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Whatever else I do to earn a living, I am a software engineer at the core. Outside of work other things give me a reason to smile – heavy metal bands, science fiction books or my family – but when it comes to work, writing software is what gives me the biggest buzz. Even after 33 years! Recently I spent the weekend writing some software for a client. They have an app, which we built, that allows them to take photos and complete a questionnaire for installations so that they can record compliance. The software I wrote receives the photos and questionnaire responses from the app, generates a PDF document detailing the responses and attaches it to an email, along with the photos, to send to the client. Not a particularly exciting process most would agree. It’s a straightforward piece of software (despite the security concerns and image processing which took a little while to get just right) which delivers exactly what the client needs, but we wanted to be doubly sure. So, in the early days of the software running for real (i.e. the client is using it, not just us testing it) we got copies of the emails the app generated so we could check everything was working as it should. And that’s where the buzz of being a software developer begins. As developers, we’re not always able to monitor in what way or how frequently the software we write is being used by our clients. There are confidentiality issues to consider, as well as the practical aspects and cost concerns of implementing a suitable monitoring process. This means a lot of the time we rely on anecdotal responses from our clients, and of course feedback when something goes wrong (which thankfully, isn’t too often). With this particular client we knew each and every time they used the software as an email would appear and we could see how the app was working until we, and they, were satisfied with the process. Even though it was such a simple thing, every time an email pinged through from the app I got a twinge of excitement and a flush of pride. To see something I’d created from scratch work successfully and be used by someone was a small but genuine reward for me and reminded me why I love doing what I do. The buzz of seeing software work. What gives you that buzz every day and keeps you doing what you’re doing?

From 1 October 2017 there will be a significant change to the way in which businesses have to deal with pursing debts owed to them by individuals and sole traders, which is likely to impact most businesses’ credit control procedures.

Please note: these changes are compulsory and very prescriptive.

If you are a business then these new procedures must be followed prior to issuing a debt claim against an individual or sole trader which in the case of any new debtcollector matters means that you either need to have complied with the protocol before passing a debtor to us for further action or we can look at assisting you with the protocol.  However, from 1 October 2017 onwards we will no longer be able to apply our very low cost debtcollector rates to claims against individuals or sole traders (see below), though the cost is still likely to be far less than most solicitors’ fees for similar claims.

In order to comply with the changes you must send the debtor a letter before claim along with a statement of account and a response pack (as prescribed by the Pre-Action Protocol for Debt Claims, which includes an information sheet and reply form, along with a financial statement form). The letter before claim will allow the debtor 30 days to pay or respond, whereas previously 14 days was the norm (and indeed that should remain the case for claims against larger businesses). The next step will depend upon the response received from the debtor, if any, though it is possible for the debtor to extend the process by up to 90 days, or in some circumstances even more. 

Failure on the part of the creditor to comply with the steps set out in the protocol may result in penalties such as costs orders or denying interest you have claimed, or the court could even stay proceedings pending further compliance and costs.

Broadly speaking, you have the following options if you wish to ensure compliance with the new protocol:

1.    You may be able to seek payment from all individuals and sole traders in advance (though for some industries that may be commercially unrealistic)

2.    You can instruct Leathes Prior to pursue the debtor in the usual way and we will follow the steps of the protocol on your behalf. Such claims will not be covered by the terms of our debtcollector service and the cost is likely to be a little higher than the cost prior to 1 October 2017. We are happy to provide a quote for our fees but, given the way the protocol operates, the initial cost is likely to be a little higher and the cost at the outset of pursuing a debtor is likely to be around £150 – £200 plus VAT (whereas prior to 1 October 2017 our initial fee was around £40 – £100 plus VAT), plus the usual debtcollector rates once proceedings have been issued (assuming no dispute arises).

3.    Alternatively, Leathes Prior can provide your business with the necessary training and resources required to instigate and comply with the new protocol before passing a debt to us to then issue legal proceedings. Please just give us a call on if we can help at all and we can provide a quote over the phone.

If you have any questions on any of the changes, or on debt collection in general, please get in touch with us on 01603 610911.

