Web Design Companies – Finding One That You’ll Be Pleased With

Cost is obviously an important factor to consider when getting a new website designed by a web design company. For starters though, you need to know what your website is supposed to do for your business. What is the website meant to do add to your business? What end results are you expecting? After that, start to structure out your website and find out where all the pieces are going to fit. Websites all over the Internet have varying kinds of structures, and you can take a look at them to see what format might work for your web presence. Figure out how many pages you would need, and what would go on each page in terms of content. After you have a general notion of what you want the website to look like, and what you need it to do, you are in much better position to dictate the price when it comes to web design companies. the saturated nature of the web design market means that there are thousands of companies and individuals vying for your business, giving you the advantage of determining price. Just like everything else the web design realm is full of good companies, OK companies and just plain bad companies. It can be difficult to determine which is which so a good rule of thumb is if somebody promises to provide you with everything you want for an extremely low price, they are likely not going to be up to the standard you want. In the event that you have all the money in the world, and can afford to just pick the most expensive company there is, you can trust that you will receive top-notch service and impeccable quality when it comes to your website. You can just Google ‘web design company’ and pick the first one that you see. However, you have to do some research and find the best one if you have a budget to consider. You can find plenty of web design companies that have the talent, but not the overhead or the staff to charge you an exorbitant amount. Despite their comparative lack of resources, you can bet that they will have the knowledge and dedication to bring you the innovative web presence that you need at far lower prices than larger web design companies would offer.

Now Try – Web Design Birmingham

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Facebook Etiquette for Businesses and Brands

When your business establishes a presence on Facebook, you make a commitment to be a good neighbor, a trusted Facebook friend. The emphasis is on being a friend, not a store, a business, or even a customer service help desk (although these days, your customers are just as likely to ask you a product support-related question via Facebook as they are through your website, but that’s really a topic for another blog post).

As my co-author Joe Kraynak and I point out in our forthcoming book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Facebook, if you are not careful, social-media marketing, particularly on Facebook, can do more harm to your business or brand than good. To improve your chances of success, adhere to the following rules of business etiquette when launching and managing a business-related page on Facebook.

Avoid “I” statements
Unless you are your business, speak about your business in the third person (they) or second person (we). For example, to announce that your company is exhibiting at a conference or trade show, post “[Your Company Name] will be exhibiting at such-and-such show later this week,” rather than “I will be….” Using “We will be…” would also be appropriate. The same holds true for responses to fans’ comments… never respond with “I” or “me” (e.g., “I’m on it, email me that info right away.”).

Focus on quality, not quantity
You might not agree but I wholeheartedly believe that the quality of your business’s or brand’s Facebook fans counts more than the quantity. If you’re thinking about posting a message like, “Help us out, we only need 257 more fans to reach 3,000,” don’t! Arbitrary numbers do nothing but stroke someone’s ego. Focus instead on the quality of your relationships. If the quality is high, the quantity–through referrals and authentic word-of-mouth–will rise with it.

Display your fans’ wall posts
While it’s true fans and others visiting your Facebook page want to see what your business is up to, they also feel they have a right–and therefore, they have a reasonable expectation–that they’ll be able to see what other fans have to say. If your Facebook wall settings have “Only Posts by Page” as the default view, or “Fans can write or post content on the wall” is unchecked, change both right away. If you’re uncomfortable with fans posting content when you’re not around, uncheck the latter before heading home for the evening or weekend, but be sure to turn the feature back on the next workday. Remember, as the page admin, you can always remove a comment or wall post (and you can even remove a fan should the need ever arise).

Avoid the heavy self-promotion
Remember, this is called social networking, not social selling. While your prospects and customers expect you to be on Facebook, they don’t want you pushing yourself on them or intruding into their social time. With this in mind, limit the number of times you send updates to fans. Just like the little boy who cried wolf, no one wins when you treat everything like breaking news or a matter of immediate urgency. If anything, you lose credibility and fans turn a blind eye toward your messages, or worse, they remove themselves as a fan of your business or brand.

