Do Small Businesses need websites?

Should Small Businesses have a web presence?

In one word, yes! The internet is the most effective marketing tools in existance nowadays, have the capability of reaching far more people than any leaflet drop or advertisement in the local paper ever will.
Should you produce your own website?

It all depends on your skills, if you have the ability to produce a site that looks good, then go ahead, it will save you money and will work wonders as a marketing tool. However if your skills are limited or non-existant then we'd say no. Why? No, not because we want your money (although we don't mind if you want to give it to us...), because if your site doesn't have a professional look to it, then it is going to reflect badly on your company's image.

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Choosing a Company Name

When forming a limited company the name of the company can be an important decision. Some people may choose the first name that they think of and others may select a ready made company for speed or because they like a particular name. However, many businesses may prefer to select a company name that either clearly distinguishes itself from its competitors or contains something unique or personal. Company names can be chosen for different reasons.

One of the most common ways of selecting a company name is to use something personal. A quick look through your local newspaper will probably introduce you to many personalised business names. Johnson Consulting Limited, T Smith & Son Limited, Stephens & Barley Limited are some fictional examples of what may be found. This may instantly make a company recognisable locally, it can be deemed as more personal by its customers, and often works well within geographical areas. However, it does little to tell new customers what your company does.

A popular choice for a small business is to choose a name that is ‘descriptive’. This tells prospective clients exactly what your company does. Examples of this may be to call your business The Window Company Limited, City IT Consultants Limited or The Advertising Agency Limited. Whilst this does serve to reinforce your primary business it offers little differentiation and may easily be adapted by competitors.

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Local Businesses and Web Sites

It seems that most successful businesses these days have web sites, even businesses that service only certain geographic areas. On the web, where the market place is global, localized businesses can be at a great disadvantage.

A Local Business Web Site Example

Lets use the example of a car cleaning businesses. The business only cleans cars in a specific city, yet wants to use their web site to create more business. Time and money is invested in marketing the site in the search engines, paying particular attention to marketing the site for the specific geographic region the service provider covers. Nonetheless, many visitors from around the globe are likely to stumble across the site if it is well marketed.

Offer Non-Geographic Specific Products and Services

If a local business does not offer some sort of product or service that is available to the global market, than these web visits are wasted. The solution is simple. Local businesses that expend effort marketing their web site should also consider offering additional products or services that can be purchased by the global market.

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Internet Meetings and Small Business

The world today is a global village. It is no longer necessary, or sometimes even possible, for all the employees of any organization to come together. Equally though people need to share ideas and information more than ever. Business associates or even family and friends may be located anywhere, but our need to stay connected grows daily. We may need to talk, share pictures and programs, work together or collaborate on many projects.

The Internet has brought the world even closer. It has taken our ability to share information to a new level with brand new abilities to work and communicate worldwide. Internet meetings are web based and accessible to anyone with high speed Internet access. Unlike email, they are real time and they allow you to get immediate feedback and communicate your ideas faster.

At an Internet meeting you can exchange all sorts of information. Internet meetings have many different features depending on the software and service provider used.  Most Internet mettings today use live video and audio. They can also pass files between participants and share a common whiteboard to share ideas as well as the ability to work on Word, Excel or PowerPointdocuments together. Web meetings also provide the ability to share programs running on your PC and let the Internet meeting attendees view your desktop.

With these capabilities, the options of Internet meetings to help us keep connected are endless. Perhaps a family will stay in touch with children at school or university where they can talk and share experiences and pictures.

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Guidelines for Online Small Business Owners

you are contemplating setting up a small online business you should realise it is simply to down to a numbers game.

The difference between businesses that succeeded and ones that do not is down to their conversion ratios, meaning the ratio of visitors who actually become paying customers.

If one in 50 of your visitors become a paying customer, then you will have a conversion ration of 2%. All businesses should aim to increase this ratio, simple things like using enticing tactics such as a sale can help.
The trouble is nowadays people seem desperate for visitors, they panic and pay for batches of visitors. Unfortunately these systems rarely increase your conversation ratio at all; in fact all they do is give you a false perception of your business.