Complimentary alcoholic drinks are regularly offered by a wide array of businesses to incentivise customers. For example, businesses may offer a glass of champagne whilst customers browse their products or use their services. However business owners should be aware that if they are offering their customers an alcoholic drink, even free of charge, as part of the services they provide, they could be committing a criminal offence. It is therefore imperative that business owners who provide complimentary alcoholic drinks as part of their services obtain the appropriate authorisation to ensure they do not expose themselves to potential criminal liability and the applicable fines. This article provides information in respect of the authorisations required for the sale of alcohol, the process for obtaining the required authorisations and the potential offences that an individual can commit in respect of undertaking licensable activities without the required authorisations. Authorisations required to supply alcohol A premises licence is required to authorise the use of a premises for the supply and sale of alcohol. If drinks are provided free of charge as part of an overall service, for example complimentary drinks provided to customers, a premises licence is still required. Any person, provided that they are aged 18 or over, who is carrying on or who proposes to carry on a business which involves the use of premises for licensable activities may apply for a premises licence either on a permanent basis or for a time-limited period. “A person” in this context includes a corporate entity, for example, a company or a partnership. In the premises licence, a designated premises supervisor must be named who must hold a personal licence. A personal licence is a licence granted by a licensing authority to an individual authorising them to supply alcohol or authorise alcohol in accordance with a premises licence. In order to apply for a personal licence, the individual must be over 18 years old, hold a relevant licensing qualification (for example the BIIAB Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders), declare any relevant convictions (which may impact on whether the individual is considered suitable as a licensee) and must not have had a personal licence forfeited in the five years preceding the date of their application. Others serving alcohol at the premises must be authorised by the personal licence holder. Alternatively a person may acquire a temporary event notice (“TEN”) to authorise licensable activity on a temporary basis. A person may send an application for a TEN to the relevant licensing authority at least ten working days before the event. A number of statutory limitations are imposed on the use of temporary event notices as follows:

• the number of times a premises user may give a TEN is a maximum of 50 times in a calendar year for a personal licence holder and five times in a calendar year for other persons;
• the number of times a TEN may be given for any particular premises is a maximum of 12 times in a calendar year;
• the maximum duration of an event authorised by a TEN is 168 hours (seven days);
• the maximum total duration of the events authorised by TENs in relation to individual premises is 21 days in a calendar year;
• the maximum number of people attending at any one time must be fewer than 500; and
• the minimum period between events authorised under separate TENs in relation to the same premises (not including withdrawn TENs) by the same premises user is 24 hours.

TENs are therefore more suitable for one off events than as a permanent means by which to authorise licensable activities on a premises. Offence It is a criminal offence for a person to either carry on, or attempt to carry on, a licensable activity on any premises otherwise than in accordance with a premises licence or temporary event notice. It is also a criminal offence for a person to knowingly allow a licensable activity to be carried on otherwise than in accordance with a premises licence or temporary event notice. A person charged with the offence of carrying out a licensable activity otherwise than in accordance with an authorisation may rely on the statutory defence of due diligence the following criteria are satisfied the act was due to a mistake, or to reliance on information given to him/her, or to an act or omission by another person, or to some other cause beyond his control, and he/she took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing the offence. Where a person relies on the defence of due diligence, the burden is on them to prove on the balance of probabilities that they had done all that could reasonably have been expected of them. The Court has provided guidance on what behaviour and acts are required by an employer in order for the defence of due diligence to apply. An employer must go further than simply instituting a preventative regime. It must also exercise all due diligence to ensure that the measures put in place are maintained, adhered to by employees and continue to be adequate in the circumstances. This means that an employer will need to demonstrate that steps were taken to implement a regime and that this regime was actively monitored by the employer. For such offences, a person is liable upon summary conviction in a Magistrates Court to an unlimited fine or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or both. Given the stringent penalties which may be imposed, it is crucial for business owners to ensure that they do not inadvertently commit a criminal offence. If you would like to take advice on anything covered in this article, please contact our expert team on 01603 610911. Note: the content of this article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Specific legal advice should be taken in any specific circumstance.

For several years, we have specialised in providing SEO for short term lenders, helping them compete on Google for competitive terms, in a very tough industry. Following our success with other lenders in the industry such as Cashfloat, we were excited about a new challenge when approached with a lender from a similar sector.

