10 Small Business Web Design Disasters to Avoid...

I don’t get angry easily but I’ll tell you what makes my blood boil–irresponsible, under qualified, even clueless web designers.

Many web designers are talented, skilled and reasonably priced and have the best interests of their clients at heart. But unfortunately there are too many who don’t.

Week after week small business owners call or e-mail me wondering why their expensive website is generating no traffic or leads and not showing up in the search engines.

When I look at their website I often see a site that looks pretty, but is useless. So how do you avoid falling into the same trap?

Here is what you need to know:

1) Ask the web designer to create your website in a Content Management System like Joomla or Wordpress. This will allow you to easily make frequent changes to your site yourself without having to pay $60 or more per hour for every added link or paragraph. Those days are long gone. If the designer balks at this suggestion, run.

2) Ask if they do keyword research to determine what keyword phrases people who want your type of service are searching for. If they don’t you can certainly do it yourself or out source it cheaply. Check Elance.com for a great selection of freelancers.

3) Ask if they do Search Engine Optimization. If so, what is the cost? If they don’t, run. If they are too expensive, shop around. You can do it yourself with a little effort.

4) Do the copywriting yourself or provide an outline and have a professional copywriter do it. The headlines and content need to be focused on customer benefits and they need to contain your keyword phrases. Your headline and content will determine whether visitors leave or stay. Avoid phrases like “welcome” and “we do this” and “we do that”.

5) Ask your designer to go easy on using Java script or Flash as Google can’t recognize or read either.

6) Do not create an “enter” or “intro” page. It will increase your rate of abandonment and the search engines won’t like it. Every extra click discourages visitors.

7) It’s crucial that you have an e-mail marketing program and put an opt-in box on every key page of your site. Ask visitors to sign up for your mailing list and give them something of value to encourage them to comply. This is how you convert visitors to leads. Ask your designer if they will put the opt-in boxes on your site for you.

Check references and find out how long they’ve been in business and how reliable they are. Do they have a group of designers or are they solo? You want someone who will respond when you need their help in an emergency, not someone who ignores you for days.  You will need excellent customer service since your business is at stake.

9) Do not let your web designer register your domain name or host your website  unless you have direct access to your domain and hosting accounts and they are in your name.  You don’t want to be “held hostage” should you need to change designers. You’ll need direct access anyway for a number of reasons. You shouldn’t pay more than $10 per year for a domain, and for a simple site, your hosting costs should be no more than $10 to $12 a month.

10) Shop around. Don’t just hire the first person you’re referred to since the referrer may not be aware of some of these pitfalls.

Following these 10 tips will save you hundreds of wasted dollars and will help you create a website that sells.

How to Choose a Domain Name for your Online Busine...

Once the thought of setting up your own online business crosses your mind, you need to consider a lot of factors including domain name selection. More than 100 million Domain Names have been registered worldwide. You’d find countless people opting for whacky domain names that do not match their business type and objectives. Trust me, you can have a hard time finding a that’s unique, in demand and matching your business goals since it would reflect the products and services offered by your online enterprise.

Take a tour of the essential points that you must keep in mind before making a choice:

1) Where to look for it?

There are a lot of online platforms such as 1and1.com, Register.com, LimeDomains.com etc., where you can check for the availability of domain names that you wish to buy for your website. If it’s available, go ahead! Even if it’s not available, you get suggestions from a registrar like LimeDomains and you can then make your own choice from the available options.

2) What message does it convey?

The name that you wish to choose must clearly reflect the business you’ve taken a plunge in. It’s recommend that the URL comprises of some main services offered by your online enterprise. However, what you need to keep in mind is that the URL must not be too long or complicated. It can have up to 67 characters. Try to keep it short and simple, clearly representing your ultimate business objective. The shorter, the better!

3) Is your domain name suitable for SEO objectives?

Most of the major search engines are quite aggressive in screening URLs and attach a remarkable importance to the domain names since they screen out a number of brands for the same search query. So, it’s recommended that the URL of your website must comprise of the name that matches the keyword search query.

