Planning and executing an efficient budget plan in 2009 is going to be incredibly essential in this current economic climate. While thinking about how your company will be spending money this upcoming year of the ox, take some time to plan some of the things you wouldn’t normally think about.

These types of expenses that you usually don’t plan for can help create loyal clients, increase potential employee retention, and help fulfill the yearly end goal for every business: earn more profit than last year.

• Think about thoughtful ways of staying in touch with your best clients. Dedicate some money to sending out cards for special occasions like a client’s Birthday, celebrating Independence Day, or Thanksgiving.
• Your website may need a facelift – quickly and easily add a “call to action” form by using smart business website design which can help jumpstart sales leads.
• Maybe include a small amount of money towards a reward, of sorts, for clients that are easy to work with. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy – a $10 gift card to Starbucks would have them thinking about your company whenever they order their double tall half-caf, soy, 185-degree, one pump cinnamon, extra foamy, sugar-free vanilla latte. Reward your clients when they nail a deliverable date, or just include a gift card with a project summary when complete.
• Keep your employees happy! Employees who believe in their company and enjoy the workplace produce better work. Nothing makes an employee happier than donuts in the morning when they least expect it…*nudge, nudge*

The World Wide Web is like the largest trade show on earth. It is a marketplace that has 1.5 billion people attending worldwide. It has 188 million booths in the form of websites. This is 8 people for every booth (website). A place where every conceivable product and service is researched bought and sold.

Any person or business can set up a storefront in this huge tradeshow. For almost any business, there is almost instant access to consumers or other businesses. So with all this potential, what goes wrong?

1. Can’t be found: They are located way in the back of the showroom well away from the main entrances. They didn’t plan to be close to the entrance which supplies most of the visitor traffic. These are the websites that failed to plan for search engine traffic with organic search engine optimization.
2. Design over substance: At the trade show there will be booths that have are like a Hollywood extravaganza. They have all the glitz and glamour needed and they are the fun place to be. The only problem, the product message gets lost and people remember the hype but not the product or service.
3. Messy and disorganized: These are the booths where everything is tossed into piles and departments are unlabeled. Aisles are cluttered boxes of product waiting to be put away. A visitor wants to immediately leave. These are the websites where navigation is clumsy, page layouts are cluttered.
4. Homemade: These are the booths that look like they were built with leftover parts and held together with duct tape and bailing wire. They are functional, but look far from professional. Visitors leave running for fear that this what you will deliver to them.
5. Left unattended: These are the booths that are left empty with no one in them. Perhaps they left for lunch, or they didn’t show up at all. These are the business website designs that lack interaction. Phone numbers are absent or hidden, there are no FAQ areas, no auto responders for instant answers, blog present with the ability to comment, no forum or surveys.

The United States is not #1 by any measure. You can look at Internet usage three ways. You can measure the percent of the population that uses the Internet. In this case the US is ranked #13 in the world. If you measure the total number of Internet users, the US is ranked #2 behind China. You can also look at how many hours people spend online. China wins here too with 2 billion hours spent online each week. There are now almost 1.5 Billion people who use the Internet worldwide today.

The Internet World Stats tracks World Internet Usage and population data by country based on info published by Nielsen/NetRatings and other reliable sources. This is a wealth of information for demographic data.

China surpassed the United States in 2008 to take the #1 position as the country with the largest number of Internet users. This is despite Chinese government controls on Internet use. China saw a 56% growth in their online population in the past year.

Chinese Internet users spend nearly 2 billion hours online each week. The US online audience spends 129 million hours per week. This is according to Dr. Charles Zhang, chairman and CEO of Sohu.com which is a Beijing based company.

As the new year rolls around, so comes the heralded tradition of making New Year’s Resolutions…and in many cases, these desires and wishes end up being unfulfilled and abandoned by March.  The idea and desire to use the new year to mark the beginning of a journey or goal is not a bad thing; it’s actually a very sensible idea.  The problem lies in the actual resolutions being chosen…

Why are resolutions abandoned?

The easy answer is that whatever is picked is too hard, too lofty of a goal, or nearly unattainable.

A more detailed answer is that resolutions need to be more prudently defined.  Instead of pledging to “lose 20 pounds,” instead make the resolution “substitute fruit for dessert every weekday” or “take the stairs instead of the elevator every Monday, Wednesday and Friday” for this particular example.

