Millennials Are Rewriting the Rules of Work and Entrepreneurship

[Click for full infograph]

What do Millennials want? Flexibility and independence top the list, according to a new study, “Millennials and the Future of Work,” from oDesk and Millennial Branding that polled nearly 2,000 people aged 19 to 30. Here’s some of what the study found, and what it means for your business.

Millennial Workers Want Freedom and Flexibility

Millennial workers want freedom and the flexibility to work how they want.  Many Millennials have a “freelance” attitude. Read More

The post Millennials Are Rewriting the Rules of Work and Entrepreneurship appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Six Secrets to Make an eCommerce Platform More Powerful

Congratulations for your new online store. As you now have an eCommerce website with a finely tuned check out process, you may want to know how to make your eCommerce platform more powerful. More importantly, how to make your customers trust your eCommerce store.

Well, it really depends on your hard work and the resources available. There are a plethora of tips online that can be used to generate buzz in the community about your products and services and it is possible to boost your website sales with customer service strategies.

Fulfilment Structure Should Never Be An Afterthought

For most eCommerce merchants, fulfillment is an afterthought. This is a huge mistake.  A well-structured fulfillment process is important. In a nutshell, if you invest time and money into optimizing the fulfillment process, it will generate more profit. Some of the key fulfillment metrics that all eCommerce merchants should track include:

• Error rates on product shipped.
• Error rates on orders pulled.
• Total time for orders from the time of receipt to shipment.
• The cost of shipping and the rate charged.
• The total time taken to fill an average order.

The following flowchart shows the fulfillment workflow:

Ask your employees for input about where they think the challenging areas are and how to improve them. Measure the overall quality and performance of the fulfillment process to make your business run more smoothly and to provide better customer service.

Concentrate on Filtered Navigation

Filtered or faceted navigation is a combative point for every eCommerce platform. The most convenient, modern approach to filtered navigation is through using AJAX. However, you need to ensure that there is an HTML crawl path to all of the filtered products. Also make sure that you are not hiding any good organic landing pages within the AJAX navigation.

The following are a few rules for a search engine friendly filtered navigation:

• Do not hide an organic landing page from the crawlers.
• Let the crawlers crawl endlessly through filters.
• Robots.txt should be handled carefully while using it as a solution.

Integrate a Sitemap

Site maps help search engines to index your site’s page and augment search engine ranking of your site.  Indexing is a process through which search engines such as Google, process and categorize the pages of your website. Getting your page indexed ensures that your site will show up in the results of internet searches.

To put it simply, a sitemap is a list of your pages in a single page layout. It contains particular information about the different pages that make up your website. With a sitemap, the shopper can click on a product to find the right pages relevant to the topic. This allows them quick and easy navigation of your site. The site map is also beneficial for the search engines. They permit search engines such as Google to check how many pages are on your site.

Get Rid of Distracting Clutter

The majority of online shoppers have a short attention span. Surveys indicate that most Web surfers will not read beyond 200 words of text. The simpler and more streamlined your site looks and functions, the better it works for your shoppers. Web pages stuffed with animation, graphics and links makes the shopper immediately leave and move on to your competitor.

Simplify the Shopping Cart

It is important to consider the crucial elements of your eCommerce site and ensure that they are clear and visible. The “Add to shopping cart” button should be easy to navigate and most importantly, should be displayed prominently on your site.

Shopping Comparison Sites Can Work Wonders

According to research, approximately 68% of online shopping starts at a shopping comparison site. Shopping comparison sites offer an exceedingly cost-effective marketing mechanism as they are the best choice for every eCommerce vendor who has a limited budget.

With shopping comparison sites, you can enjoy prompt access to a larger volume of potential clients. In addition to this, your customers will be presented with your products whenever they are in a position to buy. Most importantly, comparison sites allow exposure and reinforcement of your brand identity.

Various comparison sites ask consumers for a post-sale survey to measure areas like customer service, product quality or ease of shopping. These reviews are displayed to potential customers and help boost the company’s credibility and provide you with an edge over your competitors.

