Midwest Small Business Tips

Bankruptcy Lawyer in Kansas City

2011-05-04T06:41:00.000-07:00

I wanted to give a quick mention of a Overland Park Bankruptcy Attorney that I have had a privlege of meeting and working with over the past month. Here name is Sarah Sypher and she specializes in bankruptcy law and foreclosures.

Business Websites Need a Purpose

2010-12-20T13:28:00.000-08:00

Every website should have a reason for being there. For some websites the purpose may be clear, however for the typical corporate website the purpose may have gotten lost.

Most businesses make the mistake in thinking they need a website for the sake of having one. Though I think all businesses should have one, I also feel most business websites should be built to achieve one of these three goals:

1) Build Awareness/Credibility.

Simply put, building a website to raise awareness of your brand or services is a great purpose for a website. Having a great looking site will also help your business be more credible when they are comparing it to their competitors. More and more users look to websites to evaluate if the company is credible.

After putting your website online you should then utilize social media, online marketing tools such as Google Adwords, to increase exposure to the masses. Awareness isn't going to be built simply by having a site, you need to get people to your website!

2) Lead/Sales Generation.

Using your website to gather leads is a great purpose for some industries. To do this, you not only need to have marketing initiatives that focus on driving traffic, but also you should have clear "call to actions" on your website. This may be a form for the user to fill out to request information, an instant online chatting device, or a way for visitors to sign up for your services.

3) Provide Information.

Information based websites typically provide and educate their customer. Some service based industries may provide a blog or white papers to provide timely information to their customers. While businesses that have products may share product information, reviews and information to keep visitors coming back for more.

Most website may fall into more than one category. For instance a print services company's website may be geared about building awareness but may also have lead generation forms to capture information about their potential customers.

What purpose(s) do you want your website to serve? If it is not currently fulfilling them all then contact your local web designer to help.

Windows 8 Plans Leaked

2010-10-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

With Windows 7 gaining market share and customer support, is now time to talk about Windows 8! It has recently leaked that Window 8 is planned for release mid 2012 and may be available to preview and test late this year. So what type of features is Microsoft planning to put in their new operating system (OS)? The biggest changes involve the inclusion of an apps store, improved energy efficiency, fast startup and easy reset button.

Windows' App Store

Windows 8 will be developed to have an app store similar to that of the iPhone. Users will be able to easily download and install applications. Applications will also be able to share information across each user's devices instead of only on one PC.

Improved Energy Efficiency

Microsoft is making its new OS use less energy to enhance the user experience on mobile devices and laptops. To do this they are coming out with numerous versions of Windows 8, one for each type of device it will be used on.

Faster Startup

Windows 8 will be faster to startup and in some cases will resume from sleeping instantly. Logging off and logging on will be sped up for faster switching between various users.

Easy Reset Button

This is a unique feature that allows a user to reset Windows 8 back to the default settings while maintaining all their applications and files. This will empower users to have more control over their PCs.

Other additions include facial recognition for easy login and expanded help and support. For details about the product and to see Microsoft's road map please visit msftkitchen.com.

All of these features are planned and the actual features and dates have not been officially released.

Is your copier a major security risk to your customers?

2010-10-01T12:07:00.000-07:00

Most companies pride themselves on the steps they take to keep their customer's and their employee's data safe and secure. But in many cases this sensitive data is readily available when a company discards their old copier. A 60 Minutes report earlier this year showed how much of a liability these copiers can be if they are not property configured or disposed of after you're done.

Nearly every copier sold since 2002 contains a hard drive, much like the one in your computer, which stores every document scanned or copied by the machine. This means if your copier is resold or disposed of improperly all of your sensitive information: copies of bank statements, checks, tax forms, and insurance statements are available for a thief to view.

In the 60 Minutes investigation they retrieved over 300 pages of individual health documents and 95 pages of checks containing social security information. All of these documents were taken from copiers a health insurance company and a construction company disposed of.

So what can your company do to protect itself? There are two common solutions.

1. Purchase a security kit for your digital copier (MFP).

These security kits act like a paper shredder for your scans and copies; after a copy is made the file on the hard drive is destroyed. This is a must for any company in accounting, legal or insurance.

2. Have the hard drive destroyed at the end of your lease.

Make sure your copier dealer offers a service to destroy the hard drive when you are done with the machine. This will eliminate any secrets that your machine may be hiding.

Take the steps to ensure your customers and employee's data is safe. Don't end up on the next 60 Minutes.

Google's Caffeine is Shaking Up Search Results

2009-09-17T07:33:00.000-07:00

Search engine optimization is starting to become a lot like the stock market: some of your investments pay off quickly, some don't ever pay off, and others go great for years and all of a sudden are worthless.

If you find that your search results are not what they used to be it may be because of all the changes regarding the search engine market. Every search company is trying to differentiate themselves in this crowded market and this is stirring up rankings.

A month or so ago, Microsoft launched Bing which was promised to provide better results than ever before. They also partnered with Yahoo, meaning webmasters no longer have to optimize their site for Google, Yahoo and MSN (Bing) to ensure they are getting maximum exposure. Now there are just two big dogs, but there is going to be a wrench thrown into the mix.

Google is launching a new search engine named Google Caffeine. Caffeine claims to deliver faster and more accurate search results and the launch could slow Bing's growth.

The public can test Caffeine to see where a site ranks or see what the differences are. It is not nearly as large a change as what Bing was, but it may have some large implications to your website traffic. One of the enhancements will revolve around getting real time data. As news breaks or new content is published it will be added to Caffeine almost immediately.

Google's Caffeine Sandbox

Search engine optimization

Google and Bing are claiming to focus more on crawling of relevant content and reliable websites. This means more time should be spent on boosting your website's content and making sure the structure of your website is sound. There are several things your webmaster can do to make sure you are visible to both Google's Caffeine and Bing.

One of the areas that is being de-emphasized is backlinks. Using the old Google and MSN, backlinks were king; the more links you had to your website the higher ranking you would receive. This caused a problem in the industry because you could literally buy your way to the top. While backlinks are still very important, having website content that is relevant is even more important.

