Blog - Archives May 2012

Top 5 iPad apps to help you manage your website

28 May 2012

For web startups in today’s world, technology has certainly helped curb the burden of yesteryear. Even when speaking in terms of Dotcom businesses specifically, the last decade has ushered in a wave of advancement unlike any witnessed before. Creating a website today and managing your business is made easier with a wide assortment of tools, like iPad applications.

Managing a website requires knowledge, the correct platform, and the right tools. With an app to assist in the management,  the platform and the tools are taken care of, and the amount of knowledge needed is reduced. In other words, if you use the right applications and tools for a web business, starting and maintaining a business website is something that anyone can do, no longer a skill confined to those with degrees in computer science and years of experience.

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Why Drupal is a lot better than Wordpress

25 May 2012

Getting into web business is a risky venture today not so much because of the difficulty involved with building and maintaining websites, but actually because it’s so simple to start that the competition is insanely dense. Thanks to content management systems like WordPress and Drupal, the average Joe or Jane would-be web entrepreneur can now easily design and integrate and manage websites like professionals.

If you’re in web business and are looking for a content management system, you may be wondering which of the big two to go with. Although there are many, many more to choose from, WordPress and Drupal are pretty much the industry standards for the time being, and when lined up side by side, Drupal seems to win out over WordPress in a big way. Here’s why.

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What is internal navigation in web design

23 May 2012

As a newcomer to online business, one of the first things you need to worry about, long before funneling traffic and playing strongly to your niche, is the actual website which will house your product or service. Websites are almost literally a dime a dozen in today’s marketplace, and while simplicity certainly does sell, as evidenced by the dominance of social media sites, any site you construct needs to appeal to people and operate seamlessly.

For the time being, you can put your immaculate images, fancy Flash features and purple prose up on the shelf. Before you go adding these different aspects of your website, you first need to decide how they’re going to play off of one another. You need to categorize and streamline. You need to work on the internal navigation of your website. Below, we will discuss some of the finer points of internal navigation.

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Is your website a sales system or just a brochure?

21 May 2012

In building websites to sell products online, there’s a huge misconception out there about products selling themselves. Perhaps if you have the brand recognition of Apple or Coca-Cola you may find that products sell relatively easily, but once you examine the “why” behind it, you quickly realize that these huge companies have spent millions of dollars—if not billions—creating and maintaining that brand.

The truth of the matter is that online entrepreneurs have been getting bad information for well over a decade, and the end result is that their websites are set up to function much more like brochures rather than legitimate, sustainable, self-functioning sales systems.

Think about a grocery store circular or tourist information in a new city you visit. It’s somewhat appealing. It’s certainly new and therefore momentarily intriguing. It’s helpful, if only because you wanted to know about the subject before you picked up the brochure. But it’s not exciting; it doesn’t grab your attention and identify a solution to a problem. Unfortunately, this is the common website out there: Insipid, unclear and uninspiring. It’s a brochure, not a sales system.

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What is a personal brand and how does it affect your online business?

18 May 2012

As you begin to learn more about how to be a successful player in the realm of online business, you are undoubtedly going to hear a lot about branding. To explain what a brand is, what it does, how it’s built up and how incredibly fragile it is, just look at a large corporation like McDonald’s. That name alone—that brand—says everything you need to know about the importance of a brand. However, that’s strictly a business brand; it’s not a personal brand.

When you’re getting into the makeup of a personal brand, you’re dealing with a different monster entirely. For the difference between a company brand and a professional brand, you can look at the difference between Bill Gates and Microsoft. One may assume that the brands are interchangeable, because they tie in together, but they’re actually completely different. Mr. Gates’ personal brand, while it has benefited Microsoft in numerous ways, is a wholly separate entity.

His personality, his solo campaigning, his likes and dislikes, his opinions on things – you can liken this to what your personal presence may be online. As you might imagine,having a personal brand can either help your business or act as detrimental to your business. But as long as you’re branding correctly, the two, though separate, will be intertwined.

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Why you need to research your competition

16 May 2012

One of the more daunting aspects of online business that startups deal with is that fact that no matter how original they think they are, they find a lot of competition out there in their respective niche. Even if you’re catering to a niche inside of a larger niche, you’re going to find that you’re dealing with some competitors. No one has the market cornered online, and if you did, you would find that there’s not much of a market at all.

But instead of shying away from the competition, the smart business startups seize the opportunity and actually learns from their competition. If you’re willing to put in the time and effort in order to thoroughly research those guys offering similar products and services, you can leverage your position in the market in a big way.

