Are You Customers Showrooming?

Showrooming has become an increasingly troubling trend. Customers come to your brick and mortar retail store to see a product, but then buy it online.
Retail Information Systems (RIS) just published some very troubling trends.

• Showrooming drives 50% of online sales.
• 20% of consumers who see a product in a store eventually buy it from an online only retailer
• 15% of consumers eventually purchase the product from a competitor as a result of their research.
• Top 5 Retailers at risk of Showrooming: Bed Bath and Beyond, Petsmart, Toys R Us, Best Buy and Sears.

What does a retailer do to combat this? RIS suggests that retailers design strategies to engage showroomers. For example, price match, provide more delivery options, sell exclusive products, publish their inventory online, and partner with price comparison apps.
Are your customer showrooming your business?
By Barry Moltz

Why Simple Websites Work Best

What is it about simple designs that makes them timeless, functional, and beautiful?
When you’re creating your own website, part of the reason a simple design style is so appealing is that — frankly — it means less work for you. After all, pages that are unfussy, uncluttered and clear are just easier to put together.

But there’s a lot more to it than that. There are three important reasons that you should consider paring down your website’s design elements and embracing simplicity.

1. Simple websites load faster

How fast does your website appear on screen after you land on one of your pages? If it loads slowly, you’ll pay for it. How?

• Visitors will click away impatiently before it loads.
• Your site will come up lower in search results because Google uses site speed as part of its ranking algorithm.
• Many of your pages will never see the light of day.

There’s nothing wrong with images on your site, for example. It’s a good idea to use images in your marketing. But don’t use so many they slow your site down. And be sure they’re optimized to load fast.

2. Simple websites are easier to understand

Imagine living in a dark cave for many months. When you finally emerge after spending so much time below, your first reaction is to notice the blinding light, the variety of colors, the feel of the fresh air on your skin. There are so many sensory experiences happening at once, it’s overwhelming.
People arriving on your website are similarly disoriented. They’re not sure where they are, what they’ve found, or how to get around this new place.
Presenting information in the simplest, most pared-down way possible gives them a chance to get their bearings, adapt to the new environment, and quickly and easily find what they want.
Here are some tips for making your site easy to use, even for brand-new visitors:

• Make your text easy to skim by using lots of subheads to break up the paragraphs of copy.
• Unclutter your sidebar. Feature only the most essential information you need to convey. Consider moving some of your information to your footer, your About page, or elsewhere on your site.
• Use submenus in your navigation to group similar pages together. This will allow you to streamline your navigation menu and make it easier to use.
• Label your navigation items with universally understood terms. This isn’t the place to be cutesy or tricky.

3. Simple websites are a departure from the ordinary

Here’s another reason simple websites are great: by presenting your information simply, your site will stand out from most of the other sites on the web.
Did you ever see a home page that looked like it was designed by committee?
There’s a little of this, a little of that, a splash of the other. It looks like every department in the company was clamoring to be represented.
The result? A page that may make the internal folks feel great, but it’s a mess for the site visitor. They have to wade through way too much to get to what they’re looking for.

That’s why simple can be so surprising. It’s like a breath of fresh air in the midst of a cluttered Internet experience.
By Pamela Wilson

Start a Business After 50 ?

