5 Reasons There’s Never Been aBetter Time to Start a Business Mike Armour This is the greatest time in history to start a small business. Sure, money for startups is not easy to come by. The economy, while technically in … Continue reading
Category Archives: Internet
The header of every web page should contain a description of the page within a meta tag. When the page is displayed in a browser, this description never appears. Therefore, web programmers are sometimes inclined to dash off a description of the page rather hurriedly.
But when your page shows up in search engine research, the first 156 characters of the description meta tag are reproduced right below the name of your site. If you write your description tags enticingly enough, you can use these two free lines to draw people into your web site.
So see the description as free promotion of your site by Google. And take the time to carefully craft an engaging description for each page, a description that pulls people magnetically into your site.
Web designers increasingly turn to video to tell their story. They know that internet users are now conditioned to glean much of their information about products and services from visual presentations. Done professionally, however, online video demands resources which may be beyond the capabilities of a small startup. However, SlideShare videos embedded on a web site provide much of the impact of video and can be produced with nothing more than PowerPoint software.
You can think of SlideShare as the slideshow equivalent of YouTube. It’s a searchable site, which people use for research on hundreds of topics. For research, in fact, SlideShare has certain advantages over YouTube. With an actual video you must watch for several minutes before you know whether (or how well) it’s going to address your concern. With a slideshow, you can quickly navigate through the content and determine its usefulness.
Even though its relatively simple, from a technical viewpoint, to create online slideshows, they need to be designed and created with care.
They must be visually engaging, concise,and easy to follow. And users must be able to navigate the entire presentation in three minutes or less.
In addition, the small display size of the slideshow in typical web page configurations requires larger font sizes, fewer words, and close attention to spacing and margins.
Online slideshows provide a simpler and less costly alternative to video producing for telling your story in images on web pages. Slideshows do not require expensive equipment or elaborate editing software, as is the case with video. And they are far less time-consuming to produce.
Since these slideshows can be created in PowerPoint and uploaded to free sharing sites, slideshows can be created with minimal expense and a limited investment of time.
Thus, for cash-strapped startup businesses, online slideshows may be a preferable alternativein creating a rich graphic presence on their website.
Continue readingAre you thinking of selling goods or services online? Or have you started that process, only to find yourself confused by all of the terminology, acronyms, regulations, and fees associated with credit card processing? You’re not alone.
In this article I walk you through the behind-the-scenes process of accepting online payments. My goal is to clarify how the pieces of this process fit together. That way you can make more informed decisions in creating your online platform.
If you’re an encore entrepreneurs without a website, I want to show you how simple and how essential it is to create one. When I started my business in 2001, the smartest thing that I did in the first three months was to develop a website. Over the years this one move has paid immeasurable dividends and brought me untold new business. It’s simply short-sighted to do business today without a web presence.
Continue readingIn setting up a website for a new business, one of the most difficult tasks is finding a good name for the site. Untold millions of people have bought domain names ahead of you. There is a great likelihood, therefore, … Continue reading
In the previous issue I emphasized how vital it is for startups to brand themselves proactively from the very beginning. This article continues the discussion of branding by examining some of the tools that you use in establishing your brand.
Continue readingThe business plan for every startup should include a strategy for capturing email addresses sooner rather than later. Despite the rising use of texting and all of the grumbling about spam, email marketing done well remains a powerful tool. In … Continue reading