A lot of online small business owners make 3 mistakes:

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Business Tools to Help You Run a Successful Business

When setting up a business, even the best prepared among us will struggle to do everything and remember everything. It is very unlikely that we will understand all of the financial and legal ramifications of a new business, especially when we need to concentrate on getting that elusive first sale or completing the first contract. It isn’t always feasible to employ an accountant and a solicitor as well as a secretary, a salesperson and any other workers needed in the daily running of the business. So, we need to be able to diversify when setting up a new business and the best piece of advice anyone can give you to help is to make the most of the widely available business tools on the market.

Financial Documents and Tools

An accountant is a very expensive commodity that many new businesses can afford full-time. It is down to us to undertake as much of the financial side of things as possible; a daunting task indeed. There is help at hand in the form of business tools.

Spreadsheets have become immensely powerful and can do much of the financial work that any business needs, even invoicing. The Internet is awash with free standard documents for almost any occasions; if you aren’t proficient at doing this yourself, you can find balance sheets, daily cash sheets and almost anything you could need.

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Best Small Business Idea -- Get Focused And Get Going

I used to give a talk titled, “10 Ways to Overcome Overwhelm in Business and In Life”. It was an excellent resource for getting into action and taking charge of your business. If you’d like a copy, just email me and I’ll send it to you. After I’d given this talk for awhile, I realized that getting out of overwhelm was even simpler. You don’t need 10 ideas. That’s overwhelming in itself. You just need one essential key. If you can master this one key, you can pretty much get whatever you want out of your business and your life. Here it is. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it. Focus.

That’s right, focus. When you are entirely focused on what you are doing in the moment, you don’t have any attention left for being in overwhelm. Focus and overwhelm are opposites. Think about it. You are overwhelmed because you are thinking about all the things you’ve got to get done today, tomorrow, and the day after. You aren’t solidly focused in the present moment doing what’s in front of you. But when you are stuck in overwhelm, it’s really hard to get focused. So what can you do?

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A Call to Action

Because of a recent boom in business, my company needed to update our office phone system. We had a very nice system in place already, but our business had tripled within a matter of months. Since we rely on phone orders for the vast majority of our sales, we needed to upgrade in order to handle the increase in call volume. We were lucky to have a great relationship with our telephone equipment provider, as within days we were able to have a new system ready to put in place. It's not often that businesses find themselves in situations like this, but when they do come up, it's important to know that the companies you have chosen to do business with are capable of meeting your needs in a timely manner. 

Prior to this happening, we had a trunk study performed, after which we were told that we were losing business as a result of not having a new phone system in place. Anyone who has ever run a business knows that losing money because you are ill equipped to handle your customer's needs is the worst way to lose money. Being able to make a phone call and knowing it would be taken care of quickly and efficiently was a great relief to me. I knew that with every passing day, thousands of dollars were being lost and that's something I couldn't afford to let happen. The whole situation made me think about the importance of knowing qualified vendors who can get you the products you need, when you need them.

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I Don't Need a Business Plan...Do I?

I get asked that question a lot.  In fact, after “how do I start a business?” it’s probably the most asked question by new clients.   I decided the best way to describe why you might decide to write a business plan is to tell you a few stories about a client of mine.  The name and business are fictional.  We’re going to call him David and he’s going to have a mechanic shop.  The stories I’m going to tell you over the next few months are a combination of things that have happened to me and to some of my clients. 

David’s smart.  He’s got a memory like a steel trap.  And he’s ambitious.  He wants to start a small mechanic shop with the inheritance his dad left him, and he’s been very busy trying to get it started.  But he’s also young and in a bit of a hurry.  The way he sees it, he doesn’t need a business plan and anytime he’s asked about it he just taps his head and says, “I don’t need one.  I’ve got it all up here.”  Besides, he likes freedom.  He’s a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy.  He doesn’t want to be tied to what some piece of paper says. 

His mother-in-law, Ellen just shakes her head.  She’s owned a bookkeeping service for the last twenty years, which she started because she wanted to be able to stay home when her kids were small.  But David thinks, of course she’d see it that way.  She’s a bean counter and everyone knows how they are about details.  Besides, he’s already let her talk him into incorporating his business.  The way he saw it, he didn’t need to waste his money on it, but it was done.  No way was he going to waste any more money on getting a business plan.

A few weeks later, David opened his shop for business.  What a day that was.  He’d been too excited to sleep the night before, and it ended up being an awfully long day because he didn’t have any customers.  Not a single one.  He’d spent the day cleaning the shop and organizing his tools and sometimes just staring at the phone, trying to will it to ring.  Oh well, he thought, what can I expect?  The shop’s brand new and nobody knows about it.  Someone will call tomorrow.  By the end of the week, with no calls except from friends and family (who he was beginning to suspect his mother-in-law had told to call), he was starting to worry.  He was also starting to run out of cash. 