1. Consider your risk tolerance. “Over-50 entrepreneurs need to understand their risk tolerance,” says Denise Beeson, who teaches small-business management at Santa Rosa Junior College in California. “At risk with a startup is losing all of the retirement funds that you may have. Consider a franchise opportunity or a business that is already up and running. Starting from scratch may not be very wise.”
2. Don’t use your retirement funds. Karen Klein of BusinessWeek notes that using retirement funds to start a business could prove disastrous. “If things don’t work out …, not only will you have no income, but you’ll also have no life savings. While desperate people sometimes — understandably — feel they must take desperate measures, make sure you’ve first exhausted all other options.”
Instead, look for funding from a bank, family, friends, or investment funds that are not connected to your retirement. The latter could include a severance package from an old job or vested company stock options.
3. Have a thick skin. Every entrepreneur has to know how to sell — to customers, investors, vendors, and future employees. Stan Kimer, president of Total Engagement Consulting by Kimer, points out that “there will be lots of rejection and obstacles, but a small number of wins can drive a successful business. If 95 percent of my prospects do not call me back or accept my proposals, the 5 percent that do engage me can drive a successful business.”
4. Don’t build the business around yourself. “As we get older, the odds of illness or diminished ability increase. The challenge of the senior entrepreneur is his own mortality,” observes Tom Collins, author and founder of the software company Juris. “He must make himself dispensable or lose everything he has built. He can recruit and/or train his replacement or sell the business. Wait too long to do it and the business along with its value will evaporate.”
In other words, find a partner. This could be a son or daughter or somebody else a generation after you. Not only can they help with the longevity of the business, they may attract a different customer demographic.
5. Get help. Even if you’re starting a business in a field where you have years of experience, running a business involves a new skill set. “I have a mentor at the UTSA Small Business Development Center, and I attend their workshops,” says Vickie Hosek, owner of Senior Sidekick, a business that assists seniors with financial and other tasks. “I also participate in webinars and read senior-oriented publications. I am a member of several professional organizations, which provide the opportunity to network with professionals who also work with seniors.”
6. Enjoy what you do and give back. Craig Wolfe, president of CelebriDucks, a company that makes custom rubber ducks and has been featured on The Tonight Show, says, “I’m 60 and over time, as you age, you become a different person with a different set of values. Doing business becomes less about just making the best deal for you and more about making sure it’s a win-win for both parties. You are also more inspired to use your success to benefit others who can use your mentoring and often your donations.”
By Tim Parker

Entrepreneur, Freelancer or Something else?

If you are self employed or running your own business how do you describe your position to other people? You will be described with different labels by your accountant, your bank manager or others marketing products and services to you. These labels include things like 'Owner Manager', 'Freelancer', 'Entrepeneur', 'Independent Professional'. In the NRG Linkedin Group We've been having an interesting discussion on what people like you are comfortable with and what are the differences between each of these labels. You can follow the discussion at http://lnkd.in/_Nu9Wd. A number of points have emerged in the discussion. If you work on your own then you are probably a freelancer or independent professional. Even if you run a business on your own it may well be that you are effectively creating your own job and the business would not exist without you. If you employ people then you may or may not be an entrepreneur. There is some agreement that the title entrepreneur is misused, and should be used when you are building a business that will scale and make a difference. There is a big difference between working on your own and owning and building a business employing others. You may well not be concerned about it, but consider what Chris Kenber said in the discussion, " It (what you call yourself) matters a lot because the title determines your view of your world and what aspirations you have. If you're not clear about this yourself - you should be!" By Dave Clarke

Make Your Business Look Bigger

A well planned strategy to put your best face forward and appear bigger than you are can help you engage potential customers who may otherwise not give you the time of day. This, in turn, can instantly translate into higher sales conversion. Here are six suggestions on how to make your small business look bigger online.

1. Get a Global Sounding Domain Name

If you have a domain name like phoenixwebdesign.com, this gives the immediate impression that you only service the Phoenix Arizona area–only one region. Try registering a name that gives the impression that you offer your services worldwide. For example, change phoenixwebdesign.com to something like worldclasswebdesign.com.

2. Consider Getting an Aged Domain Name

Most savvy Internet users know how to quickly check how old a domain name is and they may be motivated to do so if they are considering buying something online from an unfamiliar company. If your domain name is two months old, this is a tell-tale sign that you’re a new, and probably a small start-up business. So, if you are just starting out, consider buying an aged domain name, one that’s been around for at least two years, and longer if you find one for sale that fits your business.

3. Make Your Social Media Accounts Look Highly Professional

It can be worth the extra expense to hire a designer to create a custom and professional look for your Facebook page, Twitter page, LinkedIn page, and other social media accounts. You can have a world-class website but if a potential customer clicks on one of your social media links and finds a spartan amateurish page, this will be an instant clue that you are not a large business. On the other hand, you can give the illusion of being a bigger business than you actually are by having a sophisticated, professional looking social media pages.

4. Make Sure Your Social Media Accounts Have Thousands of Follows

Another sure sign that your business is small potatoes is when your social media accounts have a small number of followers, especially if they aren’t very active. You may want to hire a social media specialist to work on increasing the number of followers on your social media accounts through a content marketing strategy. It should include a game plan to engage the dedicated users you have to participate in a more active discussion under your account. Ask for their opinion to get the dialog going.