Credit to Kevin via Flickr

If your resolution/goal is to fly to the moon, focus on the small steps to ensure success rather than unspecified generalizations.

If your ultimate goal is to increase sales leads, set some realistic “resolutions” that actually focus on the process:

• Contact every customer weekly/bi-weekly – if happy with your services, by keeping your company on the tip of their tongue & fresh in their mind, you may find yourself flooded with referrals!
• Take some time every week to read some blogs related to your industry and comment on them. If compelling enough, these comments get read and followed by interested prospects.
• Add a call to action or lead generation form by using smart business website design.
• Social media can be a powerful tool – work on increasing your presence on LinkedIn, Facebook and write captivating articles for Squidoo.

2009 is the year of the Ox, which symbolizes prosperity through hard work and fortitude. With smart resolutions, you can set up 2009 to bring prosperity to your business!

HIPAA is a congressional act that governs how electronic information pertaining to medicare/medicaid must be handled.

The new HIPAA Laws are now in effect. An owner of a medical website must take steps to secure their website and ensure that any patient information is fully protected. “Protected Health Information” or PHI may not be used or disclosed without a valid authorization. This applies to past, present or future health conditions, health care or payments for health care.

How does this apply to a medical website? There is a very specific set of regulations that now applies to the electronic transmittal of information. HIPAA Privacy and Security Regulations require medical providers to use reasonable and appropriate safeguards to “ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability” of any health information transmitted electronically.

This means that PHI transmitted electronically over open networks must be protected from being intercepted by anyone other than the intended recipient.

1. Forms that a patient can fill out online must be fully secured and encrypted. This includes patient registration, prescription refills, appointment requests and medical history forms.
2. Contact forms and other website forms must be secured and encrypted.
3. Login areas must be fully secured and encrypted where patients can view lab results and ask questions of their doctor or pay a bill.
4. Encrypted patient-physician email. Standard email communication is not allowed. This would include the use of web mail, hotmail, AOL or even Outlook for patient communication.
5. HIPAA Privacy Statements. Website should include both an online version and a printable version of the HIPAA Privacy Statements.
6. Passwords: These should meet the Microsoft strong password guidelines. This includes using passwords of seven characters or more and containing at least one uppercase, lowercase, number, and symbol.  Passwords must be changed regularly, generally every 45 days.

Why? You want your business to be taken seriously! In business, image is everything. Using AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! and other email services is a major branding mistake. In business, image is everything.

Now don’t get me wrong, these email services are great services; they just send the wrong message about your business. Why would you want to announce “I am running my business on a shoe string?” These email addresses make your business look temporary. They make your business look like it may be gone tomorrow.

Everyone is striving for a quality image that will help customers to trust them. You want to appear more stable, reliable, and professional. Businesses do this by focusing on their logo, website and business cards. But for email is it yourname @ comcast.net? Or is it yourname @ yourcompany.com?

According to a Microsoft survey, 37% of business respondents still use Web mail, such as Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo! services for their business correspondence.

Businesses large or small should have their own internet domain, and send email using that domain. Perhaps you think that something as minor as an email address doesn’t matter, but it does!

It’s an image issue. For the same reason you shouldn’t scribble your phone number on a napkin when you meet a business prospect (that’s what business cards are for), you shouldn’t email from a Hotmail email address.

Free email accounts still have a place in business. Use these when you sign up for mailing lists or request information online. After all, if you end up on a spam list, it’s super easy to dispose of that email address and get a new one.

Just don’t use them with customers and prospects.

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
~ Sun Tzu

Many of you have heard this quote and may attribute it to either the original source, the heralded book “The Art of War”, or maybe (for some movie buffs) even Mike Corleone from “The Godfather II.”

This idea transcends application to just strategy on the battlefield and can rationally be applied to the business world. Specifically, in the world of ecommerce, it can mean taking the advantages that your competition may have over you and learning more about your target audience and what is working for them. And of course, using that information to gain the upper hand.

“Potrait of Sun Tzu, Chinese Military General” by Vivek666 via Flickr

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

Put yourself in the mindset of a consumer who is looking for the good/service that your company sells. Load up Google and quickly search on that good/service and visit the #1 ranked result. Or if you already know of a company that is doing better than you sales-wise, go to their website.

Scan their online home for things that they do differently/better than you. Are they using social media to gain more exposure? Are they using smart business web design by incorporating a lead form or captivating call to action to help drive sales? Are they offering special pricing deals?  Sending out newsletters?  Blogging?