Using the strategies above will ensure a strong eCommerce platform.

eCommerce Photo via Shutterstock

Six Secrets to Make an eCommerce Platform More Powerful

Congratulations for your new online store. As you now have an eCommerce website with a finely tuned check out process, you may want to know how to make your eCommerce platform more powerful. More importantly, how to make your customers trust your eCommerce store.

Well, it really depends on your hard work and the resources available. There are a plethora of tips online that can be used to generate buzz in the community about your products and services and it is possible to boost your website sales with customer service strategies.

Fulfilment Structure Should Never Be An Afterthought

For most eCommerce merchants, fulfillment is an afterthought. This is a huge mistake.  A well-structured fulfillment process is important. In a nutshell, if you invest time and money into optimizing the fulfillment process, it will generate more profit. Some of the key fulfillment metrics that all eCommerce merchants should track include:

• Error rates on product shipped.
• Error rates on orders pulled.
• Total time for orders from the time of receipt to shipment.
• The cost of shipping and the rate charged.
• The total time taken to fill an average order.

The following flowchart shows the fulfillment workflow:

Ask your employees for input about where they think the challenging areas are and how to improve them. Measure the overall quality and performance of the fulfillment process to make your business run more smoothly and to provide better customer service.

Concentrate on Filtered Navigation

Filtered or faceted navigation is a combative point for every eCommerce platform. The most convenient, modern approach to filtered navigation is through using AJAX. However, you need to ensure that there is an HTML crawl path to all of the filtered products. Also make sure that you are not hiding any good organic landing pages within the AJAX navigation.

The following are a few rules for a search engine friendly filtered navigation:

• Do not hide an organic landing page from the crawlers.
• Let the crawlers crawl endlessly through filters.
• Robots.txt should be handled carefully while using it as a solution.

Integrate a Sitemap

Site maps help search engines to index your site’s page and augment search engine ranking of your site.  Indexing is a process through which search engines such as Google, process and categorize the pages of your website. Getting your page indexed ensures that your site will show up in the results of internet searches.

To put it simply, a sitemap is a list of your pages in a single page layout. It contains particular information about the different pages that make up your website. With a sitemap, the shopper can click on a product to find the right pages relevant to the topic. This allows them quick and easy navigation of your site. The site map is also beneficial for the search engines. They permit search engines such as Google to check how many pages are on your site.

Get Rid of Distracting Clutter

The majority of online shoppers have a short attention span. Surveys indicate that most Web surfers will not read beyond 200 words of text. The simpler and more streamlined your site looks and functions, the better it works for your shoppers. Web pages stuffed with animation, graphics and links makes the shopper immediately leave and move on to your competitor.

Simplify the Shopping Cart

It is important to consider the crucial elements of your eCommerce site and ensure that they are clear and visible. The “Add to shopping cart” button should be easy to navigate and most importantly, should be displayed prominently on your site.

Shopping Comparison Sites Can Work Wonders

According to research, approximately 68% of online shopping starts at a shopping comparison site. Shopping comparison sites offer an exceedingly cost-effective marketing mechanism as they are the best choice for every eCommerce vendor who has a limited budget.

With shopping comparison sites, you can enjoy prompt access to a larger volume of potential clients. In addition to this, your customers will be presented with your products whenever they are in a position to buy. Most importantly, comparison sites allow exposure and reinforcement of your brand identity.

Various comparison sites ask consumers for a post-sale survey to measure areas like customer service, product quality or ease of shopping. These reviews are displayed to potential customers and help boost the company’s credibility and provide you with an edge over your competitors.

Using the strategies above will ensure a strong eCommerce platform.

eCommerce Photo via Shutterstock

Small Business Owners File Lawsuit Against IRS Over Obamacare “Power Grab”

Small business owners in states that did not establish healthcare exchanges in advance of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act will be harshly impacted by a recent rule enacted by the Internal Revenue Service. Some small business owners have filed a lawsuit in Federal court over it.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) reports on a lawsuit filed by six small business owners and several individuals against the U.S. government, challenging the IRS rule.   The IRS rule seeks to provide tax credits to people in states that did not opt to create state healthcare exchanges under Obamacare.

