10 WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS <strong>July</strong>/<strong>August</strong> <strong>2019</strong> Is your shop window gathering dust? PR AND COMMUNICATIONS > BY HEATHER CLAYCOMB Heather Claycomb is director of HMC Communications, a Hamilton-based, award-winning public relations agencys. When I was a little girl growing up in the US, one of the special activities my grandmother and I would do together is shopping at the largest department store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania – Watt & Shand. One of the most exciting parts of those regular shopping excursions was the anticipation of seeing the huge shop windows – some as large as eight to ten metres long – and the fashion stories told through the creative mannequin displays. Christmas was an especially exciting time of the year and driving by the big downtown department store windows was, if you can believe it, on the top of the list of holiday activities. Fast forward to <strong>2019</strong> and most businesses no longer have a shop window. Even for those retail shops that do, little effort is put into telling a story within them. When’s the last time you stopped to look at a creative window display? What hasn’t changed from now to then, however, is that people will visually seek out information, messages, imagery and stories before they purchase your product or service. What has changed is that nowadays your ‘shop window’ is your online presence, specifically your website. So, what does your shop window say? Just like the purpose of the old department store display, is it visually beautiful, easy to interpret at a glance, positive, rich with clever content and constantly changing? And most importantly, does your online presence invite people inside to get them one step closer to purchase? For some businesses, their online shop window is dusty, covered in cobwebs with a few dead bugs in the corner, their mannequins have broken limbs and are wearing fashions from 2005. If you think it might be time to freshen up your online shop window, here are a few things to consider before you get started: Build it on the right platform You would never locate your exclusive dress shop inside an industrial building in Te Rapa. It’s critical to get your platform right. There are an incredible number of website companies and platforms available. If you need a very complex website for a major organisation, that’s going to require a very different technology system behind it than an online brochure for a start-up SME. Get the guts right The experience inside your store must live up to the hype promised in the window. A beautiful home page can draw your visitor to look at additional pages on your website, but if you don’t have compelling written and visual content, you’ll lose your shopper quickly. Find a writer who understands how to write for the web, because it’s a special skill. And ensure every element on the page works together to create a logical flow that’s easy on the eye. Invest in imagery No one’s going to inquire about buying your latest fashions if your mannequins are dressed in rags. The photos, videos and graphics on your website need to be suited to an online environment and they need to be of the highest quality. Work with professionals to get it right and put in place a regular routine to keep it fresh. Don’t forget the signposts A shop won’t survive if it depends solely on passers-by and impulse shopping. Once you’ve got your website ready, don’t forget to lead people there with some basic Google, online and social ads. It doesn’t always take a huge budget to ensure your company is popping up when people are searching for the goods or services you provide. So, ensure your web investment includes an ongoing budget for essential online wayfinding. Gender diversity and governance By JULIE HARDAKER Lawyer and governance professional and Chair of Women on Boards NZ There is no shortage of female candidates for board roles in New Zealand. There are plenty of qualified and capable women in this country with the skills and expertise to fill board positions in all sectors. It’s always a cause for celebration when there is a positive move in gender diversity at governance level. Last month the Minister for Women, Julie- Anne Genter, announced that women occupying seats on state sector boards and committees had reached a record level of 47.4 percent for 2018, up from 45.7 percent in 2017. The New Zealand government set a target of 50 percent last year for the more than 2600 appointments that are made to state sector boards every year from large SOEs through to community trusts and it seems to be working. But the results from the private sector are sobering. Fewer than one in four directors of New Zealand’s top 100 companies are women, and 20 of our top 100 corporates have no female board members at all. And at senior management level, only four of the CEOs running the NZX’s top 100 are women. Why are women not getting appointed and are gender diversity targets required in the private sector? Mandatory quota targets are being used in other countries to reduce unconscious bias and closed shop selection to overcome barriers to gender equality in governance. A common example used to illustrate quotas is Norway where in 2003 it became law for listed companies to have at least 40 percent female members on their boards. The results show good progress. In New Zealand the argument put forward for mandatory quotas is that progress on gender equality has been painfully slow and a step change is needed. Those opposed say quotas will result in appointing women without the skills and experienced needed and that ‘making up the numbers’ is demeaning for women. Another approach to achieving equality was recently presented by academic Lata Gangadharan, an experimental economist at Monash University who has been undertaking research about an opt-out system. Under this system, women must choose to opt-out of a selection process which automatically has everyone in the running, rather than women opting in and putting themselves forward. She told the New Zealand Association of Economists conference in Wellington a few weeks ago that this system statistically brings more female candidates to the selection pool and can be used to improve gender diversity. She says this system can also bring to the surface people with a far broader range of personality traits and experiences and diversity. The Ministry for Women has a database of experienced women that boards can access to find suitable candidates. Women on Boards and the Institute of Directors also have access to a large database of women who are experienced governance professionals. Board appointments are about appointing the best candidates for the job ensuring that fair consideration is given to all candidates whatever their gender.
Julie Hardaker Lawyers juliehardaker.co.nz +64 21 284 8618 EMPLOYMENT LAW RELATIONSHIP PROPERTY PUBLIC LAW
Change language