This Week's Dom's Digest
How's the last week of February treating you?
I'm loving this unusually warm weather - let's hope it lasts!
This week I helped a stressed out business owner who felt trapped in his business. He was out of ideas and frustrated that his business (e-commerce to B2B's) wasn't growing, no matter what he tried.
It's a common complaint I hear a lot during discovery calls.
Owning a business can be hard work, and when you're so close to the problem, seeing a way forward can be pretty daunting.
In this customer's case he was doubting anything could work...
I'm pleased to say that I managed to work with him last week to find the low hanging fruit which resulted in an extra £12,500 in sales during the week.
He was pretty happy and it renewed a spark in him that making changes can work. We'll be working together some more over the coming months to build a customer acquisition system that brings in customers more reliably.
Exciting stuff!
We've also had a promotion running for our IT support business, Cloud Plus, this week. It's a massive 35% lifetime discount on any IT support services ordered by 5PM Thursday.
It's been really popular and kept us busy, so if you wanted to take advantage you don't have long left. Check out cloudplusit.com for the details.
Onto this week's Dom's Digest. Another selection of the best tools and gadgets I've been using this week.
App to Improve Your Writing
Writing is key to building relationships and making sales. As you know, the words you use can have a dramatic effect on the outcome of a communication piece.
That’s why I love using the free and easy to use Hemingway app.
It makes your prose better. Therefore leading to a better reading experience and more impactful result for your recipient.
The app highlights lengthy, complex sentences and common errors; if you see a yellow sentence, shorten or split it. If you see a red highlight, your sentence is so dense and complicated that your readers will get lost trying to follow its meandering, splitting logic — try editing this sentence to remove the red.
You can utilise a shorter word in place of a purple one. Mouse over them for hints.
Adverbs and weakening phrases are helpfully shown in blue. Get rid of them and pick words with force, perhaps.
Phrases in green have been marked to show passive voice.
I highly recommend you take a look and use it in your next letter, email or video script.
Book To Make Your Website Work Better
Making Websites Win: Apply the Customer-Centric Methodology That Has Doubled the Sales of Many Leading Websites by Karl Blanks & Ben Jesson.
It's a fact that most websites don't work for their owners.
They don't generate enough leads or sales as they should, which leaves most business owners (and some website designers!) baffled as to how to fix the problem.
If that sounds like you, then this book is a game changer.
It takes you through a customer centric approach to improving your website so that it actually starts generating the goals you want from it.
I've read this a few times now and each time I implement something new across our website to improve it.
A Chrome Plugin to Banish Distractions
I use YouTube a fair bit for finding solutions and researching topics.
But as you know, YouTube is directly incentivised to create as many views and ad clicks as possible. As a result we are inundated with tasty thumbnails and advertisements from every angle.
While this is good when your advertising or looking to kill time, it's not so good for those of us intending to focus on research or learning something new.
After using DF Tube for a few days, you realise the extent to which the pattern of click, watch, scan mindlessly for a new video, click, watch, and repeat, has been ingrained in us by YouTube's design. DF Tube breaks that cycle.
By default, DF Tube disables autoplay, hides the video recommendations sidebar as well as the related videos that appear at the end of videos. It also removes the grid of recommended videos that appear on your homepage. These settings are all configurable. It can also hide comments and disable playlists site-wide.
I recommend you download it and increase your productivity when consuming YouTube content.
As always, I love getting your feedback on Twitter and email. Did you have a favourite from the list? Do you have any suggestions or recommendations for me to try?
Don’t be shy, let me know. Just send a tweet to @dcb_jones with #DomsDigest at the end so I can find it or you can email me at dominicj@barttech.co.uk to get in touch.
Have a great week!