CEI noted in a prepared statement last week:

“The Affordable Care Act authorizes health insurance subsidies to qualifying individuals in states that created their own healthcare exchanges. Those subsidies trigger the employer mandate (a $2,000/employee penalty) and expose more people to the individual mandate.  But last spring, without authorization from Congress, the IRS vastly expanded those subsidies to cover states that refused to set up such exchanges.  Under the Act, businesses in these nonparticipating states should be free of the employer mandate, and the scope of the individual mandate should be reduced as well.  But because of the IRS rule, both mandates will be greatly enlarged in scope, depriving states of the power to protect their residents.”

One effect of the lawsuit is to make sole proprietors subject to consequences they otherwise would not be subject to. For instance, Jacqueline Halbig, one of the plaintiffs, is a sole proprietor who says that under the IRS rule she would be subject to paying a penalty for her own coverage.  In the lawsuit she asserts she “will be forced to either pay a penalty or purchase more insurance than she wants.”

Chuck Willey, an MD who also is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement through CEI: “Contrary to the clear language in the Affordable Care Act, government is directly impeding my ability to design a quality affordable health plan for my employees. The IRS will extra-legislatively extend this onerous benefit requirement (which will increase premiums and costs of care) and impose the employer penalty in states with federally-run exchanges. I maintain the right to choose my own employees’ health plan without government intervention into its benefit design and without penalty.”

Thirty-three states have opted not to establish state healthcare exchanges.  Those states that have not established their own exchanges include Wyoming, Wisconsin, Virginia, West Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, South Dakota, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Ohio, North Dakota, North Carolina, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Montana, Missouri, Mississippi, Michigan, Maine, Louisiana, Kansas, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, Delaware, Arkansas, Arizona, Alaska, and Alabama.

The lawsuit is complex, but can be viewed here in its entirety.

Three Consumer Trends In The Mobile Space You Need To Know About

If you haven’t made a mobile website yet, you’re probably still asking yourself whether you should. Considering how the smartphone has penetrated considerably into the consumer market, you now are confronted with a new arena to compete in. But how competitive is the mobile space, really?

Hibu business, a provider of a variety of online services such as online stores and email marketing, has found some trends in consumer behaviors on mobile devices. I’ll take each one apart and discuss it:

• Consumers research online and buy locally. After people finish searching for the best smartphone, TV, or child’s toy, seventy-five percent of these people will go to a local place to buy the product anyway. Making a mobile presence is essential here, since you could attract many local people to come to your store after they’ve found you. A mobile app is especially useful, since you can give people directions to your place of business from where they currently are. Location-based services can help make your business look smarter and more modern than your competition.
• Mobile Battleground. What hibu means by this is that half of all Americans own smartphones, but three quarters of businesses don’t even have mobile-optimized sites. This reflects poorly on businesses and drives people to hit the “back” button on their phones to find another site that is a bit easier on the eyes. The need to zoom in and scroll all over the place can be especially daunting for someone in a hurry!
• Visibility on multiple channels. Here, hibu points to the fact that 87 percent of small businesses do not use display ads on their sites and 90 percent also said that they don’t utilize email marketing. This is a huge opportunity for you, especially considering the amount of mobile devices hooked up to push/IMAP email accounts. Get ads on your site (also get them on your mobile site) and use solutions like hibu or VerticalResponse to get your marketing done!

Is mobile competitive? It surely is! Are businesses taking advantage of it? Only the big ones are. It’s time to do this yourself. Don’t allow your business to fall behind the competition. Getting into the mobile arena may seem like a risky investment, but it’s a very small one that doesn’t require a lot of commitment. What are you waiting for?

Speak to Me: 4 Online Personalization Strategies for Your Business

No matter what they’re shopping for or where the transaction takes place, customers like to feel as though the experience takes their preferences into consideration. This includes online shopping. In fact, conversion rates are typically higher when online personalization is involved.

So how can you create an individual experience for your website visitors that converts more of them into paying customers?

Fortunately, you don’t have to invest a ton of money in sophisticated platforms that track, analyze and respond to your visitors’ every click. There are simple and inexpensive ways to make your customers feel virtually welcome.

Ask Them What They Want

The best practice to find out what your customers really want is to conduct an online survey. Online surveys are everywhere these days, and most people are comfortable filling them out. You can create a survey that lets customers tell you about their preferences as part of your website’s registration process and then use that data to suggest product or service options that match up.