Finally, the age of your website is more important. New websites are being penalized and older domains are being rewarded. There is really nothing you can do about this aspect, just make sure to register new domains as early as possible and don't switch domain names if you can avoid it.

This article was provided by LogicBright CRM - Online contact manager

Some insight into Bing, and why you may actually like it

2009-06-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

Not all search engines are created equal, if they were Google wouldn’t have over 60% of the worlds search market. But is Bing a Google killer or just another search with a few gimmicks?

At first glance, Microsoft’s msn.com replacement looks surprisingly familiar. It has a search box in the middle of the screen, some links along the top to sign in or create an account and other links that access "images, videos, shopping, news, maps and travel." So, upon first look, it seems that Microsoft spent 100 million dollars to create… Google! But this is really where the similarities stop.

Bing is livened up by a crisp background image that links to some interesting facts and videos about the pictures when you rollover certain areas. Neat, but it is not exactly going to make Bing the search engine of choice.

So how about their search results?

Search results are displayed in the same format as Google and even their results are similar. When I searched for "Kyocera Kansas City" Tekniq popped up as #1 on both search engines. But on Bing I was able to hover my mouse over a little symbol to the right of the results and see a text preview of the page and what the page links to. This little feature could be handy, but with high speed internet it’s probably just faster to click and go to the site to see it yourself.

So where does it really excel?

Bing may be similar in appearance and functionality to Google for searching, but where Bing really dazzles is with its other programs.

1)Bing Images
Bing allows for better image searching and displaying. You can customize the layout of the images and there is no flipping through pages to see more results, simply scroll down and more images appear.

Bing also has a "Show similar Images" link on every image. This is great for finding the type of image you want. So if you want an image of a person talking on a phone, you can type in "phone" and then find the image that you want and click "Show similar images" and you will see more like that image.

2)Bing Videos
Bing has a searchable video service that has video’s from youtube, ABC, BBC and other sites. It also has a quick preview feature where you can roll over the video and it will start streaming it immediately so you can preview the video before even clicking on it.

3)Bing Shopping with cashback
Perhaps one of the best features that Bing has is their shopping feature. It is easy to use and similar to Google shopping but they have a cashback program that pays you up to 10% for buying from certain vendors.

Some of their prices seem to correspond to the wrong products, but one can only assume that it is because the service is new. If they fix this then why would you ever shop online any other way?

4)Bing Maps
Bing’s mapping feature is leftover from live.com. But if you have never checked it out, I think you may be impressed. It has great satellite and areal imagery that let you view your house from all four angles instead of just a bird’s eye view. It also has a plug-in that you can install to access true 3d mapping.

Though it doesn’t have an answer to Google Streets, it is still a nice tool and good in its own right.

Bing really does deliver some impressive features without losing what most love about Google. If Google doesn’t respond to some of these features by making changes of their own, then Bing may be something to reckon with. My guess is that Google responds in a big way and is able to leverage their name to once again increase their market. But for now, Bing may be the search engine of choice.

What to do when your business outgrows spreadsheets

2009-04-22T06:46:00.000-07:00

If you are like most businesses, you track some of your data in spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are easy and flexible, but they have one major limitation: they can only be worked on by one user at a time. Many businesses start by tracking customer records, daily activities and other data in spreadsheets but what do they do when they start having more people that need to access them at the same time?

One solution is to use pre-made software. For instance, if you wanted to keep track of your contact’s information, you could use contact management software such as LogicBright CRM. This would allow you to keep track of all your contact’s information in one centralized place where all your employees have access to the same set up data.

But what happens when your spreadsheets are specific to your workflow and boxed software just won’t cut it? Having a software custom written for your business, may not be as hard, or expensive, as you think. Many small businesses utilize custom software to automate repetitive tasks or assist with reporting.

To get custom software solutions developed for your business first ask yourself the following questions:

1)Are there time consuming daily tasks that could be automated?
2)Is my business relying on spreadsheets for day-to-day operations?
3)Would real-time reporting help my business?

If you answered yes to any of these things then you may want to find a custom software vendor by looking for website development firms.

Finding the right vendor

Many web design firms do only website design and they do not have extensive experience programming complex business applications. So make sure you choose a vendor that has the appropriate experience.

Monetizing your website with limited traffic

2009-03-20T06:08:00.000-07:00

Making money off of your website is not an easy task, but it can be done. The easiest and fastest way to start making money is to sign-up with an advertising network. One type of ad network is pay per click (PPC), such as Google AdSense. Other networks are pay per impression (CPM) like Burst Media or Tribal Fusion. The problem with the later is you need a substantial amount of traffic to make any money. Sometimes you will need a lot of traffic just to sign up with them.

So what can you do if you are like the rest of us but don’t have a whole lot of traffic?

1) Pick your niche

Sometimes websites are so focused that getting a single click from a Google advertisement can make you $10. The problem is that these opportunities are few and far between. Keywords that have to do with legal issues such as Mesothelioma (asbestos disease) can pay up to $25 a click. Other business products such as newsletter software, small business CRM, and even brand names can net you a lot of cash.

2) Build your site properly

If you focus on building your website properly, provide good content and generally follow good practices you may find your website having a nice Google page ranking. If you have a page ranking of 4 or higher, you can probably sell ads on your site that are focused on SEO.

For example. LogicBright, small business contact manager, wants to appear higher on Google's search results. So they purchase a advertisement, in the form of a text link, that contains their keywords. LogicBright will not get any traffic from your small website, but the SEO benefit is there and they may be willing to pay $25 a month or more for higher page ranks.

3) Offer paid reviews

If your website is a blog or a website that can fit reviews, you may be able to make money by posting paid reviews on your website. Some companies such as PayPerPost will allow you to join their network to find these opportunities. You are usually provided with all the product information you will need and in many cases it won’t take long at all to make some money. The biggest requirement these sites have is that your page ranking is decent and you make regular updates.