Some people say that keeping a hyphenated domain name can be really useful while others say that it can be potentially dangerous especially when people are acquainted with the original name. If you choose a domain name that’s already very popular and hyphenate it, it’s quite possible that most of the users type the non-hyphenated form and land up on your competitor’s website.

If anybody asks me, I’d certainly prefer hyphens (or dashes) over underscores since my logic says that if some percentage of the target audience is not Internet savvy then it will tend to misinterpret an underscore for a hyphen or dash and an average user will more likely be using a hyphen rather than an underscore.

For example, you have an online store featuring a large bouquet of products that you wish to sell online. You can keep as whacky a domain name as www (dot) allstuffatoneplace (dot) com but rest assured that search engines would never pick up that name. However, if you keep it www (dot) onlinestore (dot) com, chances of a search engine picking it up quite fast are maximized. Also, if you attempt back link building then you’re in a win-win situation!

4) Should you choose a TLD?

There is a broad array of TLDs available on the Internet such as .com, .net, .org, and .biz etc. However, .com still continues to rule the World Wide Web as it was the first domain extension to be put to commercial use and fetched a lot of media attention.

Try to grab ‘.com’ domain extension. However, if your luck does not favor you then you can opt for .net domain name since after.com, it is the second most popular extension on the Internet today.

5) Should you register multiple domain names for your domain?

If you want to protect your domain name adequately, it’s recommended that you register ‘multiple domain names’ for your online business, which will prevent your competitors to register the same name with varied domain extensions. This practice would direct your potential customers to your website only and help you enjoy the benefits of your brand value.

We hope that these simple tips would help you make an intelligent choice of domain name and move forward in your online business with absolute confidence. Once you have chosen a good domain name, all that’s left is finding a good domain name registrar.

Customer Relationship Business Management – ...

Info at hand is the “Business Portal” and central application in our CRBM Platform. Depending on your perspective or roles played in your business processes, you will find a benefit and perhaps many that apply to you. If you are a manager or book keeper there are several features that can help you track assets, inventory and help you gather solid business intelligence. If you are a production manager or talent resource there are many tools for managing project and improving efficiency or collaboration of your team. If you are a system administrator there are many tools for managing roles, teams and other system wide configuration and customizations.

There are really 5 clear value propositions that make the CRBM platform a perfect choice for virtually any small to mid-sized business:

1. Consolidated business management with reporting, automations, HR, Project Management with project profit loss tracking, Timesheet, and more.

2. Seamless integration with the Joomla CMS for virtually unlimited expandability for front end customer portal, partner portal or social networking community.

3. e-Commerce synchronization for a full transaction life cycle management and ERP inventory management capabilities with Shipping and Receiving.

4. One time licensing fee on premise model and low cost of entry.

5. Close integration and two way synchronizations with QuickBooks and Microsoft Outlook.

Our Info at hand based CRBM (Customer Relationship Business Management) has helped large number of organizations to manage their various functions including:

Marketing Management
Document Management
Inventory Management
Receiving
Shipping

1). Marketing Management:

1. A).Sales force automation:

Sales force automation includes lead capture, and the promotion of leads to Opportunities;
Opportunity tracking with sales stage and percentage likelihood;
Sales pipeline tracking, with graphical charts that offer drill-down from the bar or segment of the chart to the data that underlies it;
Definition of sales teams and territories, to manage information sharing and track sales performance by territory;
Sales forecasting and comparison of forecasts to quotas and actuals, by team or by individual;
Lead source analysis of sales and opportunities;
Flexible reporting, to extract precisely the information you want to see;
Corporate calendar management, for arranging calls and meetings; and
Integrated Inbound and outbound Email, which is automatically added to account and contact history.
B).Email & Letter Mail Marketing Campaigns:
Marketing campaigns may be conducted with email templates for automatically customized emails, management of prospect lists, and tracking of campaign click-through rates.
A target list for an email campaign may be assembled from a mixture of prospects plus pre-existing contacts and leads. You may create a target list as the output of a report, facilitating the targeting of prospects or existing clients with specific characteristics. A special Quick Campaign feature makes it quick and easy to perform spur of the moment email campaigns.
You can also import lists of prospects (in either Comma Separated Values (CSV) or Tab Separated Values (TSV) formats).
A mail merge feature enables the execution of letter mail campaigns, and target lists may also be exported to MS Word for a variety of purposes.