Here’s a quick hint: Keep the survey short. A questionnaire that goes on for pages and pages (or scrolls down forever) is going to lose interest. Many visitors will simply head for a search engine to find a less complicated sign-up process.

Give Them a Voice

As proven by the popularity of social media, people are more influenced by recommendations from peers and friends than by company-driven marketing material. They also have their own opinions they’d like to share with others.

If you don’t already have a system for customer reviews and opinions on your website, consider getting one. Consumer-driven reviews give your company a more personal touch. Include plenty of social sharing tools, so your customers can tell their friends about their great experiences with your business.

Now Featuring: You

Everyone loves a little time in the spotlight. When you showcase not just your products or services, but also your customers, you create a friendly atmosphere that shows there’s more to your business than pixels on a website. You can also stir up your visitors’ competitive spirit by offering a chance to be featured on your site.

Invite your customers to send in their stories, photos and even videos about their experiences with your company, and create a customer-centric area to show off the responses.

Let’s Keep in Touch

Never underestimate the power of the follow-up, especially when it’s personalized. Tracking your visitors’ activity on your website is great, but it’s even better when you contact those visitors and ask helpful questions, such as whether they were able to find what they needed, or if there’s anything else you can do for them.

You should also follow up with customers who have purchased products or services from you, and maintain the personal touch. If the customer had a good experience, don’t be shy about asking for referrals. Most people enjoy sharing positive finds.

It doesn’t take a lot of extra time or money to interact more personally with your online customers, and these changes will help you bring more business to your website.

More customers means the results can be exponential for your profit margins.

Talk to Me Photo via Shutterstock

Speak to Me: 4 Online Personalization Strategies for Your Business

No matter what they’re shopping for or where the transaction takes place, customers like to feel as though the experience takes their preferences into consideration. This includes online shopping. In fact, conversion rates are typically higher when online personalization is involved.

So how can you create an individual experience for your website visitors that converts more of them into paying customers?

Fortunately, you don’t have to invest a ton of money in sophisticated platforms that track, analyze and respond to your visitors’ every click. There are simple and inexpensive ways to make your customers feel virtually welcome.

Ask Them What They Want

The best practice to find out what your customers really want is to conduct an online survey. Online surveys are everywhere these days, and most people are comfortable filling them out. You can create a survey that lets customers tell you about their preferences as part of your website’s registration process and then use that data to suggest product or service options that match up.

Here’s a quick hint: Keep the survey short. A questionnaire that goes on for pages and pages (or scrolls down forever) is going to lose interest. Many visitors will simply head for a search engine to find a less complicated sign-up process.

Give Them a Voice

As proven by the popularity of social media, people are more influenced by recommendations from peers and friends than by company-driven marketing material. They also have their own opinions they’d like to share with others.

If you don’t already have a system for customer reviews and opinions on your website, consider getting one. Consumer-driven reviews give your company a more personal touch. Include plenty of social sharing tools, so your customers can tell their friends about their great experiences with your business.

Now Featuring: You

Everyone loves a little time in the spotlight. When you showcase not just your products or services, but also your customers, you create a friendly atmosphere that shows there’s more to your business than pixels on a website. You can also stir up your visitors’ competitive spirit by offering a chance to be featured on your site.

Invite your customers to send in their stories, photos and even videos about their experiences with your company, and create a customer-centric area to show off the responses.

Let’s Keep in Touch

Never underestimate the power of the follow-up, especially when it’s personalized. Tracking your visitors’ activity on your website is great, but it’s even better when you contact those visitors and ask helpful questions, such as whether they were able to find what they needed, or if there’s anything else you can do for them.

You should also follow up with customers who have purchased products or services from you, and maintain the personal touch. If the customer had a good experience, don’t be shy about asking for referrals. Most people enjoy sharing positive finds.

It doesn’t take a lot of extra time or money to interact more personally with your online customers, and these changes will help you bring more business to your website.

More customers means the results can be exponential for your profit margins.

