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10 Steps to Hiring the Best Web Designer Or Web Design Company For Your Business Website

You have been planning forever to get a website designer to work on your site. Your plans are clear and you have prepared your content. What next? How do you go about choosing the best web designer or web design company?

Step 1. Ask around. Ask friends, or similar companies who have hired a web designer in the past. Besides getting the contact numbers of the web designers, ask how it is to work with that person. Find out what happened during the design process and what they think of the designs submitted.

Step 2. Do your research for contact information. Use the internet or your phonebook to get the names and contact information of web design companies in your area. If you use the internet, have a peek of their past work. Then contact each and ask for a quotation.

Step 3. Look through the portfolio of the web design company you are choosing from. See if the designs are professional-looking, clean and easy to use.

Step 4. Look at the experience of the web designer or Web Design Company. How long has the person or company been in business? How many companies have they designed for?

Step 5. See if the designer or web design company is up to date with the newest trends in web marketing. Useful, profitable websites attract the correct traffic with search engine optimization and usability and by employing web 2.0 strategies such as social media marketing. Effective web sites take SEO and usability into serious consideration. See if your web designer has at least a basic knowledge of both. In order for your website to be successful you need to be able to implement a successful internet marketing campaign.

Step 6. Look at the web designer or web design company proposed turnaround time. Does it match the schedule of your company’s plans?

Step 7. Examine the web designer or web design company terms of service and website files ownership. See if you agree with the conditions set by the designer to work with you. See also the rights as to who owns the final output and what sizes. If this is not clear from the start, you just may be surprised to find that the work you commissioned is not yours and you may have to pay extra to get it.

Step 8. See what the web designer offers for after-design services. Will the designer help maintain your site or is the designer only expected to do the initial design?

Step 9. Talk to the designer. Is s/he easy to communicate with? You should be able to communicate with your web designer easily. You should be comfortable presenting problems that you want solved. Your web designer should be respectful and prompt. You should both be able to compromise on what will work best for the viewers, not necessarily your personal taste.

Step 10. Look for previous, happy clients. You may look through the designer’s website or blog and see if there are client testimonials. Note what they have to say about the designer. You may also try to call them (you may ask the contact number from the web designer) and ask for comments regarding the design process and final output.

3 Simple Steps For Coming Up With 100 Unique Business Ideas

In my last article I talked about how an idea is not going to make a business. I said what’s important is who is behind it, but you still need a business idea to start a business and the better product or idea you have the easier the process will be. Here are 3 steps you can take to easily come up with 100 business ideas in less than a year.

Step One:

Keep a file on your mobile phone named “business ideas.” If your phone does not have this capacity or you do not own a cell phone carry a small piece of paper and a pen around will you instead. What you must to is every single time any sort of business idea or product idea comes to your mind you instantly write it down in your phone with a simple sentence or two. Don’t worry about how wired of an idea it is or how stupid it may sound to you now just jot down the idea. The key to this step is that the best ideas usually arise when you are going through your daily lives. Ideas will strike you at the most interesting times when you are encountering daily problems and engaging in daily conversation. The one thing you cannot do is thinking the idea is undoable or unprofitable you must write it down anyway. As long as starting a new business is a focus for you ideas will keep coming to you during your daily life.

Step Two:

Next to your desk you must keep a notepad and it is best if the note pad can stay in view at all times (it might be best to put it on a wall you always see or next to your computer.) The reason for this is to keep you focused on your goal of coming up with new business possibilities. Label the top of these notepad business ideas. Once a week write the list you have created on your phone and list these down on your business idea note pad. It is very beneficial to keep this note pad in view and on your mind to remind you of your goal of coming up with quality business ideas.

Step Three:

This step takes the most commitment. Dedicate one hour of every week (you should usually do this after you transfer ideas from your phone to your note pad.) During this hour you must look at the ideas on your note pad and analyze them. See what the good aspects of them are and the bad ones. See if any of them can fit together in anyway or if the spark any new ideas and write any new ideas down. That should take no longer than 10 minutes.