So you see, you don’t need to rely on high-traffic anymore to monetize a website. The best part about it, is all of these things can help you build your traffic as a result of promoting your website in certain channels.

Driving Traffic To Your Website Using Twitter

2009-03-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

Recently, I conducted an experiment by using twitter heavily to drive people to my website. When I say heavily, I mean really heavily. I got over 900 followers in 5 days and posted over 170 posts, many of contained links to fun content on my website.

To do this, I simply searched for random people and b2b companies that focus on contact management for small businesses, and added them to the people I was following. In turn, about 50% of them followed me back. It was pretty easy, but very time consuming.

What I found was people were eager to follow tweats and become my friend, even sending private messages to chat, but when push came to shove it didn’t drive many people to the website. Furthermore, the traffic it did create wasn’t good traffic. It drove a small amount of people to the site that viewed the page I posted to them and no other pages.

The problem with Twitter when it comes to driving traffic is you cannot easily target people who would be interested in your website. By not having a way to target people based on interests it is simply not worth the time to use Twitter as a traffic driver. In fact, like every online trend that has SEO implications, I was flooded by messages of marketing people trying to do the same thing as me. This obviously dilutes the market place.

My suggestion is to wait for the next Twitter to come along and be one of the first people involved. The traditional ways of driving traffic to your website; word of mouth, forums, advertising, blogs and SEO give you more bang for your time.

Going green, and saving green, with Managed Print Services

2009-01-21T13:01:00.000-08:00

It is no secret that one of the easiest ways to save your business money is to run more efficiently. This applies to all aspects of your business, but the printer and copier fleet is commonly overlooked. Many companies simply track the cost of toner, and that can yield a large amount of savings on its own. But the savings can go much beyond toner alone. Managed Print Services (MPS) paired with eco-friendly; super efficient printers, can save money on paper, energy, toner, reduced downtime, increased productivity and more.

MPS, like the name implies; basically means you rely on a specialized IT company to help plan, implement and service your printer fleet. The advantage of having your printing network planned and managed by one vendor is that it saves a substantial amount of time fixing IT problems, ordering toner and implementing new document management systems. Imagine never having to order toner and the time saved by only having one invoice to deal with every month; now this is being efficient.

Another way of being more efficient is choosing an eco-friendly printer fleet. Eco-friendly printers, such as Kyocera, can save up to 40% on energy costs when compared to other market leaders. They can also save you money on consumables. Using less toner and drum units reduces money and waste while helping the environment. The reduced waste is one reason Kyocera won the prestigious, MicroScope Award for Channel Excellence (ACE) as Environmental Company of the Year in 2008.

It isn’t only about reduced waste; it is also about reduced downtime. Nothing costs a company more money than downtime. When it comes to reliability, not all brands are created equal. For instance, the Kyocera KM-8030 printed 2 million pages with no unscheduled service required. In fact, it only got a paper jam once every 166 thousand pages. Brands like Kyocera are more reliable and have reduced cost per prints which is why H&R Block has 10’s of thousands of them nationwide.

Finally, if you really want to increase your savings and decrease your impact on the environment, implement a document management system. Even the simplest document management systems will reduce paper and toner consumption and increase productivity. Document management will reduce the time spent on filing and retrieving documents and make documents more accessible – no matter where you and your employees are.

The opportunity to save money and help the environment is obtainable. Even if your business’ printers are new and you believe you have an efficient printer fleet having an outside MPS vendor may help you see the base of the iceberg more clearly. Many times a MPS provider will analyze your network and printer fleet for free resulting in little to no risk of saving your business money.

A Step-by-step Guide to Online Marketing

2009-01-21T12:54:00.000-08:00

As companies seek to find more effective, and less expensive, marketing methods, online marketing stands to see the biggest increase. Businesses already spend more on online marketing than they do on Radio and is set to surpass magazines by 2010 (ZenithOptmedia, 2007). However, you can do many things to make sure your website is not lost in the clutter. Below are the top actions your business can take to increase your website exposure and increase your ROI.

1) Maintain and improve your website

Unless your business has an endless marketing budget then you need to rely on your website’s quality to drive traffic to your site. This is the basic of search engine optimization (SEO). A high-quality website doesn’t just mean something that looks pretty. It means that you have text that engages the reader, contains your keywords, and can be found by Google and other search engines. Simply put, your website needs to be designed to current industry standards with special attention to the basics like page titles, meta descriptions, accessibility, and navigation.

2) Build web presence

Once your website has the basics down you can concentrate on promoting it. Depending on your product you may want to utilize viral media sources like YouTube, MySpace or Twitter. These can be great for B2C type product lines if used in conjunction with directory placements, online press releases, online trade publications, forums and article submissions. The key is to get as many quality links to your website as possible; this will increase your search rankings. The higher your rankings are, the more traffic you will get.

3) PPC advertising

There are several PayPerClick options to choose from. The largest network consists of Google AdWords. You may have noticed these ads when you search for a product on Google and there are “sponsored links.” Adverisers pay to see their advertisement there when you search for certain keywords. This can be a very effective method to drive traffic to your website.

Note: PPC advertising is getting more expensive because of the dramatic increase in competition over the years. This could also reduce the effectiveness of your campaign if it is not monitored closely.

4) eNewsletters

Sending out eNewsletters can be a very effective way of staying in front of leads and existing clients. There are a couple of basic guidelines when sending an eNewsletter.

a) Frequency – Choose a frequency that makes sense. If you email them too much it will reduce the effectiveness of all the newsletters

b) Content – Don’t send a newsletter for the sake of doing it. Provide your mailing list with something of interest and they will thank you for it.

c) Unsubscribe – Make sure your newsletter has an Unsubscribe option. It will help you maintain an email list that is of the highest quality and reduce bad feedback.

d) Compatibility—There are countless email programs. You need to make sure that your eNewsletter looks acceptable in the major ones like Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo.

