Small Business Owners: Are you using E-Commerce to Grow Sales?

January 3, 2014

Shopping Cart
E-Commerce sales continue to grow at rapid pace. Online retailers such as Amazon and eBay have been growing at double digit rate for the last several years and are expected to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Traditional brick and mortar retailers have recognized this trend and have started to take aggressive actions to increase their online presence. Every single retailer is focusing on integrating traditional and online shopping with the ability to order for online items right from the store and return items purchased online to the store.

Small business owners can benefit equally well by including ecommerce channel with their traditional operations. As I will explain below, when you consider what is required to set up the ecommerce operation and the resources available to do so, it becomes a no brainer to set up an online store. You can improve sales by tapping into this additional channel to get customers who otherwise would not visit your traditional store.

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Filed Under: Sellers, Technology Tagged With: ,

How to Bring out the Best in Your Employees

January 2, 2014

How to bring out the best in your employees
No business owner or leader wants to hire mediocre employees. They all want the best employees to work for them – those who will provide best customer service, develop the best products, and in doing so help the business grow. The reality is it doesn’t quite work out this way. It starts with hiring a really good employee, who is eager to learn new things and contribute to the business. After some time, however, this passion starts to fizzle out and the employee gets stuck in the rut of doing everyday chores. The end result is the business owner doesn’t get what he had hoped when he hired the employee.

So, what motivates employees to continue giving their best to their employers? What can business owners do to bring out the best in their employees so it creates a win-win for both employees and employers? Here are some tips.

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Benefits of Outsourcing IT Support for Small Business

December 21, 2013

Benefits of Outsourcing IT Support for Small Business
Yesterday I went to a store to buy an electronic toy that cost about $100. When I went to the checkout the clerk told me their computer systems were down. Either I would have to wait for up to 30 minutes for them to fix it or come back later. What? Who has time to wait for 30 min or go back again in this busy Christmas season? Needless to say he lost my sales along with the sales from many other customers like me. Such is the important of having reliable computer system in your business. When it works well it can help businesses tremendously, but when it goes down it can result in lost sales, unhappy customers and lost productivity.

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Filed Under: Technology Tagged With:

Why your Business Needs to have a Website

December 20, 2013

Why your business mush have a website
As a small business owner if you have not yet created a website then you have been leaving in cave for some time or just don’t care about improving your business and sales. The internet revolution of the last decade has enabled all kinds of businesses to develop web presence. It is becoming easier to create and operate websites to the point where even 10 year old can do it within hours. It used to cost thousands of dollars several years ago to create a presence on the web. That is not the case anymore. You can setup and operate a website for as little as hundred dollars now. So why do you need to have a website?

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Flash Marketing – The Power of One Day Events

December 20, 2013

Flash marketing
Few marketing events provide as much return on investment as flash event where you select a theme and arrange entertaining and engaging program to match the theme housed within an elegant venue. You can find examples of this type of events during new product launches or major corporate announcements. The surprise factor resulting from the event theme can generate lot of buzz and media coverage. The more out of ordinary and intriguing the event the better media coverage and higher return on your investment you will receive.

The key to success for this type of events is to plan in advance and create a theme that highlights the message you are trying to deliver. In addition, you need to have a surprise for the participants and media so that when they finally come across it their mouths are wide open and can’t stop posting the pictures on social media and they keep telling their friends about it long after the event is over. So, how can you plan and execute such an event? Read on to find the tips.

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Recycling – Good for Environment, Good for Business

December 19, 2013

Recycling
Recycling is one of those initiatives everyone agrees is wants to do, yet few fail to follow through. They believe it takes too much effort and, in some cases, costs more than it is worth to do. This is a wrong assumption. While no one can argue about the benefits of recycling to the environment, its benefits to the business bottom line are equally convincing.

Majority of large corporations have adopted recycling. After all, they have many resources available to do this. Small businesses, on the other hand, have been somewhat reluctant due to apparent lack of resources and perceived high cost. While the will has always been strong among small business owners, many have been unable to make a commitment to recycling for these reasons. But as I will show below this does not have to be the case. Here are few compelling benefits recycling provides to businesses, large and small.

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Filed Under: Management Tagged With:

How to Create Optimal Floor Plan for Restaurants

December 17, 2013

How to create optimal floor plan for restaurants
If you had to choose between a restaurant with a nice, quiet ambience with privacy versus a restaurant where people are bumping into each other amid noisy atmosphere where would you take your date for dinner? This is the difference floor plan can make. A good floor plan can create a sense of privacy and quietness in the restaurant. It can also increase the productivity and sales at any restaurant. That’s why you have to pay careful attention to how various sections of the restaurant are laid out.

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Filed Under: Operations Tagged With: ,

Running a Successful Internet Cafe Business

December 17, 2013

Internet cafe
If you want to start your own business, perhaps you should consider the internet cafe sweepstakes business.  The internet cafe business has proven to be lucrative for number of people.  One reason for this is that everyone likes to do things that are fun and exciting and internet café provides just that. The internet sweepstakes business involves internet cafe games that are an engaging way for people to make money. These businesses provide opportunity for people to meet new people and bond.

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Filed Under: Management Tagged With:

Tips for Organizing Your Office to Improve Productivity

December 16, 2013

Tips for organizing your office
Imagine this scenario. You are working in your home office. A client had sent you a contract worth $100,000 to sign and the deadline to send it back is today. You have to read the contract, verify and send it back or lose this biggest contract you will sign for the year. Unfortunately, you just cannot find the contract anywhere. You are trying to call the client to send a duplicate, but he is out on vacation and cannot be reached. What do you do?

For many people who are not organized this scenario plays all too often leading to lost documents and missed opportunities. Good news is it doesn’t take long or much effort to organize your office and be able to find anything you need in a quick second. All you have to do is spend some initial time to get everything in place and then keep at it on a daily basis. Here are some tips on how to organize your office to improve your productivity.

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How can Small Business Attract Young Employees

December 15, 2013

Apprentice Programs
When it comes to hiring employees what do business owners value more – experience or fresh ideas? In other words hiring experienced employees or young ones? Both can be useful in their own right. Experience can help avoid mistakes that someone would make when he doesn’t quite understand all nuances of business. On the other hand fresh ideas are the lifeblood of any business. Without them businesses will not be able to compete in this hypercompetitive world. Many business owners are on the fence about hiring young employees because they think that they are not quite reliable. They tend to make mistakes hurting the business in terms of lost customers and sales. However, as I will discuss below hiring young employees does have its advantages.

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Filed Under: Employees Tagged With: ,