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Purchasing a Domain Name

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

It is advisable when developing your business name to see if the domain name is available for purchase. If not you may have to be inventive. I recently started working with an SME who had already registered their domain name with www.uk2.net. At first glance they appear to be a cheaper than other domain name companies. With good reason. Once you get started you realise that they are a but like Ryan Air, everything is an extra.

Now if you own a domain name, I can guarantee that you will want to hook it up to a website. If the site is hosted somewhere else it appears that some domain name companies want to charge you for the privilege of pointing it to your website. Not just once either but every year and this is on top of your domain name registration fee.

There is a better way 123-reg.co.uk offer an all in price when you register the domain name. Unlimited updates and access to a host of other services. They might be £2 more expensive to register your domain name but it pays in the long run.

If you need assistance registering your domain name then do give me a call.

Michael Bates - Director - MSI Commerce, marketing driven e-business

Posted in buying a website, company website, e-business, eBusiness | No Comments »

The benefits of email newsletters

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

I have just spent some time trawling the net looking for some statistics on the benefits of an email newsletter. To my suprise I haven’t found anything to report back on.

“Hang on.” do I hear you say, “There are tons of stats out there.”

Yes indeed there are, but none are specific on the benefits of just a newsletter. No sales, no offers just a business talking about what they have been up to. This might be that some of the largest email senders are retailers. Hardly suprising as there are stats that offer figures like $50+ per dollar spent (sorry for the dollars). Impressive figures.

But what about the humble enewsletter? I have worked with a company who, on launching their site, sent out a newsletter talking about the site launch and the what they had been up to. The response was 2 enquiries from a cold (first email) list of 400. The numbers are low, but then they aren’t in retail.

I will shortly be launching a round of newsletters from my own business and will be looking to report back on the response. I will continue to look round to find the stats but there are the obvious benefits:

1. Keeps the customer up to date with your industry developments, this can be useful as it proves that you are adding value to your services, which they can benefit from.
2. Keeps them informed of what you are doing in the market.
3. Reminds them that you are there. Which in todays market is vital.

The other point is that some businesses don’t suit a sales letter, as the customer base probably wouldn’t accept it. Some work with a fine wine company revealed that their customers expect the personalised phone service that the business has been built on, to switch to a swarm of marketing emails would downgrade the brand.

Let me know if you have any feedback on the newsletters.

Posted in e-business, eBusiness, eMail marketing, marketing, online strategy | No Comments »

Online backup - Store your mission critical data with confidence

Saturday, September 20th, 2008

Online back up has many benefits, over the more traditional inhouse facilities. If you are not already storing your data, why not, but… there has never been a better time to start. There are plenty of online backup facilities available www.Carbonite.com, www.SquirrelSave.co.uk www.mozy.com to name a few.

I have used one recently that requires a simple piece of software on your computer. It then organises the files to backup and does the rest for you. Its low cost and the great thing is that you don’t have to take the tapes off site.

There are some rules that need to be followed in order to make it cheap and lower risks.
1. Ensure everyone saves their data on to one computer (the server) on your network. This helps to reduce the cost as a number of providers charge per computer.
2. Make sure everyone saves work on to the server at all times or at least whenever possible. One of my employees lost 2 weeks work because he had been working on a piece for some time and not storing it on to the server. The hard drive went and so did the work.
3. Check that you can retrieve the data from your storage facility. No point storing if you cannot get it back.
4. Don’t assume the software will capture everything, they typically have a configuration process which may need a little tweak. What you consider important may not be automatically backed up.

Storing it off site through the internet also means that you can access the data from elsewhere and very worst case, should a major disaster (fire, flood etc) happen at your office people can all access their work remotely. Which reminds me, do you have a disaster recovery plan?

Hope some of that makes sense.

Posted in e-business, eBusiness | No Comments »

What’s the best time to send an email?

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

In a previous post I mentioned that you shouldn’t believe what you read about Tuesday’s being the best day to send a mail. I have been looking at some recent email stats from emaillabs and Tuesday’s is the most popular day to send an email with 25.4% being sent on Tuesdays, yet Wednesday is the most popular day for people opening the emails. This is confirmed by stats from the EmailStatsCenter.com.

But, just to prove my point I then found the following information from emailcenter that says Thursday is the most popular day. Their view is that this is the best day for consumers as they are just starting to think about the weekend.

Adding my own comments to this I would say that the most popular days are probably best avoided and your email could be lost in the sea of emails that arrive in peoples in boxes. Further to this as most people are already doing it is best to avoid early Monday as all people do on a Monday morning is delete the emails they don’t want to deal with. Ultimately, the only way to tell the best time is to either ask your customers or keep trying until you find the best time. You might find that this becomes one way that you choose to segment your customer base.