He barely scraped together the cash for his lease at the end of the sixth month.  He didn’t think owning a business would be this expensive.  Besides, he’d figured he’d have lots of customers by now, but the truth of it was he didn’t have enough to keep him busy for even half a day.  David decided he’d better go see his banker.  It shouldn’t be too be much of a problem to get the money, he figured.  He had a good credit rating.

David sat down and got right down to business.  He didn’t need much money.  He figured $10,000 should do it.  “Sounds good,” Shaun said when he was done talking.  “Let’s take a look at your business plan.”  And when he said, “Oh I don’t have one.  I’ve got it all up here,” she smiled and said, “We need to have one before we can proceed with a loan.  Come back and see me when you do.”

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How To Get Your Small Business Off The Ground

Many people have what they think is a great idea and would love to set up their own small business. The problem many of these people face is how to fund this idea, to get the business off the ground. Unfortunately many of these ideas never come to fruition because of these lack of funds, where in reality there are many avenues people could take to find this initial start-up capital.

I run a small business and have been doing so for about ten years. I remember at the outset worrying about how I would be able to afford to advertise the services that I offer. I would also need a certain amount of money to pay for marketing, such as producing brochures and leaflets, money to have a prescence online via a website and many other initial costs.

I would also need to be able to pay my bills and to basically live while the business was in its infancy, as I realised business would be slow to start with.

I have to say that I am extremely lucky as I have a superb family who are in a position, and are happy to back me financially from time to time. This was my first port of call. I did not just go to see my parents looking for a hand-out, I also went to tell them about what I thought was a brilliant idea.

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How To Get About Starting A Small Business!

People toy with the idea of starting a small business at various stages of their lifes. Some think of starting a small business after their educational career is over. Some think of starting a small business because of unpleasant or unhappy situations they have encountered in their work places. There are also others who think of starting a small business, because that is the only way they will be able to work again following a break from work for reasons such as health or redundancy.

Toying with the idea is one thing, but if you are taking positive steps to get started, then certain myths associated with starting and running a small business should be dispelled from your mind.

1. Starting a small business might appear to be an easy option to many who are desperate to get out of a situation but running a business is not as easy as it appears to be.

2. The general impression created in the minds of many people is that you can make a lot of money by running a small business. A few people do make a lot of money by running a small business. On the other hand there are many people who loose a lot of money unfortunately due to lack of proper research and planning.

3. Another myth is that you are the Boss, so you can work when you want, relax when you want and go on holidays when you want. You are the Boss that is all to it. The rest simply does not happen because of other factors that come into play which will need your presence and attention most of the time.

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Small Business, Big-Time Office

For small businesses in a never-ending fight for clients, first impressions mean a lot. So when a home-based financial planner wants to impress a millionaire CEO, talking stocks at the corner coffee shop just won't do. Trouble is, a one-man shop can't afford a well-appointed office at a prestigious business address. Or can he?

As National Small Business Week recognizes the more than 25 million entrepreneurs who form the backbone of the U.S. economy, it's ironic that high-priced commercial real estate keeps many of them from realizing their true potential. But the rules are changing.

"More flexible workplace arrangements now give small businesses access to the same premium office space that Fortune 500 companies enjoy, but at a fraction of the cost," said Mark Dixon, CEO of The Regus Group, the world's largest provider of outsourced workplaces.

Here are three ways an increasing number of innovative entrepreneurs are leaving the coffee shop, and still staying in the black.

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8 Important Elements for Small Business Web Sites

Key visitors to your commercial pages include web robots that crawl the internet and catalog your content. Having proper HTML source code, plus the right combination of text and graphic presentation, is just one secret to success. Proper code may mean higher robot ratings, and the "look" is equally important. Once a new prospect finds your web site, you have 5 seconds to get them to stay.

As a small business web site owner, you may have asked "Why don't we get any hits?". Did you know web pages can load and appear correct with improper or deprecated HTML code? A browser may ignore your mistakes, and display what it thinks you meant, and it may look great. Web robots may not be as forgiving.

