10 Great tips to help maximize your website efforts in increasing sales!

Expert advice to help you decide which social networking tool is the right fit for you and your business.

If you own a business and do not have customer referrals or testimonials, then first and foremost, start asking for them! Most customers are willing to provide a testimonial, but with everyone’s busy schedules these days, they simply don’t think to do it unless you ask.

When you need to keep your car in shape, you take it to an auto mechanic for a tune-up. When you need a tooth pulled, you pay a dentist because that’s not exactly the kind of service you’d want to handle yourself. So when your small business Web site needs SEO help, you hire an SEO consultant and consider it worth the cost.

If you’re looking for a simple, inexpensive email solution that includes your domain name in your email address, POP3/SMTP accounts are for you. They’re inexpensive as a stand-alone plan, and included free in most Web hosting plans. Basically these accounts connect you to a POP3 and SMTP server for receiving and sending email messages.

Your Web site’s success ultimately depends on attracting and holding the interest of your visitors. To create a good experience that keeps them coming back, take the time to explore your project from your visitors’ perspective.

If you’re running an ecommerce Web site or collecting information about your visitors on any Web site, creating a simple, quick experience for visitors seriously helps your conversions. One easy way to streamline your Web site is to make sure you use radio buttons and checkboxes correctly.

Looking for ways to increase your sales while the economy plods along the path to recovery? Why not expand your target market by opening your business to the world?

It's been a tough year for sales, and we're moving into the home stretch. Here are five tips to help you boost sales and reach your revenue goals as the 2009 shopping season gets underway.

A database is a great way to organize Web sites with a lot of regularly updated content. Databases power dynamic Web sites, meaning pages are created each time someone requests them. The pages are made by pulling information from the database into a Web page template upon request.

WordPress is one of the most commonly used blogging tools on the Web today. It’s a powerful , open source publishing platform with an administrative interface that doesn’t require a lot of experience to use—making it one of the more attractive blogging opt

Choosing the right Web hosting plan can be a daunting task with an enormous number of products and features available. Deciphering specifications and making sense of the jargon is only the first step. Finding a company you trust is equally important.

Your Web site linking strategy has two goals: 1. To drive traffic to your Web site and 2. To increase your rank with the major search engines. If you secure links on Web sites that are popular with your target audience, you could gain a new stream of t

Visitors will type your domain name into a browser or lick on it a search engine results page before you have a chance to wow them with your Web site. It's your first impression, so make it good. Your domain name should fit the style and tone of your Web site and clue visitors in to what they're about to see.

You’ve built a Web site, and you’re getting a decent amount of traffic. Now it’s time to make some money! We’ve compiled seven ideas on how you can turn a profit from your Web site, or at least make it pay for itself.

21(d) Onsite Consultation Program

When purchasing office equipment, you'll often have the option of purchasing a service contract on the new equipment. In fact, sellers will often go out of their way to try to get you to purchase a service contract. The main reason for this is that the profit margin on the service contract is often greater than the profit margin on the piece of equipment you're purchasing.

The typical credit card transaction begins when your customer hands you the credit card or swipes it through the card reader at your checkout. Or, if the transaction is handled online, over the telephone, or through the mail, it begins when the customer gives you the credit card number.

A noncompete agreement is either a separate agreement or a clause in an employment contract that prohibits an employee from working in a related business in your area for a certain length of time. Noncompete agreements are used to prevent an employee from using your business's confidential information.

Whether you need a confidentiality policy will depend upon what type of information you feel you need to protect. Some specific items that can be protected by a confidentiality clause or agreement are customer lists, trade secrets, inventions, discoveries, data, formulas, business methods, processes, machines, manufacturers, and compositions.

The majority of small businesses probably don't need a policy addressing employees' access to and dissemination of confidential information or trade secrets. However, if your business has spent a lot of time and effort developing its customer lists, highly specialized operating procedures, or some revolutionary technology or product and you want to protect your secrets from possible competitors, you may consider some kind of policy to address the matter.

The heart of OSHA compliance is becoming aware of its published standards, which address specific hazards. The standards are divided into four major categories based on the type of work being performed:

The DoD Regional Councils for Small Business Education and Advocacy are a nationwide network of small business specialists organized to promote national small business programs to include minority and disadvantaged small business concerns and minority universities and institutions.

The "Fast Track" is a special program for the Department of Defense SBIR and STTP programs that offers a significantly higher chance of SBIR/STTR award, and continuous funding, to small companies that can attract outside investors. Small companies retain the intellectual property rights to technologies that they develop under these programs. Funding is awarded competitively, but the process is more streamlined and easier.

Although similar in structure to SBIR, the Small Business Technical Transfer Program (STTR) funds cooperative R projects involving a small business and a non-profit research institution (i.e., a university, federally funded R center, or non-profit research institution). Established by Congress in 1992, the purpose of STTR was to create an effective vehicle for moving ideas from the nation's research institutions to the market, where they can benefit both private sector and government customers. The government STTR program was funded for $130 million in Fiscal Year 2006.