5) Campaign evaluation

One of the most important part of making an online marketing campaign is measuring its results. Keeping track of keyword rankings, incoming leads, new website traffic, and sales are among the most important indicators to a successful campaign. Since online media is usually fast moving and contains many traceable activities you should be able to track the success of your campaign with much greater detail than any other media.

Please visit Tekniq Data for quality website design in the Kansas City Metro.

How Managed Print Services Reduces Costs

2008-12-15T12:40:00.000-08:00

It is no secret that one of the easiest ways to save your business money is to run more efficiently. That is why so many businesses have begun tracking the cost of toner. Reducing your toner costs can yield a large amount of savings, but the savings are limited because of the inefficiencies that are involved when a company manages their own printer fleet.
This is why many money-conscious businesses are turning to Managed Print Services (MPS). Like the name implies MPS basically means you rely on a specialized IT company to help plan, implement and service your printer fleet.

They have the expertise to incorporate new printers into the network with the expectation of increasing productivity and efficiency while reducing costs. By having your printing network planned and managed by one vendor your business saves a substantial amount of time fixing IT problems, ordering toner and implementing new document management systems.

• Save up to 30% of your print costs
• Reduce the number of printers
• Service, implementation and supplies from one vendor
• Document Management properly configured
• Reduce energy consumption and waste

Printer and toner costs are the final part of the equation for MPS. There is more to printer and toner costs than the pure price alone. Don’t force a square peg into a round hole. Finding the right printer for the job can save thousands. The primary consideration for a printer should be reliability. Nothing costs a company more money than downtime. The second thing to look for is the cost of the consumables; this includes the toner and drums. Many companies such as HP and Lexmark have inexpensive toners but they do not yield nearly as much as their competitors resulting in much higher costs. Companies like Kyocera can help reduce toner costs and have one of the lowest TCO (total cost of ownerships).

Even if your business’ printers are new and you believe you have an efficient printer fleet having an outside MPS vendor may help you see the base of the iceberg more clearly.

If you are based in the Kansas or Missouri area one vendor that provides Kyocera products and manaaged print service is called Tekniq Data Corp. Copy machine and printers

How to choose a Contact Manager or CRM

2008-12-15T09:20:00.000-08:00

Here is a good aricle/tutorial of things to look for in a CRM or Contact manager

Wiki How Article

Website Design - Target your Market

2008-11-26T10:34:00.000-08:00

These days there are lots of different website designs you can choose. The most important thing to keep in mind is what is appropriate for the market you are advertising to. For instance, a website like College Humor may be able to get by with lots of video, file sizes that are enormous and flash that may slow down the navigation of the website. It is simply because the people viewing the site are not nessisarily trying to get to information. They are trying to be entertained and enetertainment comes in all forms.

However, for a small business this could be a bad thing. People want to find information about your company and find it fast. They may not be willing to wait for a flash animation to load and don't want to dig for the information they want.

Take Roy E. Daly Management Corp, they are a real estate company that has apartments and townhomes in California. Their customers want to find floorplans, contact information, apartment ammenities and photos of the properties. It is clean and streightforward which is what it should be.

So when choosing a website design, ask yourself what your customers would like to see first.

How to choose the right website design company

2008-08-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

Choosing the right designer for your small business can be hard if you do not know what you should look for. Here is a simple guide that you can use to make sure you ask the right questions and make an educated decision every time.

Website Design

Any company can say they have great designs but we believe a company’s portfolio should speak for itself. To adequately judge a website you must look at:

Quality of Design
Ease of Use
Initial Impressions
How sites compare to others in the same industry
Consistent look throughout each the entire website
Navigation is located at the top or left side of the website

Technical Expertise

This aspect is much harder to judge unless you are familiar with web technologies. However, this can be just as important as a good design. A few things to look for and ask when looking for a web design company are:

Do their sites load quickly?
Does the company put an emphasis on Search Engine Optimization?
Does the company use templates?
Does the company test on Mac and PC?
Does the company have a testing environment and backups?
Does the company host their own sites or use an outside company?

Attention to Details

Sometimes the smallest things can make the difference. Look for:

Page titles – each page should be unique and descriptive
Terms of Use page – make sure it is present
Copyright statement on every page
Use of contact forms rather than published email addresses

Of course there are many other things you will want to find out, but the important thing is to go with your instincts. If you visit a web site design website and it isn't one that you would like having, then why hire them to make your website. Hopefully this guide will help save you money and hire the right website designer the first time.

This article was written and provided by Josh Collins, a multimedia designer in the Kansas City area. He has designed user interfaces and websites ranging from small business sites to large social network websites. His recent work includes:

Logicbright.com an easy to use web based contact manager

Improving Search Engine Ranking

2008-03-25T07:44:00.001-07:00

Recently I did some research on to what makes each search engine tick. What I found was of course that they are very similar as to what they look for in a website, but one of the biggest things I found out was the site’s age plays a giant role in your search rankings.

This is true for Google especially, it is almost impossible to get a decent ranking by Google if your website is fairly new (under 18 months). Yahoo and MSN seem to put a bit different emphasis on this and in as little as 6 months you can get a good ranking with them if you build your website correctly.

The basic things I recommend to get your search ranking up are below (and in order from the most important).

1. Don’t use navigation that is Javascript based, crawlers may not be able to see all the pages in your website

2. Use your keywords in your title tags of your website

3. Use your keywords on the text of your website frequently and put them in the appropriate paragraph and heading tags.

4. Get links from other websites that have high PR rankings. Just a link isn’t great, but a link that contains your keywords. (for example if your website is example.com that sells widgets, try to get a link that goes to example.com when they click on the word “widget”)

5. Use meta tags and descriptions. They say they aren’t that used anymore, but I think it could be the difference between a good rating and a great rating. Try to be as detailed as possible to each page and not use the same description on every page.

6. Use title/Alt tags on images and link on your own website.

That about covers it, there is not amazing technology that you need to know – but people frequently don’t do the basics so if you do it will be noticed.

LongJump CRM Reviewed

2008-03-25T07:33:00.000-07:00

LongJump is one of the newest web based CRM’s on the market today, unfortunately all the hype may not be worth much.

