Most businesses reach this question through a renewal bill. The annual invoice arrives, it’s gone up again, and someone asks whether AI could do the job instead. Here’s how we work through it with clients, in enough detail that you can run it yourself.

We touched on the short version in the two questions business owners keep asking about AI, and one line from that post is worth repeating because it holds up every time: the businesses getting real value started with a problem, not with the technology. The ones who started with the technology mostly ended up with a subscription and a story.

Where should you start?

With the gap between what you pay for and what you use. We call it the subscription-gap test, and it takes about an hour with whoever actually uses the software every day.

1. List what you pay for. Every platform, every seat, every add-on, with the annual cost. Include the ones that are charged to a credit card rather than an invoice.
2. Mark what you actually use. For each one, which features does your team open in a normal week? Be strict. “We might use the reporting one day” goes in the unused column.
3. Count the workarounds. Every spreadsheet that exists because the software can’t do something, every export that gets reformatted by hand, every step where someone copies information from one screen into another.

The workarounds are the important column. They’re where the software stopped fitting your business and your staff filled the gap themselves.

Once you’ve found a gap, pick the one process that sits in the middle of it and run three questions over it.

How often does the process happen?

Frequency is what makes automation pay. A task that happens fifty times a day repays setup costs quickly. A task that happens four times a year almost never does, however tedious it is when it comes round.

Daily beats weekly, and weekly beats monthly. Anything rarer usually belongs on a checklist.

How much of it is judgment, and how much is moving information?

Break the process down step by step and sort each step into one of two piles.

The first pile is information moving: copying a customer’s details from an email into a CRM, pulling numbers from three systems into one report, checking an order against a stock list. This is AI territory now, and it’s usually the bulk of the hours.

The second pile is judgment: deciding whether a quote is worth chasing, reading a tricky customer complaint, weighing up which job gets the crew first. That stays with a person. What changes is the information in front of them when they make the call, because the first pile has already been done.

Work that moves information is where AI earns its keep. Work that weighs things up stays with a person, with better information in front of them.

What is the time actually worth?

Put a number on it. “We’d save heaps of time” can’t be weighed against a quote.

The arithmetic is simple. Hours the process takes each week, times the loaded cost of the person doing it (wage plus super, leave and overheads), times the weeks in a working year. As an illustration: six hours a week at a loaded cost of $55 an hour, over 48 working weeks, is $15,840 a year. That’s the ceiling on what fixing that process is worth, before you count errors, delays or the better work that person could be doing.

If automating it costs a fraction of that, it’s worth doing. If it costs more than two or three years of the time it saves, leave it for now. Either way you’ve made a decision with a number behind it, which a general ambition to “do more with AI” never gives you.

What are the three answers you can land on?

Run the questions and you’ll end up at one of three places.

Keep the software. It fits the process, your team uses most of it, and the price is fair. That’s a good result: you’ve renewed on purpose rather than by default.

Build AI around it. The software is fine at its core job, but the work between it and your other systems is eating hours. This is the most common answer we see. AI and automation handle the moving of information between the platforms you already have, and nothing gets replaced. It’s often the cheapest of the three and the quickest to show a result. If your CRM is one of those systems, what CRM integration actually involves covers the practical side, and our AI and application integration work is built around this middle path.

Replace it with something bespoke. The gap is wide, you’re paying tens of thousands a year, and your process has been bent out of shape to fit the tool. Then a purpose-built application can cost less over a few years than the subscription, and it fits the way you work. It’s a bigger decision with a longer payback, and it starts with a proper scope. We’ve set out what that involves in what scoping a custom web application involves.

What have we learned the hard way?

We’ve been adopting AI inside HyperWeb for about three years, and not all of it has stuck.

Early on we paid for a platform that was meant to take work off us. It didn’t. It still wanted the same repetitive data entry, and every record keyed in by hand was another chance to get something wrong. What it was asking for was exactly the work a database lookup should have been doing, with AI handling the entry and the errors that came with it. We’d bought the tool and left the actual problem sitting where it was.

The lesson has been the same each time. When we started with a process we already knew was costing us, the result lasted. When we started with a tool that looked promising, we usually paid for it for a few months and then cancelled it. The three questions exist because we needed them ourselves. The longer version of that sequence, purpose before the platform, is set out in our 4P framework for AI adoption.

Frequently asked questions

Can AI replace the software my business pays for?