Talk to Me Photo via Shutterstock

Watch Out LinkedIn, The New Facebook Graph Search Is Coming For Social Recruiting

Watch out LinkedIn! Facebook is coming in on the hiring and recruiting turf!

Facebook’s new Graph Search marks a major change in social recruiting, says enterprise software company, SAP. Employers can now harness their entire Facebook network for recommendations on who to hire. Through phrases (for example: “my friends in New York who like engineering” or “photos liked by java developers in New York”), employers can comb through people, places, photos or other content that’s been shared on Facebook to find the right candidate.

With 92% of employers using social networks for recruiting, Facebook Graph Search is undoubtedly going to impact talent acquisition strategies. But will social collaboration transform recruiting and mark the end of job boards? How much emphasis should employers put on what people post and “like” on Facebook?

LinkedIn made its name as a sort of Facebook for professionals, staying away from the junk the piles up on your Facebook wall or newsfeed and keeping things related to careers and skills. But Facebook is well-placed to snatch some of that market.

The main problem I foresee is that most Facebook users regard Facebook as an extension of their private social lives. The clear demarcations between LinkedIn and Facebook allow users to talk on Facebook as if they’re at a casual party with friends, versus being at a never-ending job interview on LinkedIn. That’s essentially how things break down for me. LinkedIn is for professionalism, Facebook is for connecting with friends, and Twitter is kind of in between.

For more on Facebook’s personal and professional balance, check out our archives. And don’t forget about Ramon Ray’s book, The Facebook Guide To Small Business Marketing.

Let us know in the comments what you think about this new Facebook feature! Will you be using it to find your next hire?

WordPress Dominates Top 100 Blogs

If your business website or blog is using WordPress as its content management system (CMS), you’re in good company. The majority of  the top 100 blogs are using WordPress, says a new study from Pingdom.

Fifty-two percent of the top 100 blogs are currently using WordPress, either hosted or self-hosted, according to an annual study conducted by Pingdom.com. Pingdom gets the top 100 list of blogs from Technorati.

The study notes that the Web and blogging sites, specifically, have changed considerably in the last few years. Pingdom says:

“For many of us, what we used to blog about we now publish to social networks. But there’s also no denying that blogging is not gone. It has, however, changed as has the tools used to publish blogs with. Some, like WordPress, started out as blogging platforms and has taken on more general content management functionality. Others have developed in the opposite direction.”

The 2013 study from Pingdom shows that 4 more of the top 100 are now using WordPress compared with last year. No other single CMS provider even comes close to matching WordPress’ dominance among the top Technorati blogs.

Interestingly, 12 of the top 100 have custom systems created specifically for them. Drupal is the second-most popular blog platform, with 7 of the 100 using it.

But some of the old stalwarts are no longer as popular as in years past, specifically Movable Type, Typepad and Blogger.

Only two of the top five blog sites, including the most popular (The Huffington Post), are using Movable Type for their CMS system.

And while TypePad added two spots in the top 100 and and Google’s Blogger added one, they are still mere shadows of their former place in the lives of bloggers.

Not only is WordPress popular for blogs, but as the report points out, WordPress has taken on a much larger role as a general CMS system. It’s become very popular with small businesses that use WordPress to build their entire websites, not just their blogs. WordPress keeps a running counter of the number of WordPress sites, and reports the total is over 65 million worldwide.

Image: Pingdom.com

WordPress Dominates Top 100 Blogs

If your business website or blog is using WordPress as its content management system (CMS), you’re in good company. The majority of  the top 100 blogs are using WordPress, says a new study from Pingdom.

Fifty-two percent of the top 100 blogs are currently using WordPress, either hosted or self-hosted, according to an annual study conducted by Pingdom.com. Pingdom gets the top 100 list of blogs from Technorati.

The study notes that the Web and blogging sites, specifically, have changed considerably in the last few years. Pingdom says:

“For many of us, what we used to blog about we now publish to social networks. But there’s also no denying that blogging is not gone. It has, however, changed as has the tools used to publish blogs with. Some, like WordPress, started out as blogging platforms and has taken on more general content management functionality. Others have developed in the opposite direction.”

The 2013 study from Pingdom shows that 4 more of the top 100 are now using WordPress compared with last year. No other single CMS provider even comes close to matching WordPress’ dominance among the top Technorati blogs.