I reciently signed up for the 30 day trial to see what all this “custom application” and “relational database” stuff that they advertise is about. It is definintely not geared to inspire small businesses to use a CRM package. It is just much too difficult and involves too much understanding of the underpinnings to do even basic tasks.

First impressions:

The appearance of LongJump is actually pretty nice. It has a green a blue windows XP color theme going on that works quite well. The overall layout is really nothing new with the tabs across the top and some actions on the left. What was interesting and hard to get used to was to add a record of anytime you needed to click on the tab you wanted and then click “add record” from the left side of the screen. A bit odd but nothing to major.

Another thing that I noticed was the drop down menu at the very top of the page. This allows you to go between your “contact manager” and your “sales force automation” along with over 12 other modules that you can choose or ones that you have created yourself. This was somewhat neat but the more I got into it the harder it was for me to use because of this.

The homepage consisted of widgets that are “drag and droppable” which was nice, though the drag and drop was choppy on FireFox. They allow you to show a lot of content on each page but this requires a minimum screen resolution of 1280x1024 to use their product. If you have this, no worries.

Under the hood:

My biggest pet peeve when working with LongJump was that you have tabs from each area that are the same but not connected to the other areas. Ie. In the Sales Force Automation tab I have accounts and contacts but if I go to the “campaign manager” tab and try to set up a mailing list it seems that I have to import new contacts instead of being able to say “use these contacts that I have already entered. There may be a way to do this, but it sure isn’t intuitive.

The lack of intuitive actions was the bottom line to why I cannot recommend this product. Even something as simple as uploading your logo isn’t as easy as it should be. You have to click on “upload logo” then you go to a screen where you need to enter all your company information, go to another screen to upload the photo and then select that upload from the prior screen. It doesn’t even resize it to make it look decent.

Final Thoughts:

What LongJump has done is create an application that can create other applications. In theory this is fantasic, but in reality all it did was create a hard to use product that isn’t “great” at anything. If you use only the basic contact manager and ignore the other parts it may work for your company, but once you start messing around with the rest you will find it just isn’t designed as nice as it could be.

For the same price you can get an easier to use small business crm software.

The verdict is in on LogicBright’s new version

2008-03-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

After several responses about the new version of LogicBright CRM, the consensis is that it was a great move for the product. Everyone thought the interface changes were good and made it easier to get around. A couple were really impressed with the “dragging and dropping” of custom fields. Most of the other features went over really well including the “assign to teams.” However, they felt that feature was really needed prior to this launch, but is glad it is part of the product now.
Though I only talked to a few small businesses regarding the changes, it seems that LogicBright CRM is really paying attention to what their clients want in a small business CRM solution.

LogicBright CRM Launches New Version: Is it good?

2008-03-07T10:22:00.000-08:00

On 3/2/08, LogicBright CRM released news of version 1.5. The new version boasts "30% lighter and has innovative new features that will help users be more productive and efficient while maintaining its ease of use." For those of you unfamiliar with LogicBright CRM, they are a small business CRM application.

But what does this all mean to you? Is it better? Faster? Do the new features complicate things?

Well I tried it out and here is what I found.

As to the "30% lighter, faster" claim. I didn't really notice the speed difference on every page, I am using a 8mb cable line so it is doubtful that their old interface was large enough to impact me. But I would assume that on a slower connection, maybe one that a mobile sales person would use, it could impact them.

There were many new features listed on their LogicBright CRM 1.5 tour page. So I will go down the list and discuss a few of them.

Start-up wizard - When new users login, they get a 5 step wizard that walks them through a few basic tasks. This is really innovative and original. I think new users will really appreciate this feature and will help them understand what CRM is capable of in an easy way.

The Interface - This was noticeable from the first login. The data is shown in a clear more refined way. I found it easier to scan for the information I was looking for.

Drag and Drop - This was probably the best feature addition I could have seen. One of their weak points in the past was their inability to put custom data fields any where you wanted. But now you can easily drag them to the spot you want them. It was one of the easiest "setups" I have seen for a CRM product.

Assign to Teams - Long overdue, but done well. When you type in an employees name it allows you to choose numerous employees or choose a team that they are on. Like usual, they use their innovative instant search that searches for your users as you type.

New Widgets - I noticed the addition of a photo widget, where you can put a couple photos to have a mini slide show on the homepage. Neat, but not overly useful. I also noticed a few options for existing widgets which allowed me to read a bit about the article before clicking on the news link. Pretty useful.

Overall, most of the changes are really good. There are a few "niceties" that aren't overly useful but add to the refinement of the product. I think LogicBright CRM has sealed the "Easy use CRM" part of the market.

How Google, MSN and Yahoo Differ on Search Engine Marketing

2008-01-21T12:01:00.000-08:00

So you are interested in advertising on Google, MSN and/or Yahoo but don't know if there are any real differences. Take it from me, there are very big differences and being aware of them can save you a lot of money.

Back-story

Recently, I was charged with the task of promoting a new piece of software that is geared towards the small business market. I felt this was a good opportunity to run a test to see which search engine is most effective to advertise on. What I found was some startling differences between Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search and MSN AdCenter and how effective each one was at promoting my product.

Test Setup

Over two months run the same advertisements with the same keywords on Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search and MSN AdCenter to see how each of them performs. Though the daily budgets were the same, the cost per click had to vary in order to keep consistent with other bids for each search engine. The goal was to bid just enough to appear in an average search position of 2-3.

Test in progress

While the test was taking place I noticed that Google had by far the most impressions to offer and had very little trouble filling my entire budget each day. Yahoo, though they said they didn't have many impressions to offer for those keywords also maxed out my budget each day, sometimes even exceeding my daily maximum. MSN on the other hand never came close to filling my budget; sometimes it only drove a handful of people to the site over a week's time.

Another thing I noticed is that the cost per click varied slightly for the same position in their results. Google was the most expensive at just over $3 dollars per click, Yahoo was $2.67 and MSN was $2.39. I realize that the costs are a bit arbitrary without the keywords but this article is for comparison's sake and not specifics.