Engage with your Facebook fans
When fans leave comments or questions on a status update or note, thank them, and then answer the questions or comment back, if called for, and always do so in a timely manner. If a fan posts a photo or video on your wall, make a comment or click the “like” button if, indeed, you appreciate the comment. Nothing’s worse than visiting a businesses or brand’s Facebook page only to see unanswered questions or unacknowledged testimonial-like comments.

Flesh out Your Facebook fan page profile
Include everything requested when setting up your company or product profile, so Facebook members have everything they need to make a well informed choice of whether to become a fan and how to reach your business should the need ever arise.

Post status updates regularly
Facebook fans lose interest fairly quickly unless you keep them engaged, so post status updates, photos, videos, and other content regularly. If you have a blog, set up a news feed on the Notes page that automatically pulls fresh content from your blog onto your Facebook fan page.

Be authentic and transparent
This one’s fairly obvious by now but some business owners and brand managers still don’t get it. Facebook members have little to no tolerance for phoniness or hidden agendas and can easily spot both. They do tend, however, to be forgiving. Be genuine and transparent. If you make a mistake, own up to it, do your best to resolve the issue, and then post back on the action you have taken. 

In closing, remember to be a friend. Facebook is a digital hangout where friends gather to share. Think of your Facebook fan page less as a tool for promoting your business and more as a place where friends feel comfortable to gather and share their enthusiasm about your products, services, and other offerings, and you will be well on your way to doing it right. If it helps to think of it in these terms, operate your business or brand’s Facebook presence less like a used auto lot where it seems everyone’s always looking out for themselves, and more like the interior of a coffee shop, where people are treated more like guests than they are prospective customers.

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Business Groups Hope Senate Squashes Healthcare Bill

Not everybody was rejoicing at the House of Representatives’ landmark approval of its long-fought healthcare reform bill. Business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Retail Federation and National Association of Manufacturers are on the stump to get the Senate to block the bill.

The Chamber called the House bill “dangerous,” saying it will increase healthcare costs, jack up the national debt and raise taxes. The Chamber spent upwards of $10 million on an ad campaign opposing the bill prior to the House vote.

For its part, the NRF called the House bill an “anti-job experiment,” that would cause already recession-shrunk retail employment to drop further.

The National Association of Manufacturers’ opposition to the bill is a bit interesting, since the organization reports 97 percent of their members already provide healthcare. One of the big objections has been from smaller businesses that would be compelled to provide insurance or pay a fee.

It’s unclear what will happen in the Senate. Senators could consider the House bill or its own version of healthcare reform, which would then have to be reconciled in committee with the House version. 

What’s your take on the healthcare-reform debate? Leave a comment and let us know if you’re happy about the House bill or hoping the Senate will send reform to filibuster-land.

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A Tale of Two Surveys

Are small business owners starting to feel more bullish about the economy?

If you’re a trend-watcher like me, it’s hard to know for sure.

According to The National Federation of Independent Businesses’ Small Business Optimism Index‘s latest survey, small-business owners are still reluctant to spend or hire, their confidence shaken by slumping sales, price declines and the ongoing credit crunch. The NFIB Index fell 1.3 points to 88.0 in February and has hovered between 86.5 and 89.3 since April 2009. That’s below where the index stood in the depths of the recession of the early 1990s.

But, according to Discover Small Business Watch, a survey sponsored by Discover Financial Services, small-business confidence may be starting to turn around. Though the Discover index fell to 84.9 in February from 85.5 in January, the index was up 13 points over the 71.9 confidence mark recorded in February 2009 when the recession hit bottom. According to Discover, the number of small-business owners who think that the economy is getting better held steady in February at 31 percent. Only 44 percent of business owners surveyed said they thought the economy was getting worse, an improvement over the 46 percent who felt that way in January. Twenty-four percent saw the economy staying the same, up from 18 percent last month, and 1 percent weren’t sure.

What accounts for the difference between the two surveys’ findings? Well, a cynic might say that the first poll was conducted by a trade association that lobbies for legislation that helps small-business owners compete, while the second poll was conducted by a financial services company that wants to make sure that its small-business customers don’t throw in the towel.