Interestingly, 12 of the top 100 have custom systems created specifically for them. Drupal is the second-most popular blog platform, with 7 of the 100 using it.

But some of the old stalwarts are no longer as popular as in years past, specifically Movable Type, Typepad and Blogger.

Only two of the top five blog sites, including the most popular (The Huffington Post), are using Movable Type for their CMS system.

And while TypePad added two spots in the top 100 and and Google’s Blogger added one, they are still mere shadows of their former place in the lives of bloggers.

Not only is WordPress popular for blogs, but as the report points out, WordPress has taken on a much larger role as a general CMS system. It’s become very popular with small businesses that use WordPress to build their entire websites, not just their blogs. WordPress keeps a running counter of the number of WordPress sites, and reports the total is over 65 million worldwide.

Image: Pingdom.com

ICO research finds lack of understanding around EC data protection proposals

Around 87 per cent of businesses are unable to estimate the costs of the draft EC proposals to their business.

According to a survey of 506 businesses by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), there is a clear lack of understanding around the proposed EU data reforms, particularly around estimated cost expenditure on meeting data protection responsibilities under the new law.

The survey also found that 40 per cent of companies do not fully understand any of the ten main provisions being proposed and that none of the survey respondents could accurately describe all of the ten provisions.

It said that this "suggests that a large proportion of companies in the UK do not have a clear grasp of how data protection regulation will change once the EC proposals are enforced".

The ICO's report found that the European Commission estimated that the new legislative framework would bring net savings for economic operators of €2.3 billion, while the Ministry of Justice estimated a net cost to UK business of between £80 million and £320 million per year.

Information commissioner Christopher Graham said: “Few people I've spoken to disagree with the need for an updated European data protection law to better meet the challenges of the 21st century. But to deliver real improvements, it's crucial that legislation is developed that better reflects the way personal information is used today and will be used in the future.

“There has been much talk of ‘what is best for business', but that must be based on valid evidence. This reform is too important for guesswork.

“Today's report is the latest contribution from the ICO to this debate. We'd urge the European Commission to take on board what it says, and to refocus on the importance of developing legislation that delivers real protections for consumers without damaging business or hobbling regulators.”

The ICO said that the research is aimed at strengthening the ICO's efforts to assist business with the implementation of and ongoing compliance with the new regulation, in order to achieve maximum benefits at the least cost to business, while ensuring individuals' privacy rights are upheld.

In a recent SC Magazine webcast, speakers including former information commissioner Richard Thomas claimed that some of the directives, such as 24-hour reporting would not be burdensome, but changes to fines could be a problem.

 

5 Tips to Declutter Your Business Website and Social Media Content (Infographic)

Spring is synonymous with spring cleaning our homes. But have your ever considered spring cleaning for your business?

In your zealous efforts to reach out to the customers via every form of web communication is your business guilty of an information overload? Have you failed to personalize social media communications or, even worse, still retain information that is out-dated? Here is a wonderfully simple and powerful infographic from ReachLocal highlighting the need for businesses to ask these 5 important questions of their online marketing efforts and how they can declutter their website and social media content.

Have you optimized your Google+ Local Page? Google+ Local Pages replaced Google Place Pages and have become a key source of online information on local businesses.  Ensure that your business address is correctly updated on your Google+ Local Page. As per Janine Popick, CEO and Founder of VerticalResponse, “If your business is local, make sure your local page on Google+ is the best that it can be!” Regularly update photos, videos and display fresh content that contains keywords for your business.

Are your social media sites truly ‘social’?  Let’s face it, unless you are an established business in the local community, have a large promotional budget or can get a celebrity to endorse your brand, getting customers to notice your social media pages can be hard work. Having your presence on every possible site is not enough, your need to be prolific in engaging your customers. Set aside a few hours every week to interact with your customers online, respond to their comments, seek out their experiences with your business and maybe even post customer photos on your site. If numbers permit, then offer an exciting spring /summer giveaway as a reward to your followers and a way to entice non-followers to enroll.