The Conclusion

In the end the only thing that really matters is how many clicks were converted. For those of you new to the term "conversion": A conversion is any signup, purchase or traceable action that you wish a user to perform. For us, a conversion meant a sign up.

After two months we had 60% of our signups from Google, 50% from MSN and a dismal 10% from Yahoo. The biggest surprise is that Google cost 50% of our total money spent, Yahoo cost 35% and MSN cost only 15% of our total budget. In the end MSN ended up being much cheaper per conversion and even though they didn't send a ton of traffic to our site it seemed that they were well qualified people that they were sending.

Yahoo was the biggest disappointment, costing over 3x's per conversion than Google and over 6x's more than MSN. There can be a host of reasons this is so, one of the possibilities is that Yahoo's users are not interested in the type of software we were promoting. Another possibility is that Yahoo's ads get clicked on by their users at a much higher rate which also causes the quality of the leads to be lower.

In the end, running campaigns on the major three search engines can be a great help, but monitoring them can save you a lot of money in the long run. What works on one search engine many not work on another, and keeping an eye on it will help you determine this. Don't be afraid to pull the plug if one is not working, sometimes you just need to go with what works and not force something that isn't showing you results.

Keeping Press Releases Interesting

2007-12-10T07:19:00.001-08:00

Most press releases are boring and don't appeal to the general public and many don't even appeal to the editors they are written for. The key to writing a good press release is to make it interesting from the start. A bad title or first paragraph can destroy a great press release. Here is the first paragraph and title of one that is different.

LogicBright CRM writes:

LogicBright CRM Fights the Software Obesity War
The obesity epidemic rages on and costs billions of dollars annually; one company is trying to put a stop to the obesity – in software at least. LogicBright CRM is fighting the software obesity war (SOW) by providing small businesses with a faster, lighter contact and lead management system that will save them money.

As you can see, this release takes a different approach to their announcement. They could have just said, "We have this new small business crm software" but instead they made it interesting and creative.

Choosing an Ad Network for your website

2007-11-07T11:51:00.000-08:00

With so many ad networks how does one choose the right one? With companies like Doubleclick, Gorilla Nation, Burst Media, Blue Lithium, 24x7 real media, adBrite, Tribal Fusion and even Google, there are so many to choose from.

The biggest thing to look for is their requirements. Nothing says “shady” like an adnetwork that will allow anyone to be part of it. These ad networks will commonly show the annoying and flashy smiley faced ads that we all love so much. They also pay out very low CPM’s because of this. Sometimes you may only make 5 cents per thousand impressions. No wonder the sites that use this are usually loaded with ads and crappy looking because of it.

Most of the reputable ones have traffic requirements and even privacy statement requirements that are reviewed by an actual person. This is usually a good sign, anytime I have signed up for a service and been automatically enrolled and ready to place my ads I have been disappointed. However, I have signed up for a couple that were almost painful to become a partner on and they have been the best ones.

One thing to find out before signing up is what the ad network gives you control over. Do they have an area where you can update your information, set up your default campaigns and reject ad’s that don’t fit your site? Most of them I have found do all of this but I have run into a couple that required me to go through my ad rep to make any changes and this is a hassle.

Below is a summary of some of the better networks I have come across.

Burst Media – good control over your ads and campaigns. Decent CPM’s but lower inventory fulfillment. (you may only have 15% of your ads filled by them)

Tribal Fusion – Great interface for the partner area, offers good control of your information and helps you put your site in front of potential ad buyers. Decent CPM rates.

Doubleclick and Gorilla Nation – Higher impression requirements limit smaller sites, but good selection of types of ads.

Google – Adsense is a great 3rd tier backup for other ad networks. I wouldn’t recommend putting them as your primary ad network but they do have decent payouts and a good interface to control your ads.

The best thing you can do is experiment. Try them out for a couple of weeks and if they don’t work out discontinue them. Most of them do not bind you to a contract that wouldn’t allow you to do this.

Making money from your website’s traffic

2007-11-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

So you have a website and you want to make money off your traffic? Anyone who has tried this realizes this is easier said than done. It is not because it is inherently hard to make money from ad revenues; it is that some ad networks make it harder than it needs to be. Here is an overview of each way you can display ads on your site.

Generally there are 3 types of advertisements you can serve up on your website. Cost Per Thousand (CPM) impressions, Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Action (CPA). Depending on your site and content you will have to experiment to find out what is best for you. But generally a mix is usually the best.

CPM rates vary by every ad network and website. Some ad networks will pay as little as .10 cents per thousand impressions and others as high as $30.00. In my experience anything in the $1 – 2 dollar range is good for an ad network. If you sell your own ads directly you may get between $5 - $30. I have seen rates higher but don’t know if they are successful in selling all their available ad space.

CPC rates are all over the board and generally is determined by the industry and competition of that ad. Take Google Adwords as an example. They do most of their ad serving as CPC. Some keywords like “Sound Effects” have little competition and demand so you may only get 10 cents a click if your website has that advertisement appearing on your site. However if you have a keyword like "Contact Manager" the market is saturated and you could make $5 dollars on one click.

CPA is the least common method of ad serving. This requires that not only a user clicks on the advertisement but also takes some required action on the website. For instance, Fire Fox offers a CPA program so that if a person clicks on the Fire Fox advertisement and downloads the browser the website makes $1.00. Other common CPA ads revolve around the user taking surveys or signing up to a website.

You can make substantial amounts of money off of your website traffic but in order to do so you must choose your ad network(s) wisely and even have numerous ad networks to capitalize on all your traffic.

Improving Google Adwords Keyword Quality Index

2007-10-25T10:58:00.000-07:00

Whether you realize it or not, the amount you are paying per click with your Google Adwords campaign is not what everyone else is paying. The higher your Keyword Quality Index (KQI) score the less you have to pay for your keywords and the higher your position will be.

