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Small Business Web Template

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You are a small business owner. You use the internet both in your business and personally. Obviously you know there are many, many web sites out there. More then likely, you've even made purchases through someone else's web site. Perhaps it is apparent that you could be doing the same thing with your own business. Certainly, extra e-commerce sales could only help your bottom line. But does your business really need a web site?

In deciding that, consider what a web site really is to a business. A well designed site can give your business exposure to a much larger group of potential customers. That makes it a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal.

In today's hyper-competitive business environment, marketing experts tell us that having a successful marketing strategy is essential to the growth of your business. Effective use of a web site can draw in new leads and turn leads into conversions. Now these new customers (your best market) can be further wooed through follow up online newsletters, automatic appreciation e-mails (auto-responders), special offers or any number of tactics. All the while building a mailing list which is like gold to anyone's marketing efforts. With this almost limitless and relatively inexpensive marketing tool in the form of your web site, your profits have an even greater ability to soar.

A web site does need to be well designed. Also, in addition to targeted, effective content, your site needs to be regularly maintained and updated. Using its full potential requires someone in your company continually coming up with new online marketing strategies. But these efforts, if thought of as marketing investments, can mean big rewards in the form of increased profits for your business.

In this information age, the internet is key to making innovative marketing decisions that build a successful business. Your competition knows this and he/she probably has a web site. If they are savvy enough to realize its marketing potential, then they have a competitive edge. But you can make up ground and pass them up with a well designed web site of your own.

(For Part 2 of this article "What is a well designed web site?" Please visit my web site.)

Small Business Web Template

The web is changing faster than ever, thanks to the Web 2.0 movement which includes Ruby on Rails, Ajax, sleek design and “hover links with colorful background”. Are you up to the task of keeping up with it? In this article you will discover how to use some of those technologies to improve you life and business, starting at no cost.

At the moment there are several excellent Web 2.0 applications loosed on the web, but usually they lack several features in order to compete with the big guys. Fortunately with the power of APIs, soon some of those applications will combine into a more robust solution.

+ Work Area

Protopage

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Suggestion: Not enough widget applications, no JS support.

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Does your monitor look like a sunflower at a distance from all the yellow sticky notes? Why not throw it all into the web? By doing so, you will be able to share it with co-workers and friends and access it from different locations. There're several solutions out there, but the one that excels in usability is ProtoPage. The edge from this London based company is the ability to drag your panels without being constrained into a grid and to resize its panels. Also, you are able to create several “desktops”. One could be for your personal life, the other one for business, etc.

The service is great, but it needs more widgets other than just the Weather one.

Since you are not allowed to add a JS script into the panel, use the “Iframe tag” with the “src=page_with_your_js.html”. This will pull anything you want into your Protopage panel.

+ Sending Invoice

BlinkSale

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Suggestion: The user cannot save the products and services to avoid typing again next time.

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Invoicing software is a aniche the creative and innovative power of the web did not touch for a long time. Consequently, small businesses were confined with proprietary software like QuickBooks, which is expensive and cluttered. BlinkSale is a very nice start to bring the financial industry into the Web 2.0 and hopefully shake things up a bit. The greatest thing about BlinkSale is to have your invoices in XML/RSS rather than a proprietary format. Although, at the moment, BlinkSale is not a replacement for QuickBooks yet due to lack of functions such having products and services list, reports and etc. BlinkSale is a basic invoicing solution for small companies, but this is just the beginning of a revolution in this area. Just wait until BlinkSale and Basecamp have their API out and well distributed. That would make several big corporations tremble, or to write fat checks to Fire Wheel.

+ Project Management

Basecamp

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Suggestion: You cannot set the time for your meetings in the milestone and some drag & drop capabilities would be great.

Online collaboration can give you the edge over your competitors by allowing your customers to log in and see what is the project status, add a file or a “to-do” item. Basecamp can be use for a wide range of scenarios, from a Web Design company to a wedding planning ocassion, this is the service to use. You can set up different user to access different projects and so on. This is a great out-of-the-box solution for any ocasion, easy to use and open for collaboration.

+Calendar

Planzo

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Suggestion: Design is a little cluttered and RSS feeds are not well tagged.

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One of the biggest headaches of the modern world is to sync your calendar. Most people have to struggle organizing themselves among Outlook at work and sticky notes at home. Planzo delivers a nice start towards solving that problem by delivering reminders via email and SMS and connection with iCal.

All of these new services are great and exciting, but be careful, sometimes in the attempt of organizing yourself, you'll end up with 20 different accounts in several services worsening your situation.

One possible solution is to combine all services through RSS into a “work area” like ProtoPage. Then you can have the invoice list, your calendar, etc., delivered into one place.

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About Author

Both Richard Radcliffe & Thiago Leite are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Richard Radcliffe has sinced written about articles on various topics from The Internet, Small Business and Computers and The Internet. Richard Radcliffe is a Web Designer/Consultant, writer, and father of a 6 year old son. He is the owner of Renshaw Design which specializes in web design and web marketing consultation for small businesses, nonprofits, clubs, and professionals with a priv. Richard Radcliffe's top article generates over 2400 views. Bookmark Richard Radcliffe to your Favourites.

Thiago Leite has sinced written about articles on various topics from Small Business. Thiago Leite is a freelance Web designer / Developer / Thinker ThiagoLeite.com. Thiago Leite's top article generates over 720 views. Bookmark Thiago Leite to your Favourites.

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