Here are some of the top reasons that you need to start researching your competition early and often.

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What is brand planning and how does it help your business?

14 May 2012

Do you know what you’re going to name your website yet? Let’s say, for a moment, that you’re deciding on MyNewBusiness.co as your site and business name. Now, let the good times roll. The traffic should be here any minute. Yep. Any minute now…

Oh, no one’s showed up yet? That’s because no one knows who you are. You first have to traffic your business. More importantly, however, you first have to build your brand. And to build a successful brand, you first have to plan the motions.

To sum up what brand planning is, you can think of it like marketing your business as to the point and as positively as possible. Some of the steps in getting your brand out there will undoubtedly include: Defining your mission statement, defining your business metrics and market goals, targeting the right market, evaluating the competition, testing and tracking your brand, and making the necessary tweaks.

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Do you have a digital strategy that works?

11 May 2012

Most of what you’re going to find in business deals directly with strategizing. This is really a phase of business that never ends. You will strategize during the conceptual phase of your business. You will again strategize when launching your business. You strategize to traffic, to leverage your business, to get more leads and customers. You strategize for the long-term success of your brand. In fact, there is not one single aspect of your business that doesn’t correlate directly to some strategy. To that end, you need to make sure you have the proper strategies in place, like a digital strategy.

A digital strategy is imperative for any online business. What is a digital strategy? In the context of the Internet in 2012—the social context of networking—a digital strategy is ultimately an approach that will guide your business from conception to launch and thereafter, harnessing the power of the Internet and enabling you to operate a fluent, successful business via this medium.

Now, for the big question: Do you have a working digital strategy? If you’re planning on launching an online business, then it’s obvious that you do have a digital strategy, even if you call it by another name. But whether or not it’s a working strategy is another thing entirely. Let’s look at some key tips to implement to ensure that your digital strategy is successful.

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Are you making full use of the cloud? 5 ways you can simplify your life with the cloud

09 May 2012

If you don’t know what the “cloud” is, you may have a difficult time understand it the way it’s explained. To borrow a quote from Wikipedia, this is how one of the web’s top information sites defines the cloud: “Cloud computing is a metaphor used by Technology or IT Services companies for the delivery of computing requirements as a service to a heterogeneous community of end-recipients.”

To really simplify this for proper comprehension, the cloud isn’t a physical thing per se. It’s a network of applications, platforms and infrastructures, delivering the network, storage, communications, security, monitoring, a database, and other computing basics to your device – accessed by your Internet. Since these many different essentials exist separate of each other but are still simultaneously accessed by you, it’s like everything’s floating around up there in a cloud.

Of course, knowing about the cloud is only half the battle. Are you using the cloud to your full advantage? If not, you may be surprised to learn that there are numerous benefits of using the cloud to run your online business.

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Let's review Rackspaces fanatical support promise, does it live up to the hype?

07 May 2012

When it comes to opening up a web business of any type, a website is needed. More often than not, you’re going to find that simply having a free blog is not nearly enough to get the job done. You need flexibility and adaptability. You need to be able to format your site for the mobile market, and you’re probably going to want to get in the cloud as soon as you get your feet under you. This means finding a managed hosting option with plenty of features, an affordable price, and with great support.

This is why a service like Rackspace ranks so highly amongst web business startups. Currently, Rackspace is one of the biggest names in the game, hosting dedicated and shared and virtual servers for nearly 200-thousand businesses. Their cloud hosting is amongst the most highly rated around, claiming to get any business up and running in a matter of minutes, with tons of space, an easy interface and scalability. Most of all, however, Rackspace is prized for its support.

Of course, most of the support hype comes from Rackspace itself, claiming that they offer “fanatical support.” But you wouldn’t expect any company to say otherwise, would you? So, let’s examine Rackspace’s support to see what’s so “fanatical” about it.

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Hot Website Design Trends in 2012

04 May 2012

While internal navigation, SEO and other functionality and traffic-driving aspects of your website may be important, newcomers to the online business scene also need to realize that site design is near the very top of the list. Unique, innovative and original sites get much more attention and inspire much more excitement than bland, overused sites that simply blend in with the fray.

Sites with a touch of original flair consistently appeal to people more than the prefab cookie cutter templates available via your web host’s options. In 2012, there are currently some hot design features trending positive, and with a little bit of original tweaking, you can use one of these trends to stand out above the crowd.

Below, we’ll touch on five different website trends that are currently hot in 2012. These are trends just coming into their own, basically still in their infancy, so you can bet that they’ll be around for years. Getting in on these trends now will ensure that your site separates itself from the rest of the pack.

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