But I think there’s more at work here. The Discover survey polled a group of small businesses with five or fewer employees, the kind of startups, sole proprietors and micro-businesses that don’t have the same concerns as larger small businesses that have payrolls to meet and debt to service. By contrast, the NFIB poll surveyed 799 member companies, only about half of which employ five people or less.

This probably explains why most of the small-business owners polled by Discover said they weren’t especially concerned about the small-business credit crisis that’s made headlines for the last year and a half. Ninety-one percent told Discover that they’d never applied for an SBA loan, and most said they probably wouldn’t apply for one even if such funding became available. By contrast, the NFIB respondents, a third of whom said they borrow money on a regular basis, continued to worry about the availability of credit going forward.

The bottom line is that not all small businesses are alike, and the concerns of a two-person home-based startup are poles apart from the problems facing a 10-employee restaurant or a 50-worker manufacturing company. The government needs to take that into consideration when crafting a policy that will give all small-business owners, no matter how large or small, the kind of help they really need.

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Your Weekly Facebook Page Update… What’s That About?

Has your business received a “Your Weekly Facebook Page Update” message via e-mail? If so you’re not alone. Every business with a Facebook Fan Page has started receiving those. Are they spam? Absolutely not, furthermore:

At the end of this post is an example of the first Your
Weekly Facebook Page Update e-mail message I received, which arrived unannounced
just yesterday afternoon. I say unannounced, because I was wasn’t
expecting anything like this from Facebook and am always leery of unsolicited
e-mail messages claiming to be from social network accounts I manage for my
clients. (These days, phishing scams are nearly as popular as Facebook
itself.)

Perhaps best of all, these e-mail messages serve as a reminder that you need to check your Facebook analytics regularly, at least once a week. I recommend you check your Fan Page(s) and analytics and engage with your fans daily, as a good Facebook friend should do.

Use the analytics on your Facebook Fan Insights Page to assess the results of your Fan Page efforts and work on accelerating growth in all three categories:

• Number of fans
• Number of wall posts
• Number of visits

Exponential growth may be unrealistic, but you should expect a greater increase in growth every subsequent week. After all, that’s what going viral is all about.

From: Facebook
Date: March 17, 2010 4:58:34 PM PDT
To: Mikal Belicove
Subject: Your Weekly Facebook Page Update
Reply-To: noreply

Hi Mikal,

Here is this week’s summary for the Facebook Page: XYZ, Inc.

+61 Fans this week (2,129 total Fans)

23 Wall Posts, Comments, and Likes this week (19 last week)

704 Visits to your page this week (641 Visits last week)

Update your Fans:

http://www.facebook.com/XYZ-Inc.

Visit your Insights Page:

http://www.facebook.com/n/?business%2Finsights/XYZ-Inc.

Get more Fans with Facebook Ads:

http://www.facebook.com/n/?ads/XYZ-Inc.

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Internet Companies Big ’09 Venture-Capital Winners

Venture Capital investment has tanked since the downturn hit. But some sectors are starting to see growth in VC funding again, recent data from VentureDeal shows.

Biotech stayed the biggest funding subsector in the world of technology with $1.9 billion in funding in the fourth quarter of 2009, flat with the previous quarter. Internet-sector companies leapt ahead 38 percent, the biggest gain of any sector, snagging $1.8 billion in funding.

Telecom companies lagged, sinking 17 percent to get just $231 million in funding,with wireless companies getting the bulk of the money. Weirdly, despite all the support for alternative energy in the stimulus bill, that sector sank too, seeing 45 percent fewer dollars at $232 million.
More than a dozen Internet startups got that coveted first round of funding in the quarter. One of the biggest rounds went to pre-launch search startup Kakai, which landed $7.5 million.

PageOnce got the next-biggest round at $6.5 million. The free service helps business people track their travel, celphone minutes and other financial tools in one place. The round was part of $10 million they’ve raised in all.