Sometimes. The test is the gap rather than the technology: how much of the product you use, how many workarounds you run, and what the subscription costs against what a purpose-built alternative would. Start with one process, not a platform decision.

Which business processes should be automated with AI first?

High-frequency, low-judgment work: moving information between systems, assembling reports, triaging enquiries. Work that needs someone to weigh things up should stay with a person, with better information in front of them.

How do I work out if automating a process is worth it?

Put a number on it. Hours the process takes per week, times what that time costs, against the cost of automating. A named process with a named cost is a decision you can make. A vague ambition to “use AI” gives you nothing to decide.

Do I need to replace my software to get value from AI?

No. Often the win is AI working between the systems you already have. Replacement is the answer when the gap between what you pay for and what you use is wide and the workarounds are eating staff time.

Want us to run it for you?

This is the process we run in the second half of an AI readiness review. We look at your systems and your software costs with you, run the three questions over the processes that matter, and give you a short list of what’s worth doing first, what’s worth leaving alone, and roughly what each would cost.

Or if you’d rather talk it through first, get in touch with the team.

By Brendan Brooks, Founder and Managing Director of HyperWeb. Brendan has spent 25 years building websites and business applications, and the last three putting AI to work inside his own agency and his clients’ businesses.

The post Could AI Replace the Software You’re Paying For? Three Questions to Ask appeared first on HyperWeb.

Here’s what sits in each bucket, and how you’d check your own position on either.

Why do businesses on page 1 of Google get no mention in ChatGPT?

I showed two rooms the same thing in the last month, a Newcastle Business Club lunch and a digital bootcamp out at Tocal. Take a business sitting on page 1 of Google. Ask ChatGPT the question that business’s customers would actually ask. Watch it name three other businesses and never mention them.

The room goes quiet at that point. Most people in it have never checked.

The reason is structural. Google ranks pages and hands you a list to choose from. AI engines assemble an answer, which means they have to decide who to name and who to leave out. They can only name businesses they can find, understand and trust, and those three things come from how your site is built, whether your business details are consistent everywhere they appear, and whether you’re mentioned credibly beyond your own website. Ranking well helps. It isn’t the same job. We pulled apart the five common reasons a business gets skipped in why ChatGPT recommends your competitors and not you.

The useful part for a business owner is that this is measurable. Ask the engines the questions your customers ask, logged out so you’re seeing what a stranger sees, and note who gets named. That’s your baseline, and it takes about half an hour. We wrote the method up in how to check where you really stand if you’d rather run it yourself.

Google ranks pages and hands you a list. AI engines assemble an answer, which means they have to decide who to name and who to leave out.

Where could AI do real work inside your business?

The second bucket emerges differently, organically. More and more clients are realising that AI capabilities can solve a pain point in their systems and processes. It usually starts with something specific: the admin that eats a day a week, the quoting process that lives across three spreadsheets and one person’s memory, or the software subscription that costs thousands a year and does maybe a third of what the business actually needs.

Those are good starting points, because they’re specific and they already have a cost attached. Vague AI ambitions go nowhere. A named process that wastes a named amount of time is something you can put a number against and either fix or leave alone on purpose.

Three questions are worth asking about any process you’re considering. How often does it happen? How much of it is judgment and how much is moving information from one place to another? And what would getting that time back actually be worth? Work that’s high frequency and low judgment is where AI earns its keep first. Work that needs someone to weigh things up stays with a person, ideally with better information in front of them. We’ve written up the full process in could AI replace the software you’re paying for.

Can a bespoke application replace expensive off-the-shelf software?

Often, yes. It’s also the question the fewest people think to ask.

Off-the-shelf software is built for the average of thousands of businesses. You pay for the whole product, use the slice that fits, and bend your own process around the parts that don’t. Per seat, per month, indefinitely.

A bespoke application works the other way around. It’s built around how you actually operate, it does the things you need and nothing else, and you own it.

It isn’t automatically the right answer. If the off-the-shelf product fits and the price is fair, keep it. The test is the gap between what you’re paying for and what you actually use, plus how much of your process you’ve had to distort to suit the tool. When that gap is wide and the subscription is well into five figures a year, it’s worth costing the alternative properly. AI has moved that maths, because building software specific to one business is meaningfully cheaper than it was three years ago.

What does an AI readiness review cover?

Two halves, matching the two buckets.