MYJAR is a short-term and long-term lending company who are committed to treating their customers fairly at all times. The loans industry is highly competitive, so approaching SEO in a very methodical and technical way is important to be successful. It is also of value to stand out from the crowd in a sea of online lenders.

Our aim for MYJAR was to create a well-ranking and good-looking website which was user friendly. Like with any website offering a product, it is of great importance that the target audience spends as much time on the site and engages with it.

Meta Data – If you want a website to perform well on Google and other search engines, meta data is fundamental to achieving this. For MYJAR, we analysed the current meta-data they had and updated it to make it more SEO friendly according to the current Google algorithm.

Meta Data includes meta-descriptions and meta-titles which feature target keywords, as well as alt-text being present on all images which are on the website.  Well optimised and carefully constructed meta data can be the difference between ranking on the first few pages of Google or ranking on the last few or somewhere in the middle. The reason for this is because the data with users will see on a Google search and is what Google will prioritise in its algorithm. 

Website Clean Up – For MYJAR, it was necessary to conduct a full clean-up of the site. This involves seeking out error codes and broken links in order to fix them. Having these on a site can seriously slow down how quickly it loads and broken links can affect the user experience if a person cannot find where they want to go on the site. Clearly, Google favours websites which are clean and have a good user experience in place. Google’s algorithm helps the user out but suggesting websites which are going to be the most helpful and easy to use for them.

Links – Having strong backlinks through PR is an essential part of the SEO process. Having such links helps to build up authority and trust for a website. In the case of MYJAR, we reached out to relevant businesses and companies and to our own partners to see what links could be provided. We used our SEO tools to see what links competitors in the industry who ranked well had, and approached the relevant companies who provided these to enquire about MYJAR. Google favours websites which have strong backlinks and rewards them by bumping them up in terms of ranking. This is because they appear to be trustworthy if other websites are providing a link to them.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) has in recent years become a fundamental part of countless business’ marketing strategy. There are a great deal of businesses whose entire business model relies on their SEO and organic search positioning and performance.

However, whilst almost every business up and down the country needs a comprehensive SEO strategy many simply do not know where to actually start. This can prove to be difficult though as not knowing where to start often leads to further problems in the implementation of an effective SEO strategy.

Your Industry and Company

Before you even begin to consider what the details o f the strategy required will be, it is crucial to take your industry into account as practices in SEO vary to some extent from industry to industry. For example, if a company works in financial planning and wealth planning, their industry will differ from for example a payday loans provider.

Ensuring Search Engines Understand

Critically, and before any new content or links can be worked on, a website needs to be made ‘friendly’ towards search engines and their basic and then more complex rankings criteria. For example, in the case of Google, heavy emphasis is placed by their algorithm on relevancy and originality of content. On a more basic level though, the content needs to be offered up to the search engine accordingly.

‘Crawling’ of a website refers to the reading and parsing of the site in question by the appropriate search engine. There are some basic rules and practices that all sites should follow here:

• Ensure none of the code making up the website are ‘hidden’
• Meta data; comprising titles and descriptions are a fundamental SEO factor that provide the initial details for search engines and these snippets of data should always be optimised
• URL structures for all pages should be relevant, natural and clean to ensure it is clear to search engines and users alike, what the page content entails

Focusing on Content and Users

As well as what most would term the ‘technical SEO,’ there are many other elements that make up the puzzle that is a fully optimised website. Principally, once the site is set up to be able to properly crawled by search engines, what is crawled becomes more and more important. There are numerous considerations here:

• Do not write content for the sake of it; each page and content piece should have a function and a clear purpose. No search engine likes pointless, thin content
• Websites should be fully optimised for mobile and tablet devices. With Google in particular operating a ‘mobile-first’ ranking algorithm, ensuring a site scales properly for mobile devices and can be properly interacted with by these devices is increasingly important
• Website speed is key. Ultimately, a slow website is more likely to end up causing users to leave due to impatience and an inability to properly access what they are in fact looking for and wishing to interact with

