Review: 3 Complete Packages to Get Your Business Online Today
Getting your small business started online can be a frustrating task. You need a domain name, a website, someone to design the website and code it for you, a shopping cart programmed to sell your products, and another person to set it up for you. The fact is, many small business owners cannot afford to have someone else take care of everything.
Luckily, there are solutions you can implement yourself.
1. Yahoo! Small Business
The basic 12 month web hosting package on Yahoo! Small Business starts at $7.46 for the first three months, then moves up to $9.95 per month. The package includes:
- A suite of simple website design tools. For those who aren’t tech-savvy, or don’t want to build the website from the foundation up, Yahoo! offers a number of free, professional-looking website designs that you can use to get started. There is also support for MySQL, Flash, Shockwave, and PayPal.
- Security and reliability. Yahoo! Small Business offers a 30 day satisfaction guarantee, an uptime guarantee, and 24/7 support online, or via phone or email. Your website is backed up on multiple servers to ensure your website stays live.
- Disk space, email and analytics. Your website has unlimited disk space, unlimited data transfer, and unlimited email storage for 1,000 business email addresses. Yahoo! also provides a full analytics suite, so you can see what kind of traffic your website is receiving.
- Ecommerce features such as a shopping cart, inventory management support, and order management are sold separately, but may not be necessary for the business just starting out.
2. Go Daddy
Go Daddy remains a competitive player in small business offerings, and the 12 month “Ultimate” hosting package costs only $14 a month. The package is very similar to the Yahoo! Small Business basic package above, including the unlimited spaces, data transfer, and the 1000 emails, but offers a few extras:
- Access to the ZenCart ecommerce add-on, a shopping cart for your users when purchasing items from your website. You have to set it up yourself, but Go Daddy offers some support, and there are tutorials available online.
- Advertising credit. Go Daddy offers advertising credits for your website to many major search engines and popular social networking websites, allowing for greater immediate exposure, ideal for any starting business.
Go Daddy has had some customer service issues, and occasionally website slow downs, but overall is a well respected, reliable hosting service.
3. Adobe Business Catalyst
Adobe Business Catalyst has the steepest learning curve of the three, but is also backed by a large, very well respected company that specializes in professional business software. The 12 month “Business” hosting package runs approximately $17 a month, and again offers similar options to the above packages, with a few notable exceptions:
- Rotating advertising. Not only does Business Catalyst support email advertising, it also offers support for dynamic ad rotation on the internet, allowing your advertising to stay fresh across websites.
- A free, 30 day satisfaction trial. Because of the learning curve, the 30-day free trial is valuable, since you may discover the web host isn’t a good fit for you.
- Business email addresses are limited to ten in this package, though if you’re just starting, you may not need more than that.
How do I get started?
All of these services are similar, and each will walk you through the set up process, once you’ve decided which is best for you and your budget. Get your domain and e-mail address set up first. After that, get your website looking the way you want, and enough information to attract your users and start generating sales. When the demand is there, create your shopping cart to offer any products you may have.
After your website is running, don’t just sit back and wait for the sales to happen! Online advertising, search engine optimization, and other marketing techniques can be covered by the remainder of your budget to improve your conversion rate and generate more leads and sales.
About the Author: Lin Edwards is a content and technical writer at SmallBusiness-Domain.com, where you will find web hosting, domain names and e-commerce offers and promo codes, such as GoDaddy coupons. Follow Small Business Domain: http://twitter.com/#!/sbdomain
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The Safest Small Business Startup Strategies Are Virtual, Guerrilla, and Flexible
Our continually struggling economy, at least on ground-level, is sending aspiring entrepreneurs mixed messages. On one hand, there’s enormous incentive to stake your claim at a time when competition is low and human resources are high.On the other hand, the still-unknowable future state of our national and global economies is enough to intimidate even the most ardent of entrepreneurs.
While we often can’t make up our minds as to whether to invest our capital into budding businesses or stow it away in StorageMart lockers for fear of an economic Armageddon, there are ways to make your enterprising dreams come true while minimizing the risk of these uncertain times:
Virtualization
The lingering frailty of the real estate market means that at any moment another crisis could lead to rising rent as mortgages skyrocket. For start-ups renting office space, this could devastate the budget for monthly expenses. In addition, the cost of furnishings and supplies takes their toll on limited income too. Considering the prevalence of cloud computing and mobile Internet connectivity, start-ups should forgo a centralized work environment in favor of a remote operation. The benefits of an office fail to apply to young small businesses in an age when the Internet is the primary means people research goods and services.
