Small Business Blog

Payvment is quietly attempting to revolutionize online shopping with a new take on the shopping cart. The Web-based cart is pitched on two main features: easy installation and the ability to reduce cart abandonment. Those two features alone can snag the attention of any online retailer, but Payvment still has much work to do before it’s ready to compete globally.

The good

Cost. The Payvment cart is free to use. While there are other free shopping cart scripts out there, none install with a single snippet of code. This aspect of the Payvment solution is likely to appeal to smaller online merchants who don’t have an in-house or on-call webmaster.

Facebook integration. Payvment makes a Facebook storefront app, which can be integrated with its Web-based shopping cart. With the Facebook app, merchants can quickly install a storefront on their Facebook page; this provides maximum visibility for the products and an easy shopping experience for potential customers. The Facebook storefront can also be used on a standalone basis, which may appeal to online retailers who already have another cart system installed on their site.

Design-friendly. The cart can be installed to an existing Web site without making major changes to the site’s design. Visually speaking, the primary changes would be the addition of “add to cart” buttons next to the products. The shopping cart itself remains hidden until a customer clicks on an “add to cart” button; at that point, a pop-up appears to show the customer what items are in the cart. The customer can click a check-out button on the pop-up whenever he’s ready to complete the transaction. (continue reading…)

Are you currently running your small business without barcoding and POS equipment? Certainly many small business owners do–I even know a few who are using the paper-and-pen method of inventory management. It’s true that advanced barcoding and POS equipment isn’t for everyone: it’s expensive to buy and it takes a bit of effort to deploy. To justify the investment of time and money, you need to have relatively stable sales volumes and medium-term visibility into your business’ future.

If your business is large enough and stable enough, the benefits of using technology to manage inventory are often substantial. A POS system improves efficiency by decreasing the man-hours necessary to take in and track your products. It improves customer service by expediting the checkout process and empowering your staff to answer customers’ questions regarding items in stock. It saves money by reducing inventory shrink. The businesses that get the maximum benefit out of their POS systems are those that have a relatively predictable product offering. Once products are set up in the system, your employees can quickly print out the barcode, tag the product and get it on the shelf.   (continue reading…)

If you are currently working in the Web sphere, you can round out your service capabilities by establishing a reseller hosting account. Reseller Hosting gives you low maintenance access to your own branded hosting services. HostNexus, for example, offers Linux reseller hosting and Windows Reseller Hosting plans, for as low as $24.95 monthly. If you have a base of clients who need hosting, you can cross-sell the service to them and turn your monthly investment into a nice stream of residual income.

Alternatively, you could set up an affiliate account with a reliable, high quality hoster. While this option has the same endpoint as using reseller hosting (your client is referred to your preferred hoster for services), there are some important distinctions to note: (continue reading…)

Judging by the reactions I’ve gotten from telling people that I’m self-employed, there’s a common misconception that entrepreneurs have the freedom to work, or not work, whenever they feel like it. Here are a few of my favorites, and I didn’t make these up.

“Well, since you work at home, you can take a nap tomorrow.”
“Hey–you’ll be home tomorrow–can you run an errand for me?”
“Yeah, I work hard too. The other day I was ready to call it a day at 4:50, but I stuck it out ’til 5.”
“If I worked for myself, I’d go to the gym every morning.”
“You’re self-employed? Wow, that’s cool. I’d love to work at home–I’d sleep all day.”

More than once, I’ve found myself explaining that being self-employed is not the same thing as being unemployed (even though the pay is about the same). The truth is, having the ability to set your own hours means nothing when you have 23 hours of work to complete before tomorrow. (continue reading…)

Back in Feb., SmallBusinessNewz published a short article entitled “Consider These 8 Sources of Web Traffic.” To quote the article, the 8 sources mentioned are:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• StumbleUpon
• MapQuest
• QR Codes
• Blogs
• Pictures

You could also add YouTube, Squidoo, HubPages, Yahoo! Questions (don’t tell Yahoo! I said it though) and others to the list. While it’s great to have a list of resources, it doesn’t get an entrepreneur/small business owner any closer to strengthening sales or profits. Small business owners have the problem of having too many options available; there isn’t enough time or money to participate in every strategy that presents itself.

So how can an entrepreneur efficiently make decisions about where to spend scarce marketing dollars? The process begins with developing a detailed understanding of where the business is currently. By this, I mean knowing things like:

• Your average ticket 
• Traffic to your store (if applicable) and your website (if applicable)
• If you have an office or store, what percentage of your customers have seen your website 
• Your close rate (once you get them in the store, in the office, on the phone, etc., how many buy from you?) 
• Amount and frequency of repeat sales from existing customers 
• Demographics of your average customer

Getting a handle on your average ticket along with the close rate can infuse your marketing decisions with a small bit of certainty. For example, say 5 percent of the people who visit your Web site end up buying from you. If you also know those eventual customers will spend an average of $350 (for example) with you over the next year, you can then estimate what each Web visitor is worth to you. (continue reading…)

Small business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly attracted to Web marketing and, in particular, social media marketing. The appeal of online media is their low respective costs. When you own and operate a small, brick-and-mortar business, you face the marketing dilemma constantly: affordable options often lack scale. But the options with sizeable reach aren’t affordable and may be touching consumers who aren’t even viable targets. On top of that, successful ad campaigns these days often take repetition to make an impact. And repetition is expensive.

As an entrepreneur, you may weigh the costs of running print ads in your local newspaper and decide you’d rather take your chances with Twitter and Facebook–options which are free as long you have the available manpower. This decision may make sense from a financial perspective, but don’t make it lightly. Shifting all of your ad dollars to one medium is a mistake, unless you know for certain that that medium can reach all of your existing and target customers. Here’s some food for thought: in 2009, a poll on CNN.com indicated that 94 percent of CNN’s audience wasn’t using Twitter.

Now I know what you’re thinking…if you’ve read some of my previous posts, you know I’m a proponent of Twitter. But I’m not a proponent of putting all your eggs in the Twitter basket, the Facebook basket, or any other ad basket. Even if it may seem like all the world’s gone a-Twitter, there’s still a place for print, for cable, for radio. And actually, one of the most effective ways to use repetition in your advertising is by reaching the same customers through different media.

Of course, these days, you have to be creative with the dollars you direct towards traditional media. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Direct Mail: Find a vendor that does postcard printing and mailing. Print up some loyalty postcards to encourage repeat purchases and send them out. Consider putting a time limit on the card, such as, “make X number of purchases within X number of weeks” or something like that. Use what you know about your customers to set the number and time limit. For example, if you know that your typical customer makes three purchases from you every eight weeks, offer a discount or reward to those who make four purchases within eight weeks. (continue reading…)

What do you do when you have a business problem that can’t be easily solved? Say you need a new POS system or a Web site that you can update and manage yourself. Maybe you ask your friends and colleagues and you get conflicting advice, plus a few referrals to high-priced consultants. You try searching the Internet for your answer and come away with nothing but a massive headache. And still, after talking, searching and networking, you are without a solution that’s workable for you and your business.

Next time this happens, you might consider using Advicely.com to get the answers you need. Advicely.com brings business owners together with the experts who can solve problems. Unlike Yahoo! Questions and similar sites, Advicely.com is focused specifically on business-related problems–the same kind of stuff we talk about here at the Business Morgue blog.

Here’s how it works. You enter your question and the site searches its database for answers that might match your questions. You can then review those answers. The simplest ones are free to view, while more complex answers must be purchased via PayPal. You do get to see a partial view of the paid answers before you make the purchase. (continue reading…)