As a business owner, your ultimate goal is highly likely to be to have more people spending money with you – this means you need to start by building a customer base. To do this you will have to work hard to build awareness of your business with your target audience. By building brand awareness and letting customers know who you are, more people will know about you and what you do. I know this sounds like stating the obvious – that’s because it is, but it’s often overlooked. With a plethora of products in the market that offer ‘instant wins’ it can seem like investment in longer-term, brand-building advertising doesn’t stack up. In the long term, a business of any size needs loyal brand advocates. It is these people who become repeat customers and the financial base of your business. You can always find the odd quick win but a stable, loyal customer base takes focus, time and effort. Let’s imagine that your business sells garden furniture. It’s unlikely that the audience you want to target (probably homeowners, who live in properties with a garden) are all actively looking to purchase garden furniture on a constant basis. It is most likely that the majority of your audience are actually not buying, searching or researching garden furniture at all right now. This means avenues like AdWords/pay per click (although effective when people are active) won’t reach them. Simply put, if I’m not searching for garden furniture today I will never see your ad on Google. Don’t get me wrong, Mrs Garden Furniture Seller, your business probably does need ads on Google, but to reach the biggest part of your relevant audience and to get some of them to come to you before they get all the options that a search on Google can bring, you need ads or content in the gardening section of the magazine they read every month and a big poster outside the garden centre they visit in the spring. By putting the right message in front of relevant people you can make your Google pay per click ads work harder. Did you know firms with significant brand awareness get a higher click-to-conversion rate from Google? It makes sense, as we are more likely to buy from a business we know and trust. There’s more on how this works on our website. Find out more at www.archantlocalimpact.co.uk

Based on current trends, brand experience is expected to surpass price point and product as the key differentiator of brands by 2020. Contemporary markets have moved away from simply wanting a product or service, they want an experience. Claiming to be the ‘best’ or the ‘cheapest’ no longer has the same allure as offering genuine and immersive customer experience, whatever your industry. Cue experiential marketing, also known as engagement marketing or events marketing, this strategy directly involves clients and consumers in the development of a brand, products and the marketing itself. This strategy hinges on building genuine relationships between business and client, through connection. Proponents of this strategy suggest that it is in the live, shareable and intimate interactions with a business that clients develop this relationship, and when used effectively, it is this relationship that will drive brand loyalty and return business.

Live events lend themselves perfectly to this aim, providing a platform to cultivate relationships, share experiences and begin to nurture a three dimensional dialogue with clients. However as with any relationship, quality should be sough above quantity, with give and take a crucial aspect of engaging meaningfully with clients. A traditional sales approach may see a salesperson approach a client, inserting themselves into their experience often creating an intrusive and disruptive atmosphere. Experiential marketing is the opposite of this, it is understanding the experience of the client in a ‘customer-centric’ approach, communicating in meaningful, relevant and of course interesting way. By doing so, not only is the traditional 1D ‘shark attack’ style sales approach left behind, but the 2D dialogue has the potential to develop into a shared 3D experience which is less transactional and more about the journey for both provider & client.

In recent years there have been a growing number of great applications of the experiential marketing approach. As part of the Molson Red Leaf Project an illuminated sustainable dance floor was used to create an alluring spectacle which linked participants to a wider theme of sustainability. With each step generating 24 watts of electricity, crowds were encouraged to twist, tango and tap across the floor whilst branded digital energy meters tracked the energy generated and celebrated the achievement of targets. Jones Soda invites regular customers to send in photos which they feature on personalised packaging, or if particularly jaw-dropping can even make their way onto a limited run of mainstream packing too. Japanese snack company Tohato launched two competing snack flavours in an award-winning advertising campaign in 2007, calling on customers to engage in an online multiplayer game to decide the winning flavour. Experiential marketing strategy can clearly be implemented across many mediums, with technological advances increasing how far offline and online tools can be leveraged.

Live events have long formed the perfect touch-stone to consolidate relationships, with IoT and immersion technology bridging real and digital worlds simultaneously so no member of your growing community is left out. Since the 90s we have advocated strategies that are now recognised as experiential marketing. From the ‘terawatt challenge’ at The Energy Event to an award-winning build incorporating an ‘IT Disaster Recovery’ off-road safari at BCI World conference, we take pride in developing meaningful, inventive and relevant experiences for our clients. If you would like more information on how we can help you or how to bring experiential marketing into your events, let’s get in touch.