Guerrilla Marketing
Guerrilla marketing tactics center on the idea that the modern public responds better to seemingly off-the-cuff promotions and brand awareness. It’s also a conveniently cheaper way of executing large-scale marketing campaigns than traditional means such as television and radio. Guerrilla marketing takes some serious creativity, because, in essence, its got to be a purely original approach to spreading awareness about your goods and services. It does, however, keep you from having to invest large volumes of cash up front for more mainstream campaigns through pricey marketing agencies.
Flexibility
The main objective is to make your business practices elastic in their necessity. Young businesses need the ability to change pace or strategy without the added expenses of increases in marketing and further investment in company assets. You’re going to want to change some of the things you do because every small business start-up makes mistakes. You want to make sure these inevitable mistakes don’t result in major setbacks due to the added cost of fixing them when your business model is set in stone.
Don’t hold back on a great small business idea at a time when the best thing you can do for yourself and for your country is to do your part to help get the economy’s wheels turning again. But at the same time, don’t set yourself up for potential failure by investing large amounts up front when you can succeed just as easily by practicing a Spartan business lifestyle. Offices and expensive marketing can always come later.
About the Author: This article was contributed by Riley Kissel.
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Choosing a Virtual Receptionist Service: 5 Tips for Dazzling Call Answering
As growing businesses make the transition from small to medium-sized, many are finding that hiring a virtual receptionist service not only helps free up time for other projects, but it adds a whole new level of professionalism and customer service. A virtual receptionist is an off-site company that fields all of your phone calls and directs them to the appropriate channel.
Depending on the virtual receptionist service you choose, your call answering may be highly customizable. Some virtual receptionist services are even able to sound like they are in your office, just like an in-house receptionist. To get the most bang for your buck, consider these five preferences when setting up service:
1. Start with a great greeting
Typically, you’re able to personalize what your virtual receptionists will say when greeting callers. Try beginning with “Thank you for calling” or “Good Morning/Afternoon” and follow with your company name. Sprinkle in a “How may I help you?” or “How may I direct your call?” for good measure. The whole greeting should set a welcoming tone for the call: “Thank you for calling ABC Company. How may I help you?”
Bonus: If “Good Morning” sounds good to you, confirm with your service that no matter what time zone the virtual receptionists are in, they will answer with your time zone in mind.
2. Request helpful information from callers
Virtual receptionists can often gather certain information when taking a message or before transferring a call to you. Would knowing what company someone’s calling from or what the call is regarding make your life easier?
3. Pick your messaging preference
Each individual in the company may also be able to customize his or her own messaging procedure. Would you prefer written messages or voicemails? Or would you like the virtual receptionist to offer a choice between the two?
For example, salespeople may prefer to have the receptionist take down a short intake form from their callers (first and last name, how they heard about you, an email address, what services they’re interested in, etc.). That way, they’re able to make an informed return call, and the potential client has a chance to engage with the company.
4. Distinguish between types of calls
Just as you can set specifications for what information to collect before a call is transferred or when a message is taken, virtual receptionist services can also personalize call instructions based on the type of call. For instance, the virtual receptionist may only try your desk line for current clients but try your cell as well for new clients.
5. Ask about FYI messages
Your virtual receptionist service may be able to send you an email every time a caller is connected to voicemail or declines to leave a message. That way, you’ll know that they called whether or not a message is taken, and you can impress clients with a proactive offer of help!
With advanced software and savvy virtual receptionists on your side, there are lots of different ways to set up your phone answering. By customizing your call answering, you’ll be able to enhance your business’s image while increasing your productivity. There’s a great big virtual receptionist world out there – don’t be afraid to ask for what you want!
About the Author: Elizabeth Robinson writes for Ruby Receptionists, a live virtual receptionist service that provides call answering for businesses nationwide.
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So You’ve Got an Idea – Now What? 8 Foolproof Steps from Idea to Implementation
If you’re reading this blog, you probably had the realization at some point in your life that you could do it better. Maybe you were working for someone, and realized that there was a better way to run the business. Or maybe you were using a product and had a flash of insight about how to improve it. Or perhaps you had a brilliant idea for a product that could change the world.
But you’re realistic. You know things are never as easy as they seem. You’re willing to gamble your time and money on your idea, but what’s the first step towards realizing your dream? And how do you make sure you don’t lose all your money on a business that ends up failing?
Where to Focus?
The answer is to focus on the customer, not the product. It’s easiest to demonstrate this approach by example. Let’s say I have an idea for a new kind of recipe site, designed specifically for professional chefs. Before spending thousands of dollars building the site and creating all the content, I would go and talk to chefs and ask what they would like to see in a recipe site. I’d look for forums or Facebook groups for chefs and ask for ideas. I’d put my vision out and try to get feedback. And I’d do all of this before building the product at all.