2). Document Management:

Info at hand enables the sharing of business documents – from HR claim forms and Marketing collateral to Engineering designs.

Multiple revisions may be stored ensuring only approved documents are used.
Documents in any format can be filed, and may be searched by title, description, file type, status, department, keywords and owner.
Documents may be associated with Projects, Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, or Service Cases.
A project can have all of the project’s documentation attached to it. An account, lead or contact can have all related documents attached. And supporting documents for a service case can be attached to it.

3). Inventory Management:

Info at hand includes a full inventory management capability. Two key modules perform the bulk of inventory management – Shipping and Receiving. In addition, the Sales Orders and Purchase Orders modules, as well as the Invoices module, evolved to support the tracking of partially received Purchase Orders, and partially shipped Sales Orders or Invoices

4) Receiving:

The Receiving module lets users in shipping/receiving document the receipt of a shipment, list the items and quantities received, and link to the related Purchase Order (and Sales Order if any). It documents the inbound shipping provider, number of packages and weight, the supplier’s packing slip number,

5) Shipping:

The Shipping module lets users in shipping/receiving record the shipments they send out. As well, it links to the FedEx and UPS shipping and tracking web services to automate those activities when using these shipping providers. It documents the outbound shipping provider, number of packages and weight, the packing slip number (it can also produce PDFs of packing slips), and the date shipped.

Using Blogging With Your Business...

These days it seems like more and more businesses online are incorporating weblogs into their web site. Blogging accomplishes a variety of things when it comes to your business. It can be a method of communicating directly with your current or potential customers. It can also be a way to provide information to site visitors about your products and services that you are attempting to sell.

Imagine this: a member of your company or someone that you hire posts various topics to your business’s blog. That writer adds a tag or two with keywords specific to the blog post’s topic. An aimless internet browser happens to type in those same keywords that you tagged and your business web site appears on the search engine. That individual clicks on the link, ends up on your blog, and learns a bit about some of the products your company offers. This scenario may end with a sale right then and there, or it could at least mean further perusing of the web site and consideration of a future sale.

It is crucial that good content is provided within the blog. If you do not have someone within the company who can expend the energy to contribute good, worthwhile substance into the weblog, a freelance writer may be the answer. It is not necessary to always showcase your products within the weblog. In fact, if you do go this route, readers may get a bit bored. As long as you are writing about interesting topics pertaining in some way to your business, you can potentially gain quite the readership. For example, say you own a business that sells flowers. You would not want to always display information on the types you are selling. Instead, you could create a blog posting that gives tips on growing flowers in a garden, with a link to your main web site’s flower selection.

In addition to providing good content, you will need to provide consistent posting. Blogging once a month will not keep readers coming back for more. At a minimum, someone should be posting to the weblog at least once a week. Preferably, if you have the resources available to do so, a daily or several times a week contribution to the blog is best.

Syndicating your blog is a helpful way to keep interested readers coming back to your site. If you are an avid internet user, you know how easy it is to overflow your Favorites folder or to get distracted going from one site to another via clicking on various links. By allowing customers and potential customers to subscribe to your blog’s feed, you eliminate this. Now updates to your blog are updated in real time right to a feed reader or to that individual’s email inbox.

Most information available out there touts the benefits of adding a blog as a complementary addition to your main web site. Used the right way, it can both communicate to your customers, as well as draw in potential sales.

How To Find A Good Website For Your Business...