Where you appear to your customers:

• How your business is named across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI, on the questions your customers actually ask
• Who’s being named instead, and what they’re doing that you aren’t
• The technical reasons you’re being skipped: content structure, schema markup, crawler access, and whether your business details are consistent across the web
• What to fix first, and what can wait

Where AI could do the work:

• A look at your systems and processes, and where the repeat work actually sits
• What your current software costs measured against how much of it you use
• Where a bespoke application would pay for itself, and where it plainly wouldn’t
• A short list of what’s worth starting now against what’s better left for twelve months

You get a written summary either way. Some businesses take that list and hand it to their own people, and that’s a perfectly good outcome.

What have we learned running this on ourselves?

We’ve spent the last three years doing this to our own business first, riding the heavy wave of AI change and trying to stay just under the lip. Plenty of what we tried didn’t stick.

Two things have remained consistent. The first is that the tools change every few months, so the useful skill isn’t picking the right tool, it’s being able to swap tools without rebuilding how your business runs. The second is that the businesses getting real value started with a problem, not with the technology. The ones who started with the technology mostly ended up with a subscription and a story.

We’ve started doing the same for clients, and we’re set up to help more.

Frequently asked questions

What is an AI readiness review?

It’s an assessment of two things: how visible your business is in AI search across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI, and where AI could do useful work inside your systems and processes. The first half looks at why you are or aren’t being named when customers ask AI engines for a business like yours. The second half looks at repeat work, current software costs, and whether a bespoke application would serve you better than an off-the-shelf subscription. You get a written summary with what’s worth fixing first.

Isn’t AI search visibility just SEO with a new name?

They overlap heavily, and good SEO work makes AI visibility easier. The difference is the finish line. Google shows a list of links and lets the customer choose. An AI engine assembles a single answer and names a handful of businesses, so being one of the options is a different result from ranking well. Content structure, schema markup, consistent business information and crawler access all matter more when there’s only room for three names.

How do I know if a custom application is worth building instead of paying a subscription?

Compare what you’re paying for against what you actually use, and count how much of your own process you’ve reshaped to suit the software. If you use most of the product and it fits how you work, stay where you are. If you’re paying well into five figures a year for a fraction of the features, working around the gaps manually, and adding staff time to make it fit, it’s worth costing a bespoke build properly. Building software around one business is cheaper than it was three years ago, which has changed where that line sits.

Is my business too small for any of this?

No. The AI search side matters more for small businesses, not less, because an AI answer names three businesses where a Google results page shows ten. On the process side, the starting point isn’t a large project. It’s usually one repetitive task that eats a predictable amount of time each week. Small businesses often see the value faster because there are fewer people and systems to change.

Want to know where your business stands?

HyperWeb has been building websites and digital strategy for Newcastle and Hunter businesses since 2000, and both halves of this are now part of that work. If you’d like to know where you stand on either front, being found or getting the work done, book an AI readiness review below or get in touch with the team.

If you’d rather read first, our working guide to GEO and AEO covers the search side in full, and our AI and application integration page covers the build side.

The post AI Readiness: The Two Questions Business Owners Keep Asking appeared first on HyperWeb.

The constantly changing Instagram algorithm is hard to keep up with but know one thing for sure – Instagram is favouring (promoting) reels over images and it doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.

While it is possible to grow on Instagram without reels – creating reels is a great way to increase followers and engagement. In fact, they are a real growth hack!

Not only are they addictive to watch, consumers are 95% more likely to retain the message or remember a product or service when consumed via video. 

We often remind our clients who are hesitant to dive head first into the world of reels that it’s an excellent opportunity to:

• Create connection with your audience
• Add value by sharing hacks, tips, tricks and how to’s
• Build trust and credibility in your niche – remember you are the master of your art and your knowledge about your product/service is your strongest USP (unique selling point)

While diving head first may seem daunting, we encourage you to dip your toes in the reel pool by trying these 5 hacks:

• Create original content

As Instagram has evolved so has the desire for perfectly curated feeds. People want original and approachable content that they can relate to. This means no one is judging you (they are actually supporting you) to create non-polished reels that foster connection and add value.

• Use texts or captions

Did you know that 85% of reels are watched without sound? Make sure you always use text in your video or captions if you’re speaking. It’s also an invaluable tool for those who have hearing difficulties. 

• Don’t post a reel once

Have you spent hours making a reel, only to use it once? This may shock you, but you can actually re-post the same reel 1, 2 even 3 times. Remember, when you post a reel you are competing with hundreds of thousands of other reels – at the same time (some may even be communicating the same message as you) and, it might take 3 posts for your reel to reach your target audience.

