New York SBDC Research Network

By Beth Thouin From Web.com Consumers are now doing more research before they buy, so making an investment in your small business website is an absolute must. With 56% of online shoppers and 45% of brick and mortar shoppers reading reviews before purchasing, their expectation is that they’ll be able to self-serve and get many of their questions answered during their research phase. This means your website needs to be modern and give consumers what they want — information to qualify their buying decisions. The most essential part of your business is its purpose and similarly, your website has to clearly express this purpose. Your business and your website need to thoughtfully address the needs of your visitors, and the best small business websites have this practice down from the start. Before you buy your domain, make sure it was never used in the past for purposes you don’t want to associate your business with. Some domains already have a bad spam score once purchased, and ...

From Small Business Administration ,Anita Campbell, Guest Blogger There are certain pages every website can’t be without. A small business’s site needs to give visitors what they are most likely to be looking for. If you’re getting a website together for your small business or reinventing an existing site, take a look at the five essential pages every small business website needs. We include three other recommended pages as well. Homepage Your homepage is the virtual lobby of your business, the first thing people notice when they visit the site. It’s therefore vital that your homepage presents your business in a professional and engaging light. Make a great first impression! As research from the Neilsen Norman Group highlights, you have less than 10 seconds to convey your value proposition. Get to the point about what your business is about. Keep words concise, punchy and compelling to hook visitors and get them to explore deeper into your site. About Us People (includi...

Obtained from: MarketingProfs Welcome to 2018, the year you need to update your website's look and functionality for two business-critical reasons:  legal compliance   and   user respect and trust. The latter is probably long overdue and has been hindering conversions; the former, a long time coming, is looking to become an immediate concern. The problem? Businesses that set up a website many years ago and have done few, if any, modifications since. They may have updated to integrate new forms of payment or to manage inventory in a more timely manner, but that's usually the extent of it. If that describes your business, then your site is doing a disservice to your business and your customers—and, potentially, your bottom line, because they are non-compliant at a time of looming enforcement of standards and legislation. * * * These are all but the tip of the iceberg of changes that are coming to Web design in the very near future. Voice-command integration, engaging...

From Marketing Profs : Many components of content marketing are controllable and predictable. But you know what isn't? Your audience's response. Surprises are the one thing you can count on. So, what can you do when a piece of content you've created simply doesn't produce the right results? Based on our experience, there's a lot you can do. In fact, with most content, the post-publishing optimization process can improve an article's performance significantly. Examples we've come across are as simple as a piece that was too long and made users drop off, or one, which tested readers' knowledge of a topic, had too many questions about other, unrelated subjects, leading to frustration. Some situations are more complex and harder to spot, such as an article with a positive headline but a negative tone in the content itself, or any kind of mismatch between the way an article is being promoted and the substance it in fact provides. All of those issue...

The planning. The design. The writing. The programming and testing. Building a website can take hundreds of hours of work over months of time. And then, finally, it's live. The result of all that effort depends on a lot of little things. And some of those little things can often hurt the result—big time. Some common mistakes have big consequences, but they're also fixable. And some of those fixes are easy. This article is about a list of five mistakes that can cause big problems but have easy fixes. Note: The screenshots in this article are from sites that make big mistakes, but to protect their identities we've obscured their logos. Mistake 1: Homepage Headline Hints Read more from Marketing Profs

Now that you've decided to build a website for your small business (congratulations, BTW), there’s no room or reason for procrastination. Right now, your potential customers are on their smartphones, tablets and computers looking for products or services like yours. The facts don’t lie: -- At least 85 percent of today’s consumers use the Internet to find local products and services. -- More than one-third of U.S. smartphone owners use their phones to find store locations online. -- And people used their phones, tablets and desktops to shop online to the tune of more than $70 billion in 2013. Most likely, your competitors are already online. You’re losing out if you’re not. Of course you’re busy. More from America's SBDC

From Real Business : A new study has revealed that 59 per cent of Britons would not use a company that had obvious grammatical or spelling mistakes on its website or marketing material, and 82 per cent would not use a company that had not correctly translated its material into English. The research, conducted by Global Lingo, polled 1,029 UK adults on their online purchasing and browsing habits. *** Wonder how Americans would react?