In this age of technology, if you have no website to promote your business online, you are just confining your returns. Your business will certainly occur but no one will be able to capture it. The fact is that to survive in the business world for continuity, you need to develop a website for your business. However, developing a good website in this age is not an easy task. If you need an affordable solution for your business, following tips can be useful to follow;

Web Developer

When selecting a web developing company for your project, you have to concentrate on each aspect of your decision. Usually, renowned companies are preferred because of their reputation but they charge high expense for their services that might be unbearable for those having small budget. In this situation, small but well reputed companies or even freelancers can provide you a more affordable deal for your business. There are different newly established web developing companies that can provide you the best and reliable services on affordable charges. If you want to save on your investment, it is best to search for these companies.

Register the Domain Name

Developing a business website is not an easy task so you have to make the comprehensive decision for this. Many of us forget to estimate the cost of domain registration and web hosting. Luckily, so many affordable web hosting and registration packages are available these days that can be availed according to your budget limit.

Useful Way to Save the Expense

After selecting a web development company and getting a low cost web hosting and domain registration, there is still a room to save to your money by cutting the expense. For example, to save your cost and time as well, you should have to draw out your project details before meeting the web developer. The less work for web developer will help you to get the cheap services.

Furthermore, you can save on graphics and photographs by using the existing images or stock photography websites is another way to get cheap or even free photo images for your website. To be ranked in top rated sites, you have to add contents to your site. Instead of getting someone professional for this purpose, you can write your contents yourself. If you are not sure about its quality, you can hire a professional to edit these contents. This would also help you to cut the expense and save money. By limiting your web pages you can cut the cost to great extent.

Earn With Your Website

Websites are not just a way to promote your business but can help you to earn money as well. Your website can become a source of earning the extra money. Web affiliation programs and selling different products on your site are the best way to increase your source of income. This earning can be spent on hosting cost or you can take out a considerable profit as well. Whatever the method you go for, an affordable website is possible.

Multi Vendor Shopping Cart Software – a Busi...

A new wave in ecommerce is multi vendor shopping cart for small businesses. If your online store is struggling to get customers, this is worth a serious look. It lets you build a mini plaza – instead of just a store – to display products from different vendors.

By focussing the strengths of complementing vendors into one store, the buyers are presented with a larger selection to choose from and all vendors stand to gain.

For example, your bookstore may consider partnering with a video store. Or, if you have a flower shop, you may consider joining with other merchants in the local area selling chocolates, wines or cards.

The significance of mini plazas for individual businesses had largely been overlooked until recently. Most businesses thought of putting only their own products online and wait for traffic. This worked fine during the early years of ecommerce, when the few with online stores had an advantage over their counterparts. The exponential growth in the number of online stores wiped off that advantage.

How can the advantage be regained ?

The answer is “Team Play” and the multi vendor shopping cart is the playing field !

But, how do stores that once stood separately – like the boutique shops in a shopping mall – suddenly join together? It will be like shopping in a mall with a cart taken to different stores and then going to a central checkout. While it is nearly impossible in the physical world, even the virtual world has some hurdles to overcome, especially in correctly matching the products with vendors. A single-vendor shopping cart software is unable to do this matching.

The multi-vendor shopping cart, on the other hand, can distinguish between the items belonging to different vendors and dispatch the orders and shipping details separately to the respective vendors. The customers will not even know that they have been to three separate stores.

Another advantage is better cross promotion. Unlike a physical store – and rarely a single online store – it can suggest to the customer that “many of those who purchased this item also purchased this!”. It can be a product belonging to another vendor.

Taking the flower shop as example, a customer who just added a bunch of flowers into the cart may be persuaded to buy a box of chocolate or a bottle of wine to go with the flowers. Suddenly, the vendors who once competed with each other are now recommending each other.

Unlike in a single store situation, you do not have to complement your inventory with companion products you are not the expert in. For example, a wine shop knows how to offer the best wines just as a flower shop knows flowers. By using them as a co-vendor, the flower shop can leverage on the wine shop’s extensive inventory.

