Nicole Davidson is an author, speaker, business and life coach, delivering keynote
presentations, coaching and workshops for small and medium sized businesses.
For over 20 years, she has helped people over 4 continents grow and achieve, and
is a specialist in helping businesses create workplace environments in which the
conditions are in place for everyone within the team to function at their best and
experience success in what they do. Looking to expand her business digitally, she
recently had a website made for her by NetStripes,
www.nicoledavidson.com.We live in a society of two halves; a physical half and a digital half. Your business’s physical identity might be enough in the physical world, but what about its digital identity?
Nicole Davidson talks to us about the importance of having a digital presence for your business through a personalised website and how it allowed her to expand her business online.
You wouldn’t leave the house and go outside without your drivers’ license, so why would your business go outside onto the internet without a digital identity?
To explain this thought experiment, we must start from the beginning.
The world has already seen three industrial revolutions; the steam engine, the assembly line, and the computer. Right now, we are amid the fourth industrial revolution, the data age.
If your business doesn’t go out onto the internet with a digital identity within the next five years, it will be two industrial revolutions behind, and it will be too late.
“I think it’s integral [to have a digital identity] in this day and age, it’s how people get to know you, like you and trust you.
It’s one of the first things that people go to look up about you, and if you don’t have that, I think it doesn’t help with your credibility. [As a business] you want to be interacting and engaging with people, and if you don’t have a digital presence, you’re not able to do that on a large scale.”
The game has changed. The digital world is bigger and superior to the physical world, and just like your driver’s license, a personalised website for your business is a way people can identify it.
Yes, I agree there is a certain degree of absurdity in comparing an important document like a driver’s license to a business website, but the fact remains; it’s true.
NetStripes put forward a website that gives the essence of who I am and what I’m about. I found the strategy sessions with NetStripes amazing in terms of helping me delve deeper into who I am and what my business is about. It allowed me to see how the different parts of what I do fit together and develop a cohesive strategy that’s in alignment with that. It gave me great clarity. It’s also a website I love the look of!
But a personalised website is in some ways, even more important than your driver’s license.
It has limitless potential to grow your audience exponentially, but to do so, you need to utilise the full potential of the technology we have today.
What [having a website] has allowed me to do is step out there and say this is who I am, this is what I am about, and it’s given me presence.
One thing that I found fabulous about the whole website development experience through NetStripes was that I felt very much in control; NetStripes was there for the technical, but it was very much up to me about what was represented. It was the outcome, but also the process, which I really valued.
Most small businesses in Australia aren’t even aware of 50% of the possibilities that today’s technology can offer. And collectively, that adds up to billions of dollars of foregone profit and benefits to the Australian economy.
The NSW Government has come to realise the importance of small businesses, offering fully-subsidised advisory services through NetStripes as part of the Business Connect program.
“I would highly recommend NetStripes. It’s great value for money, and I found that strategy session was priceless; so many people develop their own websites that can look good, but in terms of developing a whole strategy around what your business is and what you want it to represent, it is so much more than a surface level expression of that.”
And with increasing stability across the world, Australian needs to rely on within. Australia needs to rely on its small businesses to carry it into the 21st century.
Australia needs to rely on you.
Any questions?
Feel free to talk to one of our digital strategists today. We are more than happy to help! Contact us now.