Boy, pre-launch companies getting venture capital…companies with free products getting venture capital…I feel like I’m having a dot-com bubble-era flashback. Hopefully there’s a revenue model in there somewhere.

The outlook for VC funding this year isn’t too optimistic, in part due to consolidation among the big VC firms, as fewer funds attract capital. On the other hand, venture capitalists who’re staying in the game are upbeat about 2010, due to the recovering merger-and-acquisition and IPO markets, which give investors hope about profitable exits they might see a few years down the road.

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When Big Banks Won’t Lend, and Small Banks Fail

In the world of small-business loans, it’s the worst of times and the worst of times. 

The volume of new small-business loans amongst the nine big U.S. banks that received federal bailout money plummeted nearly $20 billion in January compared with December, the U.S. Treasury Department reports. The banks loaned nearly $36 billion, the smallest monthly total since last October, when the banks loaned $41.6 billion.

With big-bank lending still down, many finance experts point entrepreneurs toward smaller, community banks as a better option. The problem? A substantial number of those are going bust.

Treasury has expressed concern that small banks continue to fail at a steady pace — 27 more so far this year, nearly 200 since the beginning of 2008. The chaos created by bank failures includes broken relationships between entrepreneurs and local bankers, leaving entrepreneurs to scramble to find a new bank and establish the rapport that usually precedes getting a loan.

Partly as a result, total U.S. bank lending is down 7.4 percent. One forecaster predicts a small-business lending shortfall of as much as $500 billion as the economy continues to struggle. That’s a lot of small-business activity being stymied for lack of capital. Surviving community banks are being unusually cautious in lending further, as they closely monitor how their existing small-business lenders are faring.

So entrepreneurs are caught in a pincer — big banks not lending on one hand, community banks overleveraged or overcautious on the other. It’s hard to see a good solution here.

It’s no surprise that alternative lending vehicles that don’t involve banks are getting a lot of attention lately, from purchase-order financing to peer lending to selling receivables.

Entrepreneurs have always been creative when it comes to operating their businesses. Now, they have to be more creative than ever when it comes to finding the funds they need to grow.

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Creating a Place to Hang Out With Investors

One of the biggest challenges for many startups is finding funding. How can they connect with angel investors or venture-capital firms?

There are plenty of investor conferences you can attend, and maybe pitch a group of possible funders your story. But there aren’t many places designed to let entrepreneurs and investors hang out in a casual setting. A new restaurant, The Venture Cafe hopes to change that.

Supported by Cambridge Innovation Center founder and CEO Tim Rowe, the cafe debuted March 1 in a temporary space near the MIT campus. With its initial three-month “beta test” (what else?), cafe organizers hope to foster dialogue and build community between Boston-area investors and entrepreneurs. A permanent space for the cafe is being sought.

To get the cafe rolling, a series of “office hour” sessions are being sponsored by The New England Venture Capital Association. Several firms have already signed up to hold 25-minute pitch sessions at the cafe. The signup sheet encourages investors to come early and hang out after their scheduled pitch times in hopes of allowing random connections and more casual contact to be made. The office hours have proved popular — most of the available slots through the end of April have already been booked by local entrepreneurs. May still has some openings, though.

Often, entrepreneurs have multiple contacts with investors before they get a firm commitment, so the cafe may provide a chance to meet casually with investors and get to know each other a bit. In our increasingly virtual business world, it’s refreshing to see a concept that gets startup owners and funders out to meet in person. The cafe format may also help some entrepreneurs who might be intimidated by going to a VC firm’s office to pitch. 

If you have a snappier name for the Venture Cafe, drop them a line at their Facebook page — they’re soliciting name suggestions.
Where have you connected with investors? Would you like to see a venture cafe in your town? I won’t be surprised to see this concept spread to other cities.

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News: Mozilla Plans to Remove Support for Firefox on Tiger (The Mac Observer)

Josh Aas of the Mozilla development planning team recently posted a note stating that they want to make a final decision on the removal of Tiger code in FireFox. If they proceed as planned, then Firefox 3.6 will be the last version supported on Tiger.