Testing, Testing…
So now I’ve got a sense of how to build this amazing recipe site. My instinct might be to build out a huge site now and have a big release party in 6 months. But what if everybody was excited about it on forums and interviews, but nobody wants to pay? Or what if, when the site is actually built, it turns out to not really work the way people want it to? That’s where the idea of a minimal viable product comes in. Once you feel like you have a basic handle on your customer, create the minimum experience you need in order to test if you’re on the right path. For my recipe site, I might just create a site for desserts, with plans to expand into other meals if it goes well. I might have a very rudimentary billing system, and only the most important of my site’s future features.
Crowdsource and Improve
Once you’ve got some people using your product or service, you’ll have a better understanding of where to go. So far, I haven’t spent too much time or money on my recipe site, so if it turns out it’s a flop, I haven’t lost everything. I can talk to my customers and find out what’s going wrong: Do they have a hard time finding the recipes? Do they like the site but not want to pay as much as I’m charging? Or is the whole idea just not something they’re interested in?
If the answer to the last question is “yes”, it’s a disappointing day, but at least I haven’t wasted a huge amount of time and money. But otherwise, I’ve learned a lot from talking to our first customers. Now I can make changes – changes I probably never would have thought of myself, or changes I thought were unimportant but that my customers really value.
8 Foolproof Steps from Idea to Implementation
The process in its entirety looks like this:
1. Have an idea.
2. Talk to potential customers about the idea.
3. Build a minimal viable product or experience.
4. Get customers.
5. Learn what they like and don’t like.
6. Make changes.
7. Repeat 4-6 until you have a business people are steadily buying from.
If you get to 7, congratulations! It’s time for:
8. Scale out your business and grow like crazy.
The fallacy that too many entrepreneurs fall for is thinking that step 8 comes before step 3. They think (and I’ve thought this, too!) that, if they could just build the perfect product or service, the customers will come. In fact, you need to have the customers in order to know what the perfect product even is.
If you’d like to read more about these ideas, check out Steve Blank’s Four Steps to Epiphany and Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup.
About the Author: Michael Kaiser-Nyman is the CEO and founder of Impact Dialing, an easy to use power dialer and hosted predictive dialer for small businesses, call centers, and political campaigns.
Photo Credit: Roomic Cube
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Choosing a Virtual Meeting Service for Your Small Business
In the past, unwieldy equipment and the absence of widespread broadband internet capacity put video conferencing out of reach for many businesses. However, technological advances in just the past few years have made virtual meetings a viable option for even the smallest companies. Even as the economy recovers, virtual meetings are expected to remain a popular alternative to business travel.
Because of the rise in popularity of virtual meetings, there has been an explosion of service providers. The following points should be considered in choosing a virtual meeting service that meets the needs of your small business.
Ease of installation and set-up
Some virtual meeting services, such as GoToMeeting, require that the participants install a software program or browser plug-in. If software must be downloaded, you must make certain that the appropriate parties have operating systems compatible with the software and verify that they have installed it prior to the meeting.
Many popular virtual meeting services, such as GoToWebinar, Adobe Connect, and WebEx Meeting, are entirely web-based, and do not require that any software be installed. It is important to verify that the service will support your company’s operating system, however. GoToWebinar supports instant virtual meetings for any Windows or Mac operating system. Adobe Connect and WebEx also will support instant web conferencing on Linux operating systems, and WebEx will run on any smartphone mobile device.
Invitation Tools
A variety of invitation tools are offered by popular web conferencing services. Many virtual meeting services, such as Infinite Conferencing, Adobe Connect, and Microsoft Office Live Meeting, are integrated with Microsoft’s Outlook email application and will add a meeting’s details to participants’ Outlook calendars. This feature is useful for businesses holding regular meetings with a large number of attendees. Most services offer a variety of invitation options, including automated email templates, instant or planned webinars and meetings, and webinar registration pages.
Collaboration Tools
Virtual meeting services offer a variety of features allowing participants in a meeting to collaborate with ease. Most services currently include screen-sharing capabilities enabling a presenter to share his desktop, certain documents, as well as chosen applications in a full-screen view and allow the presenter to highlight a specific portion of his screen.
Another common feature is the capability for multiple participants to act as presenters. This tool is useful for businesses holding meetings in which it is important for various employees with expertise in different areas to participate in the presentation of the meeting. AT&T Connect and IBM Lotus Live only will allow up to four presenters, while Watchitoo will allow up to 25 presenters.
Annotation and drawing tools, such as virtual pens, pencils, and sticky notes, allowing presenters to underscore or highlight certain points also are generally available, although some popular services, such as Zoho Meeting, do not offer them. Whiteboard tools, enabling presenters to note ideas or develop outlines for projects are offered by some services, such as AT&T Connect, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, Watchitoo, and Yugma.