Posted in communication, eBusiness, eMail marketing | No Comments »

Developing my customer proposition

Sunday, July 6th, 2008

As a small business owner it can be a challenge developing a customer proposition, as the easy answer is - we want everyone’s business. Personally I have decided that I want to focus on SMEs and in reality it is mostly the SEs that I can offer the most benefit to.

In order to be a viable option to this group, low cost solutions is a key point. Previously I have worked for a business that offers its services to small businesses at £86 an hour. The result is that many of the small businesses don’t have any work done on their sites.

Taking this part of the customer proposition there are a number of my internal processes that need to be managed in order to maintain low cost – ie production, or in my case development. The best way to keep this cheap at the moment is off-shore. It is very difficult to compete with the resources offered from other parts of the world. With a strong pound it means good value resources can be acquired in the likes of India, Eastern Europe or Mexico.

Developing a virtual team is relatively easy these days and the internet offers access to a wealth of developers and businesses across the world. The use of business tools is vital to keep things on track. Recommended tool include:

Collaboration area. This is somewhere to capture all your project information. Emails are ok, but if you have more than a couple of people working the project it can quickly get out of control. People missed from emails, information captured in emails but no where else. An online site allows all the information to be stored in one place and searched at a later stage. See my previous notes on Google site.
Messenger service. Skype or MSN Messenger a quick and easy ways to communicate with team members. Quick questions are fine, don’t try to hold long conversations though. People don’t type that quickly and creativity is best done in a call.
VOIP - Small businesses can easily afford access to VOIP services and they provide cheap calls to all parts of the world. If you want really cheap ie free, get a headset and use skype. The people you are working with will need the same system.
Screen sharing - Have you ever had that feeling that someone isn’t seeing what you are when you are trying to explain something over the phone. “Its next to the green circle” ” What this red line?” “No, below the redline” ” What the picture?” “No, to the …..” sound familiar. For a small fee per month you can remove these issues with a screen sharing application. GoTo Meeting is relatively cheap and can remove hours of “No, below that”.

So now I have my team based in 3 different locations it doesn’t cost the earth to communicate with them. The operations side of the business is run with cost in mind allowing me to deliver great value services at prices designed for SMEs.

Posted in eBusiness, strategy maps | No Comments »

eMail subject line

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

I have seen some interesting result from a recent email marketing campaign that I thought may be of interest. Interesting but in reality not that surprising really.

The email was for a summer sale for a maternity company that I work with. The email subject line was set as “Re: Summer sale 50% off all clothing”. On the face of it this appears to be a fantastic offer, but when reviewed against a previous email it inspired just slightly fewer people to open it (percentage wise).

Two previous emails produced better results using keywords in the title, in the cases in question “Maternity” and “Baby”.

Relevancy is a key theme that plays a role here. We are bombarded with sale headlines from the hundreds of companies in our emails all the time. People are now switching off to a general sale and not surprisingly. Generally when I go to a sale it is all the rubbish that the store couldn’t shift. Chocolate fondue sets was one mentioned by a top retailer recently.

Sadly the company in question doesn’t have accurate data on which users have viewed particular items, we are therefore unable to tailor the emails to individuals. We can however use Google Analytics to show us what the majority of people are looking at but not buying. We can then use that for the basis of the next email, being sure to take out the customers on the email list that have purchased the product recently.

Future emails might therefore read Re: 50% in our summer sale.

I would obviously welcome your thoughts on this.

Posted in Google Analytics, eBusiness, eMail marketing | No Comments »

Online Fashion Retailing

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

I recently attended the Drapers Maximising revenue through online fashion retailing event in London. It was a well attended session with leading industry speakers. Before getting into the business end of the discussion, I must point out that their decision to serve sausage and mash at a buffet, with no seats, tiny table and only provide a fork was interesting. I managed to eat meal without spilling th e food across the floor, which is more than can be said for a previous visit to Bath University who now have an interesting red wine stain on their carpet.

A couple of key points that came out of the session:
1. It is critical that businesses pro-actively manage their online customer service. Some might say “We do this already.” But are you aware of what you customers are saying about you elsewhere. Where as in the past a customer would tell 10 of their friends about a bad experience they can now tell the rest of the world. The larger businesses are now tackling this head on and offering a space for customers to feedback even if it is a bad comment. Ultimately this gets bad comments out in the open, but at least it gives the company an opportunity to respond positively. Starting a blog or forumn in a similar style provides customers with a great space to feedback and even small businesses can participate.