Your KQI is a somewhat direct correlation to how relevant that keyword is to your site, and more importantly, the page that your ads take the user to. So this brings up the top ways to increase your score.

1)Create landing pages for your advertisements. Don’t send every user to the same page. Send them to a variety of pages that have to do with those particular keywords. The more relevant the landing page is to your keyword the better your KQI score will be.

2)Create ad groups in order to separate your keywords. Don’t group all your keywords together if they are targeting different things.

For instance, one of my clients Logicbright CRM has two markets. One is CRM for small business and one is large corporations. The keywords that are important to each group happen to be different which means the ads that each market should see would be different. So in this case you would want to make two ad groups and have one ad group go to one landing page and the other one to a different landing page.

3)Use your keywords on your landing page and make sure they appear in the meta descriptions of those pages.

Don’t get too discouraged. It may take a while for things to happen the way you want, if you remove the keywords and start over it may take even longer since Google remembers your activity for old keywords and campaigns. So be patient, if you do it right results will come.

Using the sales cycle in your CRM to maximize efficiency

2007-09-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Most CRM software can be categorized in two groups. One lets the user operate the CRM software the way they want to without much guidance, and the other makes the user fit their way of doing things.

Both ways have a distinct advantage. The one that forces the user to do things a certain way typically keeps unorganized companies in check. But this is also not very flexible and doesn’t fit many types of organizations. Examples of this style can be found at netsuite.com and entellium.com.

The other way relies on each organization to train their employees on the “best” way of using the CRM product. This is not a bad thing and it typically allows a company to dictate exactly how they want to run their business. This is also allows for companies of all types to use the same CRM package. Generally this is the type of CRM most companies will choose. Think about it, does a computer company operate the same was as a charity or a bank? No, Then why would you choose a CRM that forces them to all do the same thing? Some examples of this type of CRM is salesforce.com, logicbright.com and sugarcrm.com.

One specific area of using CRM that many companies struggle with is the Sales Cycle. It can be difficult for business, especially small businesses, to use their CRM effectively throughout the sales cycle. The best way to solve this problem is to make sure that all your employees understand how leads, contacts and opportunities get moved through your CRM. Developing a “Best Practices” technique for your company is key.

Logcibright CRM has an illustrated flowchart of how Leads are found, converted to contacts and opportunities are created. Check out their CRM Sales Cycle.

The Top 3 On-Demand CRM packages

2007-08-28T13:05:00.000-07:00

Most growing companies find themselves in need of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software at some point. Choosing the right one can be tricky and there are more things than just cost to consider.

Here are three hot CRM companies and how they fair against one another.

Sales Force – This is the front-runner for On-Demand (website based) CRM. They cater mostly towards large corporations but recently added a small business version.

Pros: They are one of the most robust CRM packages out there and have good tech support. They offer good mobile support for Blackberry and Palm OS.

Cons: Although they cost around $15/per user per month for the first year, after the first year their cost triples! Their software is so robust that for most small businesses it is confusing and may require extensive training to utilize properly.

LogicBright CRM – This is the new kid on the block. They show a lot of potential for the SMB market since they are only catering to this market.

Pros: Logicbright.com is by far the easiest and least expensive CRM’s out there. Their cost is $20/user per month and extra disk space can be purchased if you wish to use the CRM more as file-sharing software. Since it is easy to use there is little training required.

Cons: LogicBright.com is a new product and hasn’t proven itself yet.

Sugar CRM - After coming out a couple of years ago, they have launched an impressive amount of add-ons and changes.

Pros: Lots of customization if you have on staff programmers, everything is open-source. They also have on-site options if you wish to house your own servers. Great for medium to large sized companies.

Cons: Focused too much on larger companies with their pricing ($50/user per month) and their features.

There are plenty of other CRM options on the market. Most are either designed for very small businesses such as ACT! or for large corporations such as Siebal. If you are a business in the 5-10 user range I would recommend trying out logicbright.com.

How to write successful website copy

2007-08-24T12:39:00.000-07:00

Writing for the web is a difficult task for most people, especially those who are used to writing for print. The basic difference is a viewer’s attention span. In a magazine or a newsletter you have more of your viewer’s attention. They will thumb through and read whole articles because they have to decide to read it or throw it out. They are also typically left with no other immediate alternative for that same information.

With most websites, people have the attention span of a goldfish (7 seconds). If they cannot find what they want in 7 seconds they will just go and find another site. So how do you keep your viewer’s attention?

Summarize your text: Keep your text shorter. You may want to go in-depth on a subject, but use a blog, whitepaper or a downloadable pdf if you want to go deep into a subject.
Bullets and paragraph headings: Bullet points and headings of paragraphs are very important if you are listing topics out for your audience. They can quickly scan for what they are looking for and ignore what they don’t like.

Graphics: Use graphics and colors to draw the viewer’s attention to parts of the screen. This is the same strategy magazine use; it is the same for the web.

Keywords: This is the hardest part for some. To write text properly for the web you must use your keywords over and over throughout the website. This is mostly for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but also because your audience is not going to read it in any particular order. For example: If you owned LogicBright CRM, you would want to make sure your url (logicbright.com) appeared all over the website. Also use your keywords: CRM, Customer Relationship Management, small business software and online CRM software; throughout the site. Don’t forget to mention your competitors -- you may be able to get some traffic from them as well.

Length: If you think it is too long, it probably is. Even this article would be lengthy on a website that isn’t news or information oriented.

Keep it simple, and follow those suggestions outlined above and your website will be optimized for the web audience.

Website Flowcharts and Webmaps

2007-08-10T07:39:00.000-07:00

Planning a website’s structure is as important as the design of the site. It is also the single thing that can separate your business from countless others. Just think about it; how many times have you been to a site and couldn’t get to where you wanted to go? It happens all the time and since websites are a dime-a-dozen a user will gladly take their business somewhere else.

In fact, if a user spends about 7 seconds without finding what they were looking for on a new website, they will leave and find another website. This means there is little room to be inefficient in the layout of your website.