• Don’t use a video that has a TikTok watermark

Instagram devalues reels or videos that have been created in other apps. Make sure if you’ve made a video on TikTok you don’t post it to Instagram with the watermark (there are watermark removal apps available on the app store – however they can decrease the quality). The best way to avoid this is to create your content directly in the Instagram app.

• Include 3-5 hashtags

It’s hard to know whether to hashtag or not but using 3-5 hashtags will help the Instagram “algorithm” understand your content and serve it to relevant audiences.

At HyperWeb, we create marketing strategies that include reel creation and management within a wider strategy. Looking to take your brand or business to the next level? Get in touch today and find out how we can help you.

The post Are reels the only way to grow on Instagram? appeared first on HyperWeb.

So, how do we get people to pay attention for extended periods and create a lasting impression? By connecting with them through the art of storytelling.

Think about the last time you learnt something new, was it over coffee with a friend? Or listening to a podcast on your way home from work?

A study by Stanford University revealed that people remember stories 22x more than facts and figures.

Tapping into people’s emotions sharing the good and bad is how stories inspire, motivate, and eventually, drive action.

Creating a narrative around your brand will not only foster brand loyalty, but it also humanises your brand and inherently markets your business.

Storytelling sets compelling brands apart from simple businesses and one-time customers to loyal consumers who return repeatedly.

We’ve shared 5 examples of good storytelling to help get you started and inspire your next campaign.

• Know your audience

Before you put pen to paper, you need to understand who will be reading your story. Who wants to hear your story? Who will benefit and respond to your story?

Take some time to research your target market and define your buyer personas. This process will allow you to become familiar with whose reading, viewing, or listening to your story.

• Keep your story authentic

Stories make us human, and the same go for brands. When brands are transparent and authentic, it brings them down to earth and help consumers connect with them and the people behind them.

• Put your best foot forward

Share the most valuable parts of your story at the beginning rather than saving the best till last. You immediately want to lure the reader and not only connect with them but compel them to share your content with others.

• Use your customers stories

Rather than proving expertise and skill by showing off case studies and statistics share the impact of your brand by sharing customer testimonials or stories.

• Foster community and collaboration

Tell a story that moves readers to discuss and share your story with others. Use a situation or experience that other can relate to and say, “me too”.

Struggling to get your messaging, right? We know it can be to put your own story into words. We can help – get in touch today.

The post How to master storytelling in your marketing appeared first on HyperWeb.

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This year I’ve become an avid podcast listener myself and am appreciating the increasing wealth of knowledge available about a number of perspectives on topics I may not have been aware of. Surprisingly, some of these have been particularly relevant to my university studies and enhanced knowledge application at HyperWeb.

A recent podcast I found beneficial and would like to comment on is one from The Jack Delosa Podcast series: How Booktopia Grew From $10 to a $113 Million Company in a ‘Dying’ Industry. This was relevant as Tony discussed growth strategies that were useful in the successful growth of Booktopia. The three that stood out to me were personal growth and pivoting, investment in automation and delegation and communication and partnerships = trust.

Tony’s main idea for growth was stepping out of his comfort zone, being advantageous and delving into more complex business strategies found in the external business environment. Tony delved into the importance of pivoting.

Tony actively went out into a community with his current entrepreneurial and high sales abilities to become profitable. Using his “best salesman skills” he experienced failure. Rather than offering what he knew, Tony takes the time to understand the sophisticated needs of consumers and offers an alternative service which was profitable. This example of changing business ideas and delving more into marketers’ ideas, demonstrates the concept of pivoting. There have been times he has failed to understand why certain business goals have not been fulfilled within Booktopia. However, he has shown an effort to pivot actively in the industry, with bigger goals in mind. Further, Tony focused on other unused skill sets which revealed success. He emphasises ‘‘return on investment’ happens through personal development of the entrepreneur and pivoting.

For a small business owner, it is beneficial to become more engaged with the community and delve into untouched needs and wants. It is important to be efficient and ensure enrolment in personal development courses to unleash a broader skill set and raise awareness of other business ideas. Additionally, this idea could be applied to assess current internal business strategies on a regular basis and improving on a small scale before making larger changes. Many small business owners’ do not realise that often pivoting can be crucial to long term success.