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Newborn Firefox gets first glimpse of life (The Register)

Alpha 1 carries temporary 3.7 stamp Mozilla may have officially dropped the Firefox 3.7 name in December, but that hasn’t stopped the open source web troupe pushing out a first alpha of the browser for brave testers to tinker with.… Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work

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Firefox 3.7 Alpha is a Really Rough Look at Firefox 4.0 [Downloads] (Lifehacker)

Windows/Mac/Linux: It doesn’t look that different, and the version number is certain to change, but Mozilla is offering a “Developer Preview” of the rendering engine inside Firefox 3.7, which will…

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Mozilla retracts Firefox add-on malware claim (ARNnet)

Mozilla today acknowledged that it had falsely accused a developer of infecting a Firefox add-on with attack code. The admission came a week after Mozilla announced that a pair of add-ons , Sothink Web Video Downloader 4.0 and Master Filer, had slipped through its security check-in.

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AFTERNOON UPDATE: More snow, sleet may impede morning travel (Bluefield Daily Telegraph)

PRINCETON — Winter’s latest round of precipitation could start arriving by 4 a.m. Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service in Blacksburg, Va. Snow could arrive in the morning, later followed by sleet.

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8,000 copies of Wow Book expected to be sold by year-end (The Borneo Post)

KUCHING: Local publi shing house Borneo Wow Networking Sdn Bhd (Borneo Wow) is targeting 8,000 copies of its Wow Book 2010 to be sold by year-end.

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Four-star Portland on a two-star budget: Penny-pinching without pain (Seattle Times)

Portland on a pain-free budget: how to score a deal on a four-star hotel, dine in swank restaurants and find discounts on plays, museums and movies in Oregon’s Rose City.

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Calendar (Park Ridge Herald-Advocate)

Submissions for “Community Calendar” are required two weeks preceding the date of publication. Send to: Mary Ann Bottari, Pioneer Press, 3701 W. Lake Ave., Glenview IL 60026; mbottari@pioneerlocal.com. Information may be faxed to (847) 486-7495.

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Spring-Ford Reporter/The Valley ItemDatebook (Spring-Ford Reporter & Valley Item)

DateBook Notes

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Salaried? Your last chance to save taxes is NOW (rediff.com)

In the final part of this series on how salaried employees can save taxes Anil Rego of Right Horizons gives some smart tips on, what else, but saving taxes.

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Sears Gives 20X Sears Club Points First Time Ever Just In Time for Valentine’s Day (CNW Group via Yahoo! Finance)

Sears Canada Inc. turned up the heat for Valentine’s Day today by announcing a 20X Sears Club points bonus for any fragrance or cosmetic purchase until the end of Valentine’s Day, Sunday, February 14.

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Industry preps for anticipated RV revival (Detroit News)

Doing laundry, answering e-mail, baking a chicken and catching up on TV — all while hurtling southward on I-75 at 70 mph. Now that’s what I call efficient.

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Travel Web: Coupons offer discounts on travel services (The Salt Lake Tribune)

Travelers looking for coupons that can save the money should log on to www.CurrentCodes.com , a Web site designed to offer discounts for a variety of different products and services. Just click on the travel tab on the site.

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Protests, frustration at Haiti aid bottlenecks (AP via Yahoo! Finance)

The aid flooding into Haiti by plane and boat is not reaching earthquake victims quickly enough due to red tape, security fears, transportation bottlenecks and occasional corruption.

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Frustration growing at Haiti aid bottlenecks (AP via Yahoo! News)

The aid flooding into Haiti by plane and boat is not reaching earthquake victims quickly enough to stem growing unrest because of transportation bottlenecks and isolated violence.

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Clickable Coupons! Save money at thousands of stores (FOX 31 Denver)

Attention bargain shoppers! KDVR.com is helping you save your hard earned money on everything from food to travel.

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Affordable Marketing Solutions LLC Writes the Book on Small-Business Marketing (Marketwire)

Connecticut Marketing Firm Publishes “Affordable Marketing Solutions: Proven Techniques to Profitably Market Your Small Business”

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