2. Free returns good or bad?
eCommerce businesses need to overcome trust issues in order to get customers to buy for the first time. Free returns provides an excellent means to show customers how good you think your products are. One comment was that it can even encourage larger order values as customers pick a couple of items thinking “I’ll return those because I am not too sure”. But as we all know once you have it in your hands it becomes difficult to send back, for many reasons. Worth noting - don’t be afraid to be strict on your returns policy, if the product isn’t in a fit state to be resold, send it back to the customer and explain why you will not refund. If you are worried about the impact of free returns why not give free returns as an offer.

Some great ideas. A more detailed summary of the key points will follow on MSI Commerce site.

Posted in customer service, eBusiness, eCommerce | No Comments »

Developing eNoise

Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

The web provides a great way of generating some eNoise for your business. e-what I hear you cry.

The internet has numerous channels for interacting with your audience. An example would be a blog similar to this one where you can post you ideas and thoughts and allow others to comment.

There are many other similar outlets that allow you to generate a buzz around your company and many of them are free. Search for networking opportunities online and you will find hundreds varying in size from regional sites (business scene) to multi nationals such as LinkedIn.

Most are free to join and some will let you publish articles and general ramblings for free. I have recently joined a number of these as a means of generating some online activity for my site. Business Scene offers the chance for local face to face networking which can be a great channel for driving traffic to your website through your business cards.

Other ways for generating a community around your business include the generation of groups on sites. These are more appropriate for some businesses rather than others. An example would be Facebook, here you can generate a group and showcase your products and company.

As with any online activity there is an overhead associated with it all so you need to choose the one that is most appropriate for your audience, don’t be afraid to ask your customers where they look.

Posted in eBusiness, marketing | No Comments »

SEO for small businesses

Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

It has become clear over the last few months that SMEs really struggle with SEO activities. Although it all sounds easy it is very time consuming trying to make regular and worthwhile updates to your website.

I have found the same situation recently, as well as trying to develop the business I am constantly trying to keep the website up-to-date and make alterations as I go.

As search engines require you to maintain a level of recency in your site it is worth ensuring that the site is developed with a number of key areas available for editing.

At least one page if not all should be available for editing so that you can add new content to your site as your business develops. A static site may seem like a nice cheap option but it will cost you in the long run. Especially, if you have to go back to the agency to ask them to make changes. With the ability to edit at least one or more pages the facility to edit the following becomes more critical.

Page titles - these indicate to search engines what is going to be on the page that they are looking at. Make sure you can get into these to make edits to the titles otherwise it will be difficult to stay ahead of the competition if they are making changes.

Meta Descriptions - this is what appears in the search engine results page and is a users call to action.

Meta Tags - These further allow you to flag to search engines what they are going to find on the page. Although these are now seen as less important (due to abuse) a consistent message across titles, meta data and content is important.

Recently I was speaking with a company that didn’t have access to these features as standard through their site and they were now looking at a large bill to add these changes. Make sure you get these as standard.

Posted in SEO, eBusiness | No Comments »

Google sites

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

It has been pointed out that the example link has been removed by the website. I wasn’t aware that this occurred. Are you happy to proceed without having seen this?

Software development projects can be a tricky business at the best of times, but if you throw in a virtual team, some time differences and possibly different cultures and there is definitely some cause for concern.

The following can be applied to any business project and is more about making use of ebusiness activities rather than software development.

Projects require a massive amount of communication depending on the number of stakeholders involved. The bigger and more complex the project the greater the number of stakeholders. Equally the larger the project team. Developing communication within the project team is critical and ensuring everyone has all the communication can be a challenge. If the project is over an extended period there is a danger that one member of the team may leave or be off sick. It then makes it difficult to get new project team members up to speed.

Recently I have used Google sites to overcome these issues, providing a free collaboration space for developing your project it offers small businesses a great way to communicate as a team.

In my case all project documentation has gone on to the site and designs for websites are uploaded as pages. This then ensures that everyone is working from the latest documents, plus you can add comments or questions against screens or documents. It is key that all questions that would usually occur in emails are captured in the site. This provides a stored conversation that other or new team members can reference at a later date. It also prevents side conversations occurring. The whole thing is searchable which makes it easy to find things and like a wiki people can add to it as they like. (Although various admin rights can be granted)

The project team have liked it as a collaboration tool and the consensus is that it has really helped with the communication. It also notifies people when changes occur so no one is left in the dark about updates to the project.

You don’t have to use Google there are other options, but as an out of the box solution it has worked well so far. I will probably start to use the same function to collaborate with clients in the near future as we operate an open and honest policy.

Posted in communication, eBusiness, projects | No Comments »

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