Small Business Tips and Advice

With email marketing, you have only a few seconds to grab readers' attention. Here's how to make every second count so you can get readers to open, read and click on your email marketing campaigns. 1. Use a short but informative subject line. "Subject lines, more than anything ... (more...)

There are few service providers (except perhaps for lawyers) who are the subject of more derision than Web hosting providers. Indeed, ask any three business owners who have used the same Web hosting company (or read any online reviews) and you're likely to get very different ... (more...)

If your website isn't optimized to be viewed on mobile devices, you could be losing out on potential customers and sales. Need a reason to go mobile? How about 234 million of them? That's the number of Americans who were using mobile devices as of December 2009, and that number is ... (more...)

Adding search-engine optimized (SEO) video to your web- or e-commerce site can not only help you stand out from the crowd, it can increase traffic to your site and improve sales. Indeed, according to studies conducted by Forrester Research, having an SEO video on your e-commerce site increases your ... (more...)

To be successful at attracting new customers, today's small business owners need a multi-faceted, multi-channel customer acquisition strategy that targets prospective customers where they surf, exchange information and shop. While there are many ways to do this, the following five strategies are highly effective, inexpensive (or free) and any ... (more...)

If you're not happy with your current ecommerce service provider or solution, or are in the process of launching an ecommerce business, consider BigCommerce, a new hosted ecommerce service that bills itself as "the world's easiest to use ecommerce software." Released in Beta this past June and officially launched ... (more...)

In mid-June, when computer maker Dell announced it had earned $3 million in revenue from using Twitter, a popular micro-blogging site, the Internet and blogosphere were all atwitter about the news. Finally, proof that social media had the potential to not only increase traffic but also sales. Though ... (more...)

Turning away work -- saying no to a project or firing a client -- is never easy, especially in tough economic times like these when many small businesses are struggling to stay afloat. But sometimes it is necessary, for both your business and your sanity. If you do not have the ... (more...)

According to new research from Guidance, an e-commerce solution provider based in California, people like the websites they regularly visit to provide them with some sort of social interaction, whether it's customer testimonials, consumer-generated content like product reviews, live chat, or a message board where they can chat or ... (more...)

I always love to read or hear about personal success stories, particularly when they involve women who followed their passions. Over Thanksgiving break, during a trip to Chicago, I met one such woman, Valerie Beck, and got to experience her business, Chicago Chocolate Tours, first hand and speak with ... (more...)