After that, any idea on your note pad that seems reasonable in anyway should be put into a spiral notebook. Title this notebook “Business Ideas” and number the pages 1-100 or 1 to whatever number your trying to reach. For each business idea that isn’t completely ridiculous you need to write three short paragraphs. The first paragraph should be titled “Product” the second, “Market” and the third “Value.”

For the product paragraph simply give a brief explanation of the business model or product.
In the market paragraph describe whom you will be selling this product to. You must be more specific than 18-24 year old males. It should be something similar to 18-24 year old male college students who go to the University of Oregon and golf recreationally. The more specific the better.
In the value paragraph you need to explain the value your customer will obtain by buying this product. If this is hard to come up with it probably isn’t a very good business idea because it has no real value for your customers.

Filling out the spiral notebook will take different amounts of time depending on how many entries you have that week, but each entry should not take more than 8-12 minutes to make. If it does you are spending too much time on it.

You should have some extra time after this (if not that’s OK and you have already added a lot of products to your notebook.) Spend the rest of the time analyzing the ideas on your notepad, revisit some old ones and come up with new ideas to add to the spiral notebook. You can also read some of your old product ideas to see if you can come up with some variations for new product ideas. Basically spend any extra time focused on thinking about new product ideas.

Once you have filled your notebook with business ideas you can look over all of them and pick the most promising and write full business plans for them. Not all of them will look very attractive, but you are bound to have a few that catch your eye as having some good potential or maybe even a few that you really have you motivated to get started.

The “100 Business Idea Journal” is a great way of coming up with some quality business ideas to get started with, but for it to work you must be serious about coming up with some quality product ideas. After a while you should start getting a few solid business ideas outlined every week and be getting closer to starting a business that you find really has some potential.

Easy Steps to Starting an Online Business

Are you searching for real steps to starting an online business? You don’t need to keep searching all day long. There are lots of ideas available at your beck and call. You can always succeed in establishing a flourishing online business when you invest enough time and energy in the process. Here are vital steps you have to follow:

Step 1 – Get prepared to do business online

Your first step to staring an online business is to be well prepared. You have to prepare your mind to make it no matter how long it takes. You also need to get every necessary tool required for the business. You need to secure a good laptop or desktop computer. You also need to have a fast internet connection. You must prepare a cubicle for the venture as well. Once you have all these, you’re sure to start your online business with ease.

Step 2 – Create a Product or Service to sell

Your next step for starting a successful online business is to have something to offer. You can create a product or a service to sell. There are hundreds of product ideas you can market online. There are equally several services you can offer. You have to start with a single product or service you can easily promote. Apart from products and services, you can also sell information. You can come up with a good eBook and get it published online. You can sell the eBook to millions of individuals across the globe. You can also sell your talent online. All you need is to locate a good freelance website you can join.

Step 3 – Create a Website for your business

A good website gives your business a name on the internet. You need to create such an avenue for the promotion of your business idea. If you’re starting out initially, you can create a free blog or website for your business. You simply sign up with a good online resource that offers such platforms. However, you can also pay a reliable web designer to create a nice ecommerce website for your business. It’s important you keep the website very simple. You have to choose a catchy domain name for the website. You also need to register the domain name on reliable online resources. Your website must have easy payment solutions on it. This will always help your potential customers to make purchases as they visit the site.

Step 4 – Promote Your Business Regularly

If you really want to succeed in your online business, you have to get it promoted on regular basis. If you have the time, you can promote the business daily. There are several avenues you can use for easy business promotion. You can introduce free services, bonuses and other free stuffs in your business. This helps a lot in attracting more potential customers. You should also aim at generating traffic to your business website. You have to submit the website link to popular online directories in order to attract more visitors.

With these simple steps discussed above, you can always succeed in setting up a flourishing online business. Why not get started today?

