Using AI Safely In A Small Business
AI arrived in most small businesses rather than being chosen. The useful question is not whether to use it, but where to let it near, and on what terms.
Read the post →Blog
Plain-language writing on using AI safely in a small business, and on getting found by search engines and AI assistants. Written by Sam, who does the work rather than sells it.
Safe AI For Small Business
Where AI belongs in a small business and where it does not. Start with the guide, then follow whichever part matters to you.
Who Is Responsible When An AI Gets It Wrong?
If this thing gets something wrong, where does that leave me? A straight answer rather than reassurance, from the build side.
Read the post →How To Write An AI Policy Your Team Will Actually Follow
Either there is no policy and everybody guesses, or there is a nine-page one nobody has opened. Here is the one-page version that holds.
Read the post →Can I Use AI On Customer Data?
The question I get asked most once a business decides AI is useful. Not whether it is a good idea, but whether you are allowed to.
Read the post →Prompt Injection, Explained Without The Jargon
It is the main reason I care what an AI system is allowed to do rather than just what it is told to do. Here it is without the jargon.
Read the post →What Happens To What You Type Into An AI Tool
Most AI problems in a small business start with somebody pasting something in because it was faster. Here is where that text actually goes.
Read the post →What A Chatbot Should And Should Not Be Allowed To Do On Your Website
A chatbot answers strangers in your name while nobody is watching. Deciding what it must not do matters more than deciding what it can.
Read the post →Getting Found
How search engines and AI assistants read a business website, and the ordinary housekeeping that helps them get it right.
I Surveyed 88 Local Businesses. Three In Four Had A Website That Was Not Doing Them Justice.
A technical survey of 88 independent businesses around Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent. The anonymised data is published with per-criterion scores, so you can check the working.
Read the post →The Copyright Notice That Says 2001
The faults nobody finds are the ones invisible from the front. You never read your own footer, because you know what your business is called.
Read the post →The Most Common Fault Across 88 Websites Was Heading Structure
It was the most common technical fault in the survey, and it is invisible on the page — which is precisely why it stays broken.
Read the post →What Happens When A Domain Quietly Expires
Sixteen of the 88 businesses I surveyed had no working web address while still trading. In most cases a renewal simply did not go through.
Read the post →Getting More Out Of Your Google Business Profile
For a lot of local businesses the profile is seen before the website is, and it answers more questions than the website gets asked.
Read the post →How To Tell Whether Your Website Is Actually Working
Visitor numbers are the easiest thing to measure and among the least useful on their own. Here are the few figures that tell you something you can act on.
Read the post →What AI Search Engines See When They Look At Your Website
More customers are asking an assistant instead of searching. Here is what those tools can actually read on a business website, and the ordinary fixes that help.
Read the post →Why Your Business Details Need To Match In Every Place They Appear
Old directory listings, a changed mobile number, a registered office showing as a shopfront. Here is how business details drift apart, and how to bring them back into line.
Read the post →Websites That Earn Their Keep
What a small business website has to get right before anything else, and the ordinary jobs that keep it working once it is live.
What A Small Business Website Actually Needs
Most of what a small business website is asked to do comes down to about six things. Here is the list I work from, and the order I build in.
Read the post →Contact Forms That Go Nowhere
When a contact form stops working, nothing tells you. It looks exactly like a form nobody is using, and those need opposite responses.
Read the post →What Happens When Your Web Designer Disappears
Your website does not stop the day they stop answering. The renewals that were quietly being handled are the clock you are actually racing.
Read the post →Do You Actually Own Your Website?
Four separate things get bundled together under “my website”, and they are owned in four different ways. It is worth knowing which of them you hold.
Read the post →Why Your Website Feels Slow, And What Usually Fixes It
A slow page is usually a heavy page, and the weight is usually in a small number of places that are straightforward to find.
Read the post →Making Your Website Work For Everyone
Accessibility on a small business website is mostly a handful of ordinary things done properly, and the same things tend to help everybody else too.
Read the post →Who Is Looking After Your Website After It Launches?
A website is not finished when it goes live; it just stops changing. The jobs that keep it working are small, dull and easy to leave to nobody.
Read the post →From The Studio
How this business is actually run, written up with the specifics attached rather than the adjectives.
What I Built To Run This Business
One client existed as five records in five systems, spelled differently in each. This is what got built about it, and what I would tell you before you did the same.
Read the post →From Idea To Operation: My Journey Starting A Company From The Ground Up
A month of trading, written up with the specifics attached rather than the adjectives, including the parts that went wrong.
Read the post →Got A Question I Should Write About?
If there is something you have been wondering about your website, your search visibility or where AI actually fits into a small business, send it over. I would rather answer a real question than guess at one.
Ask Me Anything