Mini plaza is an entrepreneur’s opportunity

If you are an entrepreneur looking for ways to create a profitable business, this offers an excellent opportunity. Even if you do not have your own merchandise to sell, setting up a multi store and signing up merchants will help create a “mini plaza”. The participating merchants benefit in the low cost of setting up the store while the store administrator gets a commission or rent from each vendor.

The future of multi vendor stores

If the current trend continues, within a couple of years you will see that most successful online businesses are part of one or more stores. Many more mini virtual malls will emerge to cater for local businesses that work together.

These multi-stores will become places to sell for individuals and small businesses across all categories. This will especially be so for local artists who can deliver only locally.

Blogging Your Way to Home Business Success...

Many of us view blogging as something for the younger generation or just a social networking communication avenue. But creating a blog to promote your home based business can be very profitable. Savvy internet marketers know that using a blog as your main avenue is a successful business plan.

So why are more and more internet marketers turning to blogs rather than websites?

Here are a few reasons…

It’s really easy to setup a blog. There are many sites on the internet that will provide free and low cost hosting of your blog when you use their blogging software. All you need is a computer to connect and your up and running.

You can choose from a variety of blogging platforms; Wordpress, Blogger, Joomla, are a few of the most popular. These applications offer a number of attractive themes to choose from. You’re bound to find one that fits your product niche. You will also find with these platforms that people write addons, plugins or applications that add spice to your site.

People are attracted to blogs because they are generally less intimidating. They are a friendly environment that allows for open conversation about products or issues. You do not find the in-your-face hard sell you would on a website or sales page. It’s a more personal environment which attracts people.

Blogs are also great for search engine rankings. Because there is a lot of activity, postings, links, the search engines love them. The more postings you provide and comments you receive helps boost your popularity and therefore your rankings.

Blog content

The most important aspect of a blog is its content. It must be useful, informative and non threatening. You can write what you want in your blog and if people find you interesting they will follow you. You can be informative, funny, and controversial, all are great avenues to grow you reputation. As your reputation grows and your blog gains readership you will see the benefits in your profits.

There is no rule of thumb on how often you should post to your blog. Once a day is great for keeping your rankings high and your readers’ interest, but if you can only post twice a week or even once a week, the idea is to keep posting.

Offer your readers various ways to keep up with your posts. You can setup article feeds (RSS, Google, AOL), or have them register for emails to be sent every time you update your blog. This will encourage your readers to comment on your posts and keeping your blog active.

Monetize

There are many ways to add profit to your blog. You can sell advertising to other subscribers wanting to promote their product. You can be less assertive by adding text links within the blog content directing them to other sites. This is usually a personal preference. You can also add Google Adsense, AdBrites or any other content sharing ads.

If you follow these few simple ideas you will find blogging fun and a very powerful tool in your internet marketing strategy that sets you on the road to success.

Need of Software Development Application for Busin...

For our businesses, it is important to get a software program developed at economical prices. Most of us want to have software that helps in managing the records of the employees, attendance, finances, and other related information. Well now, it is quite easy… For your office now, you can get the small programs made from a team of custom software development application provider. No matters in whichever business you are they can provide you with the best software program that help you in improvise in the existing business. Some of the software development application programs that have been helpful to many businesses are

” Warehouse management software
” shipping system integration
” work center task management
” Software integration
” Business productivity software
” B2B and B2C custom e Commerce software
” financial reporting software
” Merchandising, and order processing applications
” Custom database application software
” inventory control
” mapping application
” data conversion services
” custom bar code software

If you want they can get a database also designed for your business for its smooth functioning. The performance of the company improves upon using these applications. You can provide your customers with something better. When your business will grow you with the help of software development applications, can meet the customer requirement changes well. Hence, you would be able to control the actual sales and have also witnessed high profits. In simple words, flexibility of custom software helps one to increase their value completely.

Software Services UK is a UK based company offering many services like as Software Application Development, Joomla Website Development and Drupal Web Content Management.