7 Steps to Get A Business Loan

Before the hard strike of the Great Recession, it was a lot easier to get business loans. You have to meet certain requirements before the lender can grant you the loan. Given below are 7 steps that you may want to follow when apply for business loans. Read on.

Develop a relationship with the lender

Before you even need the loan, you may want to develop a relationship with the lender. The main people should get familiar with your business. Keep in mind that lenders like to do business with trust worthy people. So, let them know as much as possible about your business.

Purpose of the money

You may want to decide on the purpose you applied for the loan for. Make sure you are going to get a loan for a good purpose. For instance, you can get a loan to buy equipment, property or software. However, it’s not a good idea to get a loan to finance losses or to get unimportant business assets.

Business needs

You may want to make an assessment of how much money your business needs. If you have a small business, you may not want to apply for a large loan. However, make sure you don’t underestimate the money you need to keep your business running. Both underestimating and overestimating can cause problems down the road.

Credit score

Typically, lenders consider the personal credit of a businessman before granting the loan. So, make sure you have a good credit rating. If you have a bad rating, make sure you work on it to get it in good standing.

Finding the lender

You may want to read up on the type of lender that will best suit your business needs. For conventional loans, you can go to commercial banks. However, their parameters are strict. Non-bank lenders is another option that you may consider. Then there are region specific lenders that include banks and other institutes that are interested in economic development in those areas. Lastly, you can check out crowdfunding websites especially if your capital needs are not over $10,000. For personals, you can also check out peer-to-peer websites, such as The Lending Club and Prosper.

Loan application package

You may want to get the loan application package ready. This includes the documents submitted so as to apply for a business loan. Generally, it includes a business plan, profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements, just to name a few. You may want to keep in mind that lenders may also check out your social media pages while doing their research.

Hang on

Once you have submitted the required documents, you may have to wait for 15 to 30 days for a response from the lender. You can check in on a weekly basis for an update. Usually, lenders may require additional documents before granting the loan.

So, if you have been thinking of applying for a business loan, we suggest that you follow the steps explained in this article.

Steps to Successful Exporting

We all want to expand our business to new heights. By overcoming or conquering the local or domestic market the focus shifts to the international market. Almost every businessman at some or other point dream of expanding the venture to international market but only a few of them actually work on it. Most of them are scared of the loss or the charges and expenditure required for an easy export. A successful businessman is not afraid of the outcome but he focuses more on the quality of the product which will eventually lead him to success. Here are some tips for you to successful exporting:

1. Find connections:

This is the foremost thing to do. Good connections and relations help you to build a good ground for overseas business. Some people even choose to tie up with foreign based entrepreneurs as they have more knowledge about the local buyers and their mindset. Yes, this includes few possible risks but a good research will help you through.

2. Travel:

In order to learn about the market, people and culture you will need to travel the country once. Relations cannot be superficially built over the phone. You will need to research, find contacts and discuss your ideas with them in a formal business meeting. Attend trade shows or any such symposium which can help you with your venture.

3. Advertise:

Advertising is the prime factor behind every successful venture. Advertise in a way which connects to the mass audience. Find out the loopholes, the mindset of people, culture and weave them together to yield a promising advertising and marketing strategy. Half of the battle is won by convincing the customers by proper advertisements. With the internet and social media the things are more promising today. You can create websites, helpline, mail support and advertise your venture on social media platforms for an affordable fees. Your main aim should be to target the right audience.

4. Get help:

Apart from building up contacts, focus on building up an efficient staff. It is not a one way but a collective game. Success is dependent on a lot of factors with unity being the utmost. Group activities fetch more benefits than alone. Ask your staff about their ideas, suggestions in making this fruitful, appreciate them and take their suggestions into account. Often great ideas or suggestions come from the staff members which we avoid listening to.

Moreover, work on the quality of the product. These things come second to the integrity of your venture and the product. Do not compromise with it. With good quality comes impeccable confidence and with confidence everything is possible. Focus and work smartly.