Don’t neglect your competition – use their successes to help analyze and understand your weaknesses.

Keep your friends close (quickly subscribe to our blog by email via Feedburner to the ), and your enemies competition closer.

E-commerce is based on trust. Other than the store itself, what other pages should be included in an eCommerce website design? There are number of pages, each designed to build trust, to answer a shopper’s questions and to put them at ease in doing business with you.

1. About Us: This is where you tell your story and tell why you are better to do business with than your competitors, what is the company’s purpose, the history of your company, your philosophy of doing business.  Use a creative and interesting writing style to let your potential customers get to know you. This is one of the most read pages in a website.
2. Testimonials: People will trust what other people say about you, much more then what you say about yourself. Positive customers that are specific are the most powerful. Here is an example of a powerful testimonial with detail. “You guys are great and helped me out of a jam; your customer service ran my order out to the airport so I could get it the same day. You’re the best!”
3. FAQ: Frequently asked questions are an important part of the pre-sale step. By posting answers to the common questions or objections, you reduce the phone calls and emails from potential buyers. By satisfying the visitor’s questions on the spot, they are much more likely to make an immediate purchase.
4. Privacy Policy: People are wary and want to protect their personal information. They want to know how you are going to use this information and if you will pass it onto others. This is another element in building trust.
5. Return Policy: One of the best ways to put customers at ease is through a well-thought-out and prominently posted returns procedure. This can range from all sales final to complete refunds.

Reports show that 80-90% of all new business websites will fail to yield successful results. What is even more frightening is that most of these websites could succeed if planned and executed correctly. So what goes wrong?

1. Design over Strategy: Companies spend most of their time planning how their design will look. They have not targeted their audience or planned their messaging or a “call to action”. A good site design starts with strategy. Focus first on creating a stream of leads, quote requests or online sales.
2. No Traffic Plan: “Build it and they will come” may work for an Iowa corn farmer (Field of Dreams), but it doesn’t work for business websites. Decide your traffic source such as organic search, pay-per-click or referral traffic before you start the design. Organic SEO is much more effective when designed into a site.
3. It’s Not About You: Websites that brag how great you are quickly turn off visitors and they leave. People search first for solutions to their problem. “Don’t tell me about your faucet, tell me how to fix-up my kitchen.” Organize your site so answers are easily found. Avoid industry jargon and use plain English.
4. Flashy Graphics: All Flash websites may be cool to look at but they are slow loading and search engines can’t index their content. It is OK to use Flash elements, video etc. mixed with text content. Keep your site simple and focus on solving a problem for your visitor. After all “content is king”.
5. Low Cost Design: Never hire your teenage son’s best friend to design your business website. You may give him (or her) some great experience, but you sacrifice your business image and the ability to drive traffic to your website. Hire a professional design firm that is experienced in both web traffic strategies and business website design.

A good e-commerce website is a clean, organized store where products are easy to locate and visitors are allowed to shop the way they want. What should you do to improve the effectiveness of your online store once a visitor arrives?

1. Plan your layout: Avoid a cluttered layout. Visual cluttering is a result of trying to put too much information onto a single page. You should limit your design to no more than 10-15 products per page and no more than 600 words of text.
2. Organize: Break text up into easy to read blocks or columns the way a newspaper does. Use graphics and colors to help break up the page to give a clean graphical look. Add headlines above blocks of text to allow visitors to quickly scan a page.
3. Categories: Add navigation and category listings so customers can find products in different ways. Use categories like departments in your store, and sub-categories if you stock a wide variety. Allow customers to browse by price category, newest products or most popular products.
4. Add Search: If customers have something specific in mind or know exactly what they want, allow them to search by keyword, brand, model number or a combination of these. Keep the search simple, intuitive and easy to use.
5. Purchase Options: Offer phone numbers or online chat assistance. Some visitors may be uncomfortable with completing a purchase online and want to place an order by phone or mail in an order with a check.
6. Simple Checkout: 30-60% of customers abandon their order at checkout because of usability issues. Design your process to be 1-2 pages and only request necessary information. Use clean and organized design layouts and add a confirmation page.
7. Shipping: No-one likes hidden or surprise fees, especially as they have their credit card in hand and waiting to pay. Allow customers to see shipping charges up front by entering only their zip code.