Following is a list of 8 basic elements for good search engine placement that need to be considered in your design and web site promotion. For details on code issues from the worldwide authority, visit the World Wide Web Consortium to view DOCTYPE and other quality standards.

1. DOCTYPE Statement

2. Page Title

3. Proper HTML Code

4. META Description

5. META Key Words

6. First Paragraph of the Home Page

7. An Extra Page of Just LINKS

8. Backlinks (Links to your pages)

These 8 key items are either missing or poorly designed in 85% of all web sites. Some search engines may only list the other 15% in their directories. In other words, as few as 15% of the 6 billion web pages online ever make it into some search engines. Even worse, there are mistakes that may result in your page being blacklisted, and the search engine web crawlers may never come back to see if it's corrected. This could explain why you "never get any hits".

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5 Simple Steps to Small Business Success on the Internet!

For years, the website design market used to fall into three separate entities for website design and development: (i) graphics and animation studios, specializing in custom graphic design and creative animations, (ii) website marketing/promotion firms, (iii) Web programming companies specializing in database-driven website development. Nowadays, however, you get to see a fusion of these three entities in several dynamic Web Development and Promotion companies operating from any part of the globe. These web design, development and web promotion firms are virtually allrounders that cater to a diverse range of clientele, include those coming up for creative web design, web databases CRM / ERP as well as for SEO (search engine optimization) needs.

Most small business firms all over the world heavily rely on the services of such web development firms as they usually cater to small business website design by providing web based marketing methods that small companies can afford due to small budgets. Depending on the effectiveness of such web-based marketing, clients often see incredible successful results from clicks to conversion. 

There are some case studies which show that utilizing their marketing equation; some sites have gone from 10 leads a month to 300 leads. However, to achieve this is easier said than done. Web marketing firms that create a full plan for their clients using both the strategic and tactical methods crafted by specialists/consultants in turn are able to give small or large businesses increased sales. After all, that is the reason one can zero down on in order to be in a business, right? To have more sales and offer value. Therefore, the objective behind any web development or website promotion project is to create a unique selling proposition through your website that can set you apart from your competition so your customers should only think of doing business with you, regardless of price.

Small business firms today look forward to the professional creative website design and strategic web development and web promotion companies for the simple reason that they want their site to have the look and usability of a Fortune 500 company site without having to spend huge bucks for it. Yes, it is definitely considered a plus if the website is designed as a tactical marketing tool that aims to engage and educate their clients in turn. And most of these businesses have a concern in their minds: can their web site provide a means to gather analytical data for them to offer better service for all?

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20 ReasonsTo Have Your Own Homeworker Website

1. Improve your Credibility as an Internet Marketer, as a Teamleader, as a home based business entrepreneur, whatever your niche is.

2. Send email using your chosen domain name.

3. Make your training info/tips easily available to your affiliates by writing it on a webpage.

4. Setup a Blog on your site. Posting to your Blog on a regular basis will improve your site's exposure on the Search Engines. I have just been learning about how to use a Blog to get traffic to your site from the Social BookMarking sites.

It is in some ways similar to posting ads to Free Classified sites. I will tell you more on this later.

5. Similarly auto-install a Forum where your Team's affiliates could help one another and you could help them all. You could make a private formum for your SFI Team Members only.

6. Adding your own content on a regular and continued basis will likely get you noticed by the Search Engines. You could allow your affiliates to submit Articles which you could host for them to get them a link back to their site or to their Gateway pages.

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10 Tips to Succeed in Your Legitimate Home Business

Virtually everyone would jump at the chance to start a legitimate home business so they could work at home and attain financial freedom. But not everyone has what it takes to transform a home business opportunity into financial success. Here are ten tips that will help you achieve your personal and financial goals through running your own legitimate home business.

1. Secure your start-up funds. Any successful business owner will tell you that you need to invest money in your business in order to make money. A home business is no exception. Expect to spend a maximum of $5,000 for a legitimate home business opportunity. If the opportunity is sound, you should be able to get back your initial investment within a matter of days or weeks, but you do need that initial investment.

2. Get high-speed Internet. If you don't already have DSL or a broadband Internet connection, you should have it installed. The best home business opportunities are Internet based, so you need reliable and speedy Internet access.

3. Find the right opportunity. Like every other person, you have a unique set of strengths and weaknesses. Find a legitimate home business that draws on your strengths. If you aren't a salesperson, for example, stick with a home business that doesn't require you to make cold calls.

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