The best way I have found to plan a new website would be to make a list of all the pages and functionality that you wish the website to have. Once you have this list you can start categorizing it to combine and reduce pages that are related and figure out what your primary topics/links will be.

Once you have a list of your pages, it is time to see how they will connect to one another. Using a program like Microsoft Visio will give you the capability to produce flowcharts and webmaps very quickly. Below is a basic example of a website flowchart for a portion of a Banking website.

The diagram shows just a portion of what a whole banking site would be, but you can imagine this expanding into several areas that are all interconnected. Some websites may only have a few pages and some may have hundreds. The more pages you have the more important is it to map it out and see how a user can go travel through the site before you build it and find your most important page is hidden.

Flowcharts and webmaps also give you a good idea of how “deep” your website content is. Website depth is a way of saying how many layers (pages) a user must click through to get to their desired area. If a user has to drill down to more than three times you may want to see if there is a better way of structuring the website. If you must have more than three layers, using breadcrumbs is a great way to show a user exactly where they are on a website. Breadcrumbs are shown below.

I sometimes get the question, “how much time should we spend on planning a website?” There is no real answer to that question, some sites only take about 5% of the total production time and some take 40%. The larger and more complex the website is the more time you should spend on planning, it will help reduce your production time and the amount of rework you may have to do.

Website Usability

2007-08-03T10:06:00.000-07:00

Usability on the web is a topic that many designers and business owners don’t seem to have a grasp on. For web designers this is an issue because many feel that a good, creative design should not be held hostage to standard usability requirements. While this is sometimes true, the real challenge is for a web designer to appeal to their audience. If their audience is artsy and expecting something cutting-edge, then the designer can feel free to express themselves fully because their audience will expect this. A great example of this is the tokyoplastic.com website. This site is entirely Flash based and mixes 3d with great sound effects. Language barriers asides, this site is hard to use but it is worth trying to figure out.

From a small business owner’s perspective, they want to make sure no clients are lost so usability should be the primary aspect when designing the website. Nothing says “Buy from us” like a great looking site in which a customer cannot figure out how to add an item to a shopping cart. Subsequently, a website that doesn’t look professional will turn customers away. So finding an adequate mix of professional looks with good usability will go a long way with your potential customers.

Reduce Clicks

One important factor to making a website easier to navigate is reducing the perceived number of clicks it takes to get to a page. I say perceived because if your site is well organized and categorized you can have the user click a few times to get to something without it seeming like it. Also, understanding that not all users use websites the way you or I do is important. So giving users a variety of ways of doing the same thing is key.

For example, I recently had the privilege of being a beta-tester for a new CRM tool called Logic Bright CRM. The first thing I noticed was there was several ways to do the same task. The duplicating of links really works because some users may never look at the one on the left and others may not look under the tabs, so this makes it easy for both types of users. Below is a screenshot of what I mean.

Navigation

Another aspect of usability is keeping the primary links/navigation of a site in the expected locations. This is usually at the top or left hand side of the screen. NEVER put your navigation at the bottom or the right side! There are two reasons you should not do this. First, a user doesn’t expect the navigation to be there so there is a learning curve for a user that is unnecessary. Second, if you user’s monitor is set to a lower resolution your navigation may not even show on their screen without them using the scrollbars. There are programmatic ways of solving this issue but they are generally cumbersome and create other issues with your website so you are better off avoiding this in the first place.

Colors, Contrast and Consistency

The final usability issue I will mention is the use of colors. Have you ever been to a website that has white text on a yellow background? It is just plain hard to read and for some people impossible. Your best bet is to stick with dark colors on light backgrounds or white text on dark colors. Along with using the right colors you want to stay consistent with your colors. If you have a link that is blue and underlined in one place make sure all your related links are blue and underlined.

There are countless other usability issues as they relate to resolution, accessibility, file size and scalability. But those are topics for another day.

Search Engine Optimization Tips

2007-08-02T15:58:00.000-07:00

SEO is a big topic that comes up all the time with my clients. Everyone wants to be the number one website on Google, but don’t know how to achieve this. This article is NOT saying you are going to be able to get to number one, but it will give you some guide lines on how to increase your chances greatly.

The most important item relating to SEO is to remember that CONTENT IS KING. Without endless amounts of fresh and interesting content you will never get to the top. But it isn’t just the quality of content that counts; it is how the content is written. For example if you are selling cell phones you want to make sure your keywords appear in your text over and over again. It may seem repetitive but this is the best way to get Google, MSN and Yahoo! to notice you.

The next tips are in no particular order because they all play a similar small role, but together make all the difference.

Use meta tags and descriptions – This is an older html technology that is considered dead by some but is still being used. Your meta description is often the description that a search engine will use when displaying your website.
Wrap text in paragraph and headline tags. Using the proper tags will tell a search engine that your text is indeed content. Headline tags are given a higher priority by search engines.
No Frames – stay away from frames, it makes it impossible for a search engine to appropriately link to your site. In-turn a user may find your site but it may not have all the page elements attached to it.
Links – Using your keywords in your links is a great way to emphasize those words to a search engine. Never use “Click here” it is a wasted link.
Backlinks – Backlinks are links from other sites that point to your site. Backlinks are one of the primary things that Google looks for in determining rank. The best way to build backlinks is with your content. You can syndicate your content over blogs, rss feeds and general article submissions. Each time you submit an article make sure it has your link on it. Joining forums and social networks are also great ways of building backlinks but many of them frown on blatant advertisements so you have to do this wisely.
Use Text – It may sound simple, but actually using text instead of images allows a google bot or yahoo crawler to read you site.
No Flash – Flash sites are bad for SEO plain and simple. Even newer Flash techniques that allow crawlers to read the site still won’t end up at the number one spot simply because of lack of perceived content since your website is only one page.
Web maps – Creating and submitting a web map notifies the search engines of which pages are the most important and how often they change.Time – SEO is slow, be patient.

There are many other things you can do to increase you rank naturally, just remember do not cheat and pay for a service to do this for you.