Communication Tools
Almost all web conferencing services provide a built-in text chat tool, enabling participants in a meeting to communicate with specific people in the group or with the group as a whole. Other standard communication tools are teleconferencing, a voice-calling feature enabling attendees to talk to each other during the meeting, as well as VoIP (Voice-over-Internet-Protocol), which allows participants to make telephone calls over the web.
Videoconferencing, although a commonly offered service, is less ubiquitous than the tools mentioned above. It allows participants to broadcast video images of themselves, making the meeting seem like a more traditional in-person gathering. Some virtual meeting services, such as Yuuguu, do not offer this service.
About the Author: Neville Luff is a marketing strategist for NewNet, a UK-based internet, hosting and networking solutions company. NewNet services include data centres, dedicated servers, business VOIP, web hosting and more. Follow NewNet on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/NewNetISP
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Small Business on a Small Budget: 3 Simple Ways to Save on Costs
Every budding entrepreneur and small business owner wishes that they could launch their business with an unlimited amount of funds. But for many, unless they find a shiny gold genie lamp that wish isn’t coming true. If you are trying to start a small business with an even smaller budget there are still simple things you can do to come up with some capital and save costs on other areas so that your business can flourish. To learn the top 3 ways, continue reading below.
1) Use your Customers to Find Capital
It’s well known that it takes vast amounts of money to launch a small business. And if you are selling products rather than services, it can take even more capital—after all, you need to have funds to develop, test and manufacture the product(s).
But if you’re gaining no luck with investors and don’t want to turn to loan officers for the money (or maybe you don’t qualify for a big loan), another option you have is to depend on your customers. You can easily sell annual subscription memberships to big shot executives who can afford to pay fees up front and in full for example.
You can in–turn use that money to hurriedly jump-start your business—just make sure that your customers receive what is promised to them or you will be responsible for paying all that money back. While this option may not be possible for every business model, it certainly can help out a few small business owners.
2) Hire Unpaid Interns
One of the easiest ways to cut back on costs and still get the extra help you need is to hire unpaid interns. There are tons of eager college students who are dying to get their hands dirty in order to learn the tricks-of-the trade, earn college credit, and boost their resumes. Some will even work for the experience alone without earning college credit.
That said, interns can be most helpful. It’s up to your own discretion to decide where you feel an intern would be most useful however—maybe in the marketing or accounting “department.” But at the very least you can most definitely find a college student to be your social media intern. The duties of a social media intern typically include monitoring and updating all of your businesses’ social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Google+) and passing out fliers/business cards.
Your social media intern maybe even be able to do some small secretarial work such as answering phones and sending e-mails while in the office. To make sure that you get some qualified applicants, contact the nearest college(s). They may be able to get your business on a official school list serve so that internship-seeking students can easily find you.
3) Take care of Financials on your Own
As soon as your business starts to really pick up then by all means hire all the professionals you need to take care of all of the financial projections, cash flows, budgets and book keeping. But if your business hasn’t really expanded yet and you’re really strapped for cash, you can hold out for a while and save a hundreds of dollars by taking care of these matters yourself.
Granted, you want to make sure that you are properly educated in this field so that you don’t make a major mistake that can severely jeopardize your business. While returning to school is a plausible option to expand your skills in this area, you just don’t have the funds to go back to college. Instead, you can brush up on your skills (or learn then entirely from scratch) by taking some free online classes like the ones listed below:
- Introduction to Financial and Managerial Accounting
- Fundamentals of Personal Financial Planning [UC Irvine]
- Business Skills for Success [Kutztown University of Pennsylvania]
- Introduction to Economics [Utah State]
About the Author: This is a guest post from Carol Wilson who writes for business insurance guide. She contributes articles about a variety of marketing, business, stock market, small business topics. She can be contacted at: wilson.carol24 (at) gmail.com.
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Industrial Survey Reveals Internet’s Importance to Manufacturers
For many industries, the Internet is the obvious place to go to expand their business. It’s not uncommon to see local mom and pop stores that also have an online side of things that allows them to sell to people around the country and world. Read more
Top 5 Retail Facebook Strategies
According to the website Realfresh.tv, ASOS is the fastest growing online retailer in the UK. And guess what? ASOS is adding fans to its Facebook presence at the staggering rate of 280,000 a month. Read more
5 Ways to Boost Brand Awareness – The Concept of the Purple Cow
Is your business a normal cow or is your business a purple cow?
Seth Godin’s concept of the purple cow came from his observation of cows. After looking at them for a while they all look the same, common and ordinary. But a purple cow would be would stand out and draw attention. Read more