Are you actively seeking customer reviews? The Local Consumer Review Survey 2012, conducted across local consumers in U.S, Canada and U.K, revealed that 70 percent of consumers read online reviews and 58 percent trusted a business with positive online reviews.  Google+ Local is now based on a 30 point scoring Zagat system (instead of stars), which are reflected on your business page and Google search result listings. You need a minimum of 10 customer reviews for the score to be populated. So your marketing efforts need to include concerted client communications via email and social media sites asking for feedback on dealing with your business. Equally important is responding to both negative and positive customer reviews, so tht potential customers reading those reviews regard you as genuine and would therefore be more inclined to do business with you in the future.

Have you evaluated your website content lately? Ensure that your business name (the way the business is spelt, logo and fonts used) appears consistent on your website and other social media sites. When it comes to ranking of your business on search engines, besides ensuring presence on key social media outlets, publishing quality content on your website is as important as ever.  Understand what topics your target consumers would be interested in and publish content that is not only informational but also entertaining. Make sure that hyperlinks on your website (and social media) are pertinent to the information on that page; failing to do so can downgrade your site’s SEO ratings.

Do your website and social media sites carry outdated information? Wrong information serves a death knell for customer satisfaction. Nothing is more displeasing for a customer than to walk in to a store only to be told that the product is no longer in stock or that the promotional offer is no longer valid!

Here’s a look at the full infographic from Reachlocal:

Information clutter and inconsistency can result in your online marketing efforts going amiss. Ensure that reviewing online business content forms a regular aspect of your business operations. To start with give your website and social media accounts a spring makeover to keep them looking fresh and relevant for your customers!

5 Tips to Declutter Your Business Website and Social Media Content (Infographic)

Spring is synonymous with spring cleaning our homes. But have your ever considered spring cleaning for your business? In your zealous efforts to reach out to the customers via every form of web communication is your business guilty of an information overload? Have you failed to personalize social media communications or, even worse, still retain...

The post 5 Tips to Declutter Your Business Website and Social Media Content (Infographic) appeared first on Small Business Technology.

User engagement can help with training, but accidental breaches are hard to prevent

User ignorance is a bigger concern than outsider or internal attacks.

Speaking to SC Magazine about recent research by Clearswift, Lee Millest, technical architect of ICT services at Warwick District Council, said that insider and outsider attacks were both a concern, but external attacks were easier to deal with due to available solutions.

He said that the government code of connection (CoCo) helped ensure the security of its network, as well as penetration testing, and while disgruntled users were a concern, the concern was "ignorance of non-malicious" users.

Asked how he was able to deal with disgruntled or malicious insiders, Millest admitted that this is hard to defend and prevent but, as figures from the Clearswift research showed, data breaches are the result of human mistakes.

He said: “We have implemented policies on USB sticks but it is nonsense if you still use them, so we put in technology to authorise encrypted USB sticks so if they are lost we can say that the data is not accessible. Considering what we do, if we suffered a data loss the PR could be worse than the breach.”

Millest said that the perception of mobiles being the biggest problem is understandable, and current government connection rules require checks to be in place, so this requires user education as well as policy and technology.

“We need to dictate what the rules are, need to communicate effectively and determine where we need to put technology in place to back things up,” he said.

In terms of how to engage users, Millest said that it had some e-learning questions that appeared on user's desktops, but this could cause a problem for out-of-hours workers. He said: “IT is an enabler for professionals and technology to help them and it is our responsibility to do it in a secure manner.”

The research found that 53 per cent of respondents felt that users would continue to use their own devices on the network, whether it is sanctioned by IT or not. To enable mobile working, Warwick District Council has deployed mobile device management technology to do email in a secure container that it could control.

“We are a conservative organisation with a small ‘c', and while our users are not hammering down the doors to use their own devices, it is the same people who have no malicious intent that could cause the inadvertent breaches,” he said.

The Clearswift research found that 72 per cent of the 300 respondents were struggling with the change in the security landscape. Guy Bunker, senior vice president of products at Clearswift, said that there is a change from bring your own device to ‘choose your own device' for the IT manager to determine what is and is not allowed.

Bunker said: “You need to make sure that your information is secure and why you put mobile device management technology on is for the need to ensure you are secure at all times and add encryption to make sure it is safe.”