

1. Start by doing some simple analysis into your most popular products and pages with highest conversion rates.

2. Do your research first, and if your are a new site, wait a couple of months to get some statistically meaningful performance data.

3. Don’t just put your most expensive products on the page, as this may look hollow and may not convert at all. Wait until you have some interaction and conversion rate data beforehand.

4. Identify top 3 to 10 products and present them in the error page content.

5. Identify top converting pages and explain what these pages are, asking if they might be of interest to the user.

6. Put your search box on your error page.

7. Optimise your error page by testing performance of different products.

8. Analyse the visitor route to error and see if there is a pattern or commercial inference to be made.

Here’s the best commercialised error page I’ve ever seen.

Best Commercial Error Page We Have Seen

Note the friendly and apologetic intro, the huge search box in prominent position, and the placement of the trendy, popular and celebrity-fave footwear items. This brand is working hard to make me like them and to get my business.

It’s worth saying that I was surprised to find a huge number of giants in online retail with a lot of opportunity to increase commercial usability and user experience, by improving on their current solution. Such as ASOS and their automatic redirect to the homepage , Argos and their complete lack of customisation and possibly the biggest surprise of all was Amazon and their slightly formal and completely non-commercial message; which for a web retail giant like Amazon, could be a considerable bit of scooping up to be done. (As you have gathered, I didn’t need to look past ‘A’ to find a surprising amount of missed opportunity.)

Automatic re-direct to home

Er... Where Am I?

Mal Function

Kudos to Zappos for leading the field. Do please let me know if you come across any really good or really bad error pages in the comments!