Consider this: There are about 700 million websites. But to most of us, only a tiny fraction of those sites exist because we jump from bookmark to bookmark, scanning our favorite homepages and refreshing our feeds. People are loyal to websites that draw them in because, simply put, the majority of those 700 millions sites are just plain bad. Of millions of websites analyzed by Marketing Grader, a whopping 72% received a grade of 59 out of 100 or below, which essentially means 72% of websites are failing to attract new visitors and convert leads. Marketers everywhere are asking, "Why do so many websites fall short?" Read more from Marketing Profs You never get a second chance to make a first impression. That’s why your homepage is undoubtedly one of the most important pages on your website. For any given company, the homepage is its virtual front door -- and face to the world. If a new visitor doesn't like what they see, their knee-jerk reaction is to hit th...

The phone’s ringing off the hook, your only employee didn’t show up today and your website and email just crashed. It’s another hectic day in the life of a busy entrepreneur. Someday, you’ll be able to take a day off – maybe even a whole week! But that won’t be anytime soon. Until you can afford to pay higher wages, you may be stuck with that one deadbeat employee. But you don’t have to put up with your website being unreliable. The problem is most likely your Web host, so if you’re not getting what you need, it’s time to make a change. As you begin your search for a website host, take advantage of resources available to you as a small business owner. More from SmallBusinessNewz .

From MoneyWatch : According to VeriSign (VRSN), more than 6 million domain names were added to the Internet in the fourth quarter of 2012, bringing the total number of registered domain names to more than 252 million worldwide. Somewhere in those hundreds of millions of names may be one you really want, one that appears to be unused or for sale. Countless domains are bought and "stocked" by aftermarket resellers, and others are bought by prospective users who never wind up doing anything with them. The aftermarket domain business can be tricky and frustrating -- sometimes you can't even get as far as finding and contacting the current owner. So what do you do when you see a URL out there that you'd like to buy and know or believe might be for

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) launched a new web page and blog dedicated to educating small business owners about the Affordable Care Act. The new tools will serve as a gateway for small business owners connecting them with information provided by SBA’s federal partners responsible for implementing the law, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "The Affordable Care Act provides small business owners with access and opportunity to provide affordable health care options for their employees," said SBA Administrator Karen G. Mills. "SBA’s new Affordable Care Act web page and blog will serve as a resource for small business owners who want learn more about how to take advantage of these benefits." The Affordable Care Act has many beneficial measures specifically for small businesses, including slowing premium cost growth and increased access to quality, affordable health insurance. SBA’s new web page, www.sba.gov/heal...

From The Information Advisor : "our monthly review of the best business research sites we’ve come across. We know how hard it is—well, even impossible—for anyone to keep up with all the new business sites that appear daily, let alone take the time to check each out and determine which are worth remembering. So we’re doing this work for you—and it’s free!"

Consumer-Rankings.com "performed in depth research on the leading web hosting service providers." It "compared their pricing, features, bandwidth and storage space, ease of use, customer support and more to help you determine which hosting provider is right for your personal or small business website. According to our 2010 logs and stats , 59% of our visitors preferred iPage .For a quick overview of the most popular web hosting services click here ."

WASHINGTON – As part of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s mission to ensure that small business owners and entrepreneurs have access to accurate, timely and helpful information, SBA Administrator Karen Mills today unveiled a newly re-designed SBA website. The new site also features the launch of SBA Direct, a dynamic new web tool with a variety of personalization features that will help small businesses start-up, succeed and grow. ...SBA Administrator, Karen Mills said, “While the SBA website has traditionally been an information-rich site, we wanted to make it easier for small business owners to navigate. With the new improved SBA.gov , business owners can access the answers they need, specific to their business profile, in an instant – it truly presents the face of the future of SBA.” While the site features a variety of enhancements including a full re-design, new content, and improved navigation, the centerpiece is a dynamic new web tool called SBA Direct. SBA Direct allows...