Custom Software Development: No Less Than a Boon f...

On how many occasions have you tried those customary software programs and failed to get that result that you were waiting for? Difficult to remember as you did encounter it for many a times? Well, it’s the time to jump in joy! With the arrival of custom software development services providers, you can get your required software design and developed the way you want it, the way your business needs it. The basic of custom software development lies in its power to develop industry-specific software programs for you. Fort all types of businesses and for all sizes of clients custom software development programs are available at affordable rates. Even though custom software development costs a bit higher as compared to ant standard software development program, for the efficiency and profit maximization, it’s worth spending!

A custom software development company now uses the most advanced and reliable software development platforms and tools so that clients are guaranteed with complete satisfaction. Be it softer development for a travel portal or for an ecommerce site, custom software development come real handy for everyone, simply everyone. Flash, HTML, .Net, PHP, Joomla! – for every website development platforms also custom services are now being offered by the developers.

During any custom software programming effort, developers and coders utilize their experience that they have gathered working in different software and web development firms. There are also several independent custom software and web development companies which have been handing all types of custom development programs for all sorts of clients. Custom software development packages offered by them are various. It all depends on clients’ capability what they really want and how much they are ready to invest.

The prime advantage of using custom software program is that it helps users get optimum out of their expenses. Custom software are efficient enough and are extremely helpful in cost cutting. Increased productivity is another major advantage of using custom software in the business environment of a firm. Those who are smart and who think of the future growth for them the arrival of the custom software is no less than a boon for sure!

Business Templates...

If you are new to the sector of eCommerce, web sites and HTML programming, the idea of building and designing a site can be a daunting one. Even if you haven’t any technical skills, there are straightforward, effective things you can do to have a worthwhile site and ensure your customers can find you on the net.

One ) make sure the colors are pleasing to the eye. Don’t make the background too light or too dark. The hottest colors are light green or blue but the choice is up to you.

2 ) don’t make it too tricky for your possible shoppers to find what they are attempting to find, i.e. : make your internet site straightforward to navigate. Make your buttons clear and simply visible.

3 ) Write 2 paragraphs on your home page telling folks precisely what it is your business is about. What’s your product or service? What benefit does it provide to people? Be certain to include information about you. This helps to build trust. Folks like to know who they’re purchasing from.

4 ) do not be unnecessary with your graphics. There are 2 reasons for this. One, the website may take too much time to load if someone doesn’t have a speedy connection ; and too many graphics can be distracting and take away from your main message.

five ) Have a FAQ page ( frequently asked questions. ) Include info about your product including benefits and features. It is also a sensible idea to have some info about you.

6 ) Have a ‘contact us’ button and make it obviously obvious. Don’t make folks scour your site hunting for a way to get in touch with you. They will quickly get frustrated and move on and you’ve just lost a potential sale.

seven ) you need to have an HTML form to capture peoples names and email addresses. This form does not have to be advanced. It can be a simple ‘fill in your name and email to get special promotions’, or ’sign up for our weekly newsletter.’ One of the main goals of a domain is to build a contact list. Use this list wisely however ; this isn’t a license to send them ten messages a day. They will quickly unsubscribe!

eight ) Consider uploading an image of yourself on your website. Folks like to see who they may be conducting business with. Remember, your goal is to build a reputable business online and have a solid customer base. Folk need to believe that they can trust you and will want to business with you.

9 ) Ask for the business! Put some special packages together, or offer something for free. Compel people to order from you. Again you’ll need a simple html form so they can fill out their shipping and payment info when they click an ‘order today’ or ‘order now’ button.

10 ) Have enough white space thru your internet site. This implies not having excessive wording – be clear and concise. You don’t need to fill every inch of space with words or graphics. This becomes too tough to read, and people will get tired of trying to figure out what you are trying to say and move on to your competition.

By following the above tips, you’ll soon find you’ll have a pro looking web site and your business profits will soar!