Tony expresses the need to invest in automation and understand delegation of business practices. The entrepreneur focuses on using their skills to build their own content systems and algorithms for reordering and pricing to ensure growth of Booktopia in a cost-efficient manner. Due to the scale, Tony expresses his understanding that it gets to a point where you need to outsource to avoid diseconomies of scale and invest “buy vs build”. By doing this with other systems within Booktopia, the company has been able to spend time investing funds into other areas of the business as well as ensuring resources are used accordingly.

For those in small business, it would be ideal to assess current processes and capabilities through key performance indicators and look at potential outsourcing options if costs or time allocation is not being delegated efficiently. By doing these things it will assist growth for long term business objectives.

A major contributor to the successful growth of Booktopia was to place a high focus on transparency and building trust in the online business environment for consumers.  Nash actively put Booktopia’s businesses name, address and phone number of the business on the webpage for customers to make direct contact with the business. He delved further into having the logos of partnering businesses such as The ABA and the NAB. To demonstrate transparency and build a sense of trust, it’s often small initiatives which most businesses choose not to disclose or offer such personal information.

When applying it to small businesses, it would be ideal to ensure that you remain focused on understanding consumer’s need to hold a strong degree of trust. To do this the main focus would be to establish partnerships with credible brands that will help your business and disclosing these to consumers. Through offering direct and immediate contact methods to the company rather than just an email generated response, this would increase levels of consumer engagement and increase profitability, particularly in the online shopping industry.

The team at HyperWeb are going to be reviewing more podcast’s around topics related to business growth, strategy, marketing and web development. If you have any podcast recommendations, connect with us via our Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and  Instagram.

The post Podcast Review: Tony Nash CEO of Booktopia Speaks With Jack Delosa appeared first on HyperWeb.

The E-Myth concept is in three stages of growth:

• Infancy – where the technician is everything
• Adolescence – where better management skills are required
• Maturity – where the entrepreneurial vision is needed

The strategy to navigate this journey lies in three key activities:

1. Innovation
2. Quantification
3. Orchestration

and seven distinct steps to achieve success:

1. Primary Aim
2. Strategic Objective
3. Organisation Strategy
4. Management Strategy
5. People Strategy
6. Marketing Strategy
7. Systems Strategy

For your website and digital marketing strategy, where are you in the kind of three phase framework of growth?

• Is it just doing the job of showing people what you do? – Infancy
• Is it performing new or additional business functions such as customer support, customer service, sales? – Adolescence
• Is it integrated with other parts of your business with automated functions that perform tasks? – Maturity

It is worth thinking about this in terms of your readiness because as your business moves through the stages, so too should your front facing marketing activities and resources such as your website.

Skipping the section in The E-Myth Revisited on a turn-key or franchise approach for a future investigation. Next we will look at the E-Myth activities as they apply to your website and digital marketing.

1. Innovation – are you thinking of new ideas to be different, offer new services, products, delivery methods, customer servicing?
2. Quantification – are you measuring the activity you are attracting, the efficiency gains you are achieving, can you forecast further gains with new ideas, marketing, and sales channels?
3. Orchestration – do you have a plan to get things working together, your marketing integrated, your function elements into operations? Is the automation, systems, and processes that are required bedded down.

Lastly, the considerations when thinking about the seven steps to achieving your optimal online strategy:

1. Primary Aim – What do you want your digital investment to achieve?
2. Strategic Objective – What does your website and digital marketing have to do to achieve your primary aim? Does it need to increase income, expand market reach, take advantage of new opportunities? What is your timeframe, how will it deliver?
3. Organisational Strategy – How is it structured and intertwined with the organisation? Who will be responsible for what?
4. Management Strategy – How will you manage the initiative, what project management systems will you need to put in place for development and implementation?
5. People Strategy – What internal staff can be applied to tasks, what internal resources need to be employed, what external resources need to be engaged for specialist takes, where can efficiencies be gained in leveraging people?
6. Marketing Strategy – What markets are you wanting to reach, who are they, how do they engage and find your services?
7. Systems Strategy – what hardware is required, what software, what data needs to be gathered, how will the tools work together and with existing systems and process to form greater ones? What can be automated?

Using the framework of The E-Myth Revisited we can identify where we are currently and plan and resource a path to growth and development in the use of your website and digital marketing initiatives to further feed into your greater business growth journey.

If you would like a guided look at your own position and what can be done to bring your online resources in line with your business growth and needs, get in contact with us and book a coffee.

The post The E-Myth Framework, Your Business Website & Marketing appeared first on HyperWeb.