The SBA is conducting a complete overhaul of its website to make it easier for small business owners to find the information they need. The agency recently launched “The NEXT SBA.gov," a transition site dedicated to sharing its redesign progress with employees, small business owners, agency partners and other agency stakeholders. You can find the site at www.sba.gov/NEXT . The site includes a link to Frequently Asked Questions which provide more details about goals of the redesign. Feel free to submit comments and suggestions using the “What Do You Think?” box at the bottom of the site.

From onlineclasses.org: If you’re preparing for a career in the business world, you’re undoubtedly devoting a lot of time and effort to your schoolwork, internships and networking. But keeping up with business news is equally important, and these websites can help you apply what you learn in class to real-world situations, from the stock market, to international business, to starting up your own company to social media marketing. Here are 100 best websites for your business news and know-how . The list includes General Media (Forbes, Fortune), Blogs (the Curious Capitalist), Social Media (Fast Pitch, PartnerUp), Stock Market and Finance (CNNmoney, Business Index), Entrepreneurship (Entrepreneurship.org, SBA), Business Education (Harvard Business Publishing, MIT Sloan School of Management), Tips, Tools and Tutorials (All Things Workplace, Business Owner’s Toolkit), Career (Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist, Wisconsin School of Business Careers), and my favorite, of course, Green Busines...

Here's an article that appeared in yesterday's "Small Business" section on CNNMoney's website, titled " What's Your Idea Worth? " It features a website called the USA National Innovation Marketplace , the result of a partnership between the Manufacturing Extension Partnership and Planet Eureka!, the website of a consulting firm started by a private entrepreneur named Doug Hall. There are no shortage of matchmaking sites on the web. The stated innovation of this site is its use of a proprietary business simulation system known as Merwyn. In the words of the article, it "uses algorithms and human analysts to estimate the business potential of new product designs". The site also presents descriptions of inventions in plain language, avoiding the "geekspeak" that is an occupational hazard (and hindrance) to those seeking manufacturers of their creations. The site also enables manufacturers to seek technologies that will enable them...

I came across this article by Jeff Wuorio. "When it comes to your company's Web site, there's no shortage of advice on what you absolutely have to have there. But little is often said about those elements that should never see the light of day." Wuorio lists his nine items and the reasons. I'm going to give my observations about his major points. 1. Your photo on the home page. Interesting. Feels right. Heck, I don't even have my photo on my personal blog. 2. Visual (and audio) overkill. I HATE sites that start music as soon as I go to them. Partly, it's because I'm usually already listening to music. Partly, it's because their music is usually treacle. It happens a lot at music and wedding-related sites I go to. Sites that take too long long to load, I abandon relatively quickly. Virtually all studies suggests my reaction is the norm. 3. Too many confusing menu options. I took this website design one-day course once - I was visiting a friend in M...

Who said that building a website has to be a complicated thing? I was interested to read Jennifer Shaheen's article at Entrepreneur.com, " Build a Website in Blog's Clothing ," where she discusses how using a blogging platform can be used to set up a small business web presence. The blog format can offer just about everything a website needs: up-to-date content, search engine visibility, a way to communicate with customers, and plug-ins and add-ons a plenty (for an example, look at all the extras we have running on the right side of this blog.) Best of all, it's free. The blog format takes the newest posts and pushes them to the top, which is great for providing upcoming news and events. But you can also create posts with more permanent content, for example, your contact info. Just build a link to that post into one of your sidebars, and it will always be visible.

The website USA.gov , "Government made easy", has added Web 2.0 tools to the portal: a governmentwide news feed service, a gallery of online gadgets, and a word cloud that depicts the most popular online government content. The Government News Aggregator lets users receive consolidated news and information from across the federal government, delivered through RSS feeds. The Government Gadget Gallery is a collection of gadgets and widgets organized by topic and created by subject-matter experts, which can be embedded in home pages, blogs, and other sites. USA.gov Word Cloud allows one to see at a glance which key words are most often searched.