5. Send Out Professional Press Releases

Big businesses tend to send out professional press releases all the time. You can too, regardless of how big your business is. You can use PRweb.com or other similar sites to send out press releases at very reasonable prices. You can link to some of these press releases as they get posted around the Internet.

6. Hire a Professional To Design Your Website

Many online small businesses start out designing their own websites. However, unless you are truly exceptional at web design, this usually shows. Some people use professional templates as a short-cut and to save money. However, these templates get used by a lot of sites and internet users can quickly recognize a template that is used a lot. It’s a sign that your business isn’t very big because bigger business almost always have a custom designed website. So, if you want to appear like a bigger business, consider hiring a professional to design your site and give you a truly custom look.
By Alisha Webb

In Love With Your Product?

You Might Be Too In Love With Yourself--and Your Product

5 simple rules to start viewing your business as a potential customer does.

It is far too easy to fall in love with something you are close to. That’s often the explanation for marketing initiatives that fall flat. Too many ideas, product launches and even ad campaigns have died a painful death because of the inability of the creators to step back and view them critically.
Authors Chip and Dan Heath, masters of insight into the workings of the business mind, call this phenomenon the “spotlight effect:” focusing so quickly and definitively on the idea you have coalesced around that you fail to see other directions that may be far better.
It’s not that hard to avoid the spotlight effect, but it does require a shift in perspective. You have to turn the lens from your perspective as a marketer to the times you are a consumer. Think about how many things you see every day that make you wonder, “What were they thinking?” That’s the last thing you want someone to say about you. So apply your own consumer behavior to your marketing decisions. Step back and look at yourself through the lens of “Consumer You.” Here’s how to start.
Make it fast. Let’s face it, the average consumer has the attention span of a gnat on Red Bull. They really don’t care about the detailed workings of your product; you either have them or don’t in 10 seconds. Can you articulate your product and its core benefit in that amount of time? Would it catch “Consumer You’s” attention if you saw it on TV playing in the background while you were also surfing the web and tweeting from your iPad? If not, you need to re-think things.
Make it simple. It never ceases to amaze me how frequently marketers design products because they’ve “always done it that way.” The results are never pretty. We recently got proposals for some IT services and most of what we got back was beyond comprehension--including one quote with a whole bunch of line items that made no sense coupled with a discount of around 70 percent on only certain elements. Instead of making things make sense, they chose to give me something that I could never possibly understand. Next…
Make it BS-free. We all have that internal BS meter that rings loudly when we hear unsubstantiated claims and promises that are too good to be true. The term “where’s the beef” entered the cultural lexicon because it was grounded in truth. Make sure you have credible, factual claims that would convince you--“Consumer You"--that the things you are promising are as good as you claim.
Know what you’re up against. Go to your website. Now open three more: your two biggest competitors and the hottest smaller company in your space. Presented with nothing but the facts on your screen, would you choose your own product? Is it competitively priced? Does it deliver superior benefits that “Consumer You” can relate to? Is this a company “Consumer-You” would REALLY rather do business with? Consumers look at more than one choice, so you should too. If the answer to these questions is no, re-think more than just your site.
Do your homework. I was in the Apple Store the other day looking at covers for my new iPad mini. While viewing options on the shelf, I started searching for reviews on each model. I’m not the only one. A recent study by Weber Shandwick found an astounding 65 percent of potential consumer electronics purchasers are inspired by a consumer review to select a brand that wasn't in their original consideration set. So, do your homework. Look at others’ comments as though you’re a potential customer. Would you buy once you’ve read them?
By Scott Elser and INC Magazine

New Customers Only ???

We all hear those commercials and ads that offer super special deals for different products and services but only for new customers. All of the regular loyal customers have to hear this and get NOTHING? Is this company saying we don't care about loyalty and just want new customers? If you have been a regular customer or client don't you think you should get the best deal over any new customer? Maybe it's time to change where we purchase since we get no respect.

Does being a loyal customer not mean anything anymore in business? Are you being penalized for not changing where you buy things? This is what many large businesses are doing to their customers and thay don't care if you know about it. A small business can take those customers and reward the loyalty they show. The cost of getting a new customer is always much more than the cost of providing excellent Customer Satisfaction so why is big business doing it? Show your loyal customers that you care about them and give them the best offers or AT LEAST the same as any new ones are getting.

Barr is a speaker, international author and business coach. www.idealetter.com