If you run an online business, or are at least trying to run an online business, you must have felt the urge to buy a smartphone such as the new Nexus S by now. Being able to check your emails, calculate your tax return, call your clients, shop for merchandise and perform thousands of other tasks all from the palm of your hand is, indeed, handy.
There are advantages to be had from working with a smartphone. Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and RIM’s Blackberry are all fantastic business tools, but for small online businesses, especially those with just one or maybe two employees, they can be a recipe for disaster.
Security Risk
With the opportunity to cram a ton of information, including all your passwords for email accounts and potentially information about your company’s business merchant account etc, onto your smartphone, losing it is a disaster. Imagine leaving your briefcase with the keys to your office in it, along with your every conversation by email and text message, links to all your favourite websites and pictures of your kids too.
To be safe, you need to have a separate work and personal phone. Plus you should purge your phone at least every week to keep it clear of too many emails, and you should never save your passwords, no matter how annoying it is to type them in every time. Having a password to access your phone is a good idea too.
Signal + Battery Power
All the power of your super smart phone can be brought crashing down by a simple tunnel. You don’t want to be on a crucial call only to lose signal or power. This not only looks unprofessional to clients, it can even cause you to lose business and sales if your business requires a response from you via your phone.
Restricting the use of your smartphone as a main point of contact to periods when it is just unavoidable will save you from any of this. People will trust you more if you call them from a landline anyway and you will be in a better position to use a computer while on the phone too.
Concentrate Less
Having all your business calls and emails coming through your palm sized unit can force you to have your nose in your phone all the time. This is not only uncomfortable; it is annoying for your friends and family and does not paint a good impression for clients.
The answer is no! Having a proper station from which to run your online business will always be much more efficient and comfortable than using just a smartphone. Smartphones are great devices and can really help your business, but restricting yourself to one portal is madness.
As a leading payment service provider, we at Lancore know a thing or two about security and the smartphone route of business simply isn’t secure as your primary means of running your companies comings and goings.
When you open an online business or make the wise decision to move your business online, you will need a partner who knows how to handle your money in a fast, reliable and professional manner which allows you to relax safe in the knowledge that all the hard background work is being done for you. That way you can focus on what you started a business for in the first place.
One way in which you can improve your exposure is by moving your businesses website into a more socially accessible environment. This can be achieved by integrating your pages with Facebook. The social networking giant is no longer a ‘phenomenon’ as with over 500 million users it has become a by-word for modern online networking and for a fast growing movement of people who stay in touch and like to hear each others ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’, often trusting this over more direct sales approaches.
With such a fiercely competitive network of websites and blogs out there, getting your website onto the screens of your customers and keeping it there is a tough job. There are many ways in which to help your business become more popular and more profitable if you own a physical store on a high street – doing things like regular advertising, improving the appearance of your shop front, placing special offers in the window and being friendly and courteous to your customers.
If you are a business owner, you will likely have aspirations of high sales figures, loyal customers and growing budgets. One way of helping you get your business heading in the right direction, and in this case online business, is to look up to businesses which currently captivate and entice millions of people around the world to invest in, log on to and buy from their websites. By taking a look at the heavy hitters out there you can see what makes them an online success and what advice you can take from their example to help your business improve.
If you are in business these days it is almost essential to have a smartphone. With all the mobility of a…er…mobile, and all the handy application usefulness of a computer, they go with business like bread and butter. They are particularly valuable for small businesses and can act as an entire office for some one man companies. If they could find somewhere to keep the mugs in a smartphone they would no doubt do coffee too.
The Networked Nation Manifesto published on 12th July 2010 highlighted the number of people in the UK who are missing out on opportunities that the internet brings. The UK digital champion Martha Lane Fox produced this manifesto and has announced plans to try and get everyone in the UK of working age online by 2015. This is spurred by the fact that if everyone who is not online took advantage of the opportunities the internet can bring, in the shape of access to jobs and consumer savings it could in turn save a lot of money for the UK economy. For example if just 3.5% of UK unemployed gained employment this would save £560m, and with 90% of jobs now requiring basic internet skills, getting everyone online could be an easy way to save some money.
Social Media is big business and with the right plan of action and a delicate touch any site can utilise people power to improve their ecommerce. Here are a few brands which have made a big difference to their ecommerce growth using social media.
The first stage of creating an ecommerce website is of course coming up with a good idea. Whether you’re selling organic tomatoes or Toshiba televisions you have to have your ideas in place before you go on to the next stage. One area that must almost immediately be attended to is the site design. It has to be eye catching, organised and fit with the theme that the site is trying to create.
