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5 Small Business Benefits of Being at #SXSW

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Photo Credit by Jose Padilla ( @jpadilla_)

We where present at #SXSW and had the opportunity to experience it from a Small Business point of view. Different to other smaller conferences focused on many of the same subjects, I can clearly say that if you are a Small Business Owner the environment of #SXSW makes you feel right at home.

There were sessions focused the small business owners in mind. There were also great people attending the event, who wanted to get to know you as a person first.

Benefits of Being at #SXSW

Some of the clear Benefits we received as a small business were the following.

1. Access to a Large Network

Tapping into a Large Network of Quality People with common interests without measuring how big your organization is or who you are. Giving you the opportunity to meet people from various professional levels from different types of organizations.

2. Pool of Ideas

Many people together exchanging ideas from various perspectives. You had developers, marketers, bloggers, and people from various walks of life sharing their experience from their point of view.

3. Refresh

Refreshing your current efforts. It might be frustrating to get things done when you have individuals or a group of people that don’t get what you do. Based on conversations and interactions, new ideas will arise helping you take a new approach at something that you have probably been frustrated about.

4. Experience Latest Tech Tools

It can also help you find new tools and gadgets. I usually end up learning about the most practical and cost effective gadgets and applications when I am surrounded around peers who have been using them. I end up getting tools that are better and faster at getting things done than what I might be currently using. A good example of interesting apps I was recommended during #SXSW were Beluga  and Liveshare which I learned at a party sponsored by their creator Cooliris.

5. New Relationships

Extending your network with stronger relationships. It is not the same to meet someone online than meeting them in person and continuing the conversation online. Every time I have met someone in person and later on reached out to them online I  created great  relationships.

Did we miss any other benefits of going to a conference like SXSW?

If you want to read about our Raul Colon’s (Co-Founder & President) experience at SXSW feel free to visit his blog.
Photo Credit by Jose Padilla @jpadilla_

How to do advanced e-commerce with WordPress by @raffel

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Content and post from jimraffel.com

As of this writing, I am responsible for the e-commerce activities of two sites that run on the WordPress content management system platform. I’ve taken vastly different approaches with these two sites. This post will explain how I manage online stores with multiple products both physical and virtual.

The two sites

MolkkyUSA.com is a site where we sell a physical product along with a few optional physical products. I set this site up using e-junkie, because relatively speaking, it was quick and easy and didn’t require me to have an SSL certificate for the site. Basically, you manage all the e-commerce activities including affiliate sales programs from the e-junkie site. Then, you just paste code snipits into your WordPress site to power buttons that add items to the cart and display the cart to complete shopping.

With e-junkie, you create the catalog of items manually just as you would create any other WordPress page. Knowing a little HTML and CSS is pretty much required to make the pages look nice. Figuring out where to paste the aforementioned code snipits can be a bit tricky when you are starting out.

During the checkout process, you can select from many payment gateway options. We choose to use Authorize.net because we have our own credit card processing agreement with a bank. You can, however, set-up a PayPal account and be up and running in a matter of days. I have found the shipping options with this solution to be a bit limiting, but we’ve found ways to work around the limitations.

e-Junkie pricing starts at $5/month. This does not include payment gateway fees and credit card discount rates.

On ColorMetrix.com, we make use of the full-featured shopp plugin for WordPress. I found the learning curve for shopp to be extremely steep but worth it. With shopp, pretty much everything related to e-commerce happens on your site. All your products and services are stored in a database. Your sales transactions are also retained in a database (with the exception of credit card information). Because you are handling sensitive customer information for short periods of time, an SSL certificate is a must when utilizing this solution.

Once you set-up shop and add a few items to your store, you are ready to go. Just visit the page shop created during plugin installation and you have a store. This is a huge advantage of e-junkie. When you only have a few items like Molkky, setting up the catalog page is a breeze. When you have even a dozen, letting shopp take care of it for you is highly advantageous.

Another advantage of shopp (at least with the Authorize.net payment gateway) is that your customers never leave your site. You retain control of the entire shopping experience, as well as the look and feel of the pages. Shopp supports many payment gateways options and this may not be the same for each gateway. In addition, shopp supports multiple shipping optional add-ins. We utilize Fedex for shipping and can provide our customers with exact shipping costs for each Fedex service level during the checkout process.

Shopp costs us about $100 to purchase with all the modules we needed. I have found this investment to be well worth it.

Overall, I like shopp enough that sometime this year I will be converting the Molkky store. I’ve also learned enough that I am going to have a designer tweak some of the many CSS options that shopp provides (something like 200 tags).

E-commerce is probably the most non-trivial task I have ever taken on in the online world. Those shopping sites you love deserve a great deal of respect. Those you don’t love – if they are small companies and have the products you want and the solution works – maybe you should cut them some slack.

Photo Credit

Learn More About the Author

Jim Raffel is the CEO at ColorMetrix Technologies, LLC a company he co-founded in 1996. Jim earned a B.S. degree in Printing Management at Rochester Institute of Technology in 1986. After graduation Jim worked as a quality control manager assisting in the start-up of two 8/9 unit web presses. Jim then engaged in two years of independent consulting while developing an early version of the ColorMetrix software. The consulting assignments were diverse and took Jim to places as far away as New Zealand. Next, came a position as a special projects manager with a large web printer. Jim worked on and managed projects related to quality and productivity enhancement through the use of technology. One project alone added over two million dollars to the company bottom line. During this same period Jim earned an MBA from Keller Graduate School of Management in 1994.  In addition to managing the day-t0-day operations of ColorMetrix Technologies, LLC, Jim writes daily at JimRaffel.com with his unique inspirational storying telling public speaker and small business CEO perspective.

Follow him on twitter @jimraffel

Starting a Business in Seven Steps by @raffel

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Content and post from jimraffel.com

There are many details involved in starting a business. Here, I’ve boiled it down to the seven that I have found to be most important to continuing business success.

1. Open a checking account. The moment you make the decision to go in business for yourself, open a new checking account. Decide how much you are willing to invest (lose) giving this business idea a shot. Fund the account with that amount. By the way, your accountant is going to love you because you will not be commingling personal and business funds. Also, until you setup an accounting system you have a basic way to keep track of expenses and income.

2. Decide upon legal structure. There is no right answer for this step. I’ve been a sole proprietor, a member of an LLC and probably will have S and C corps before my career is over. This is the time to call on the professionals in your circle. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each with your accountant and attorney. Then, you can make an informed choice; a choice, by the way, that is not etched in stone.

3. Decide on an accounting system. If I was doing it over again I’d probably use something like FreshBooks.com and OutRight.com. Again you’ll want to consult with your professional support to decide on issues like; calendar year versus fiscal year; cash basis versus accrual accounting methods and other details that matter but can be worked out quickly with professional assistance.

4. Sell something. I’d actually be totally okay with this being your step number 1. There is really nothing wrong with selling first. I’ve read enough business success stories to know that getting out there and selling is the key to success. In the early days, when the founder of Sam Adams brewery wasn’t quite sure what he should be doing, he took a six pack of beer and walked into six pubs and let the bartender try the beer. It always resulted in increased distribution.

5. Spend about 10 seconds putting together basic marketing materials. I am talking about the very basics like a web-site and some business cards. It might take more than 10 seconds but honestly if you spend more than a day on this at this point in your business’ life, I think you are making a mistake. Later, when business is booming, you can hire a designer to clean up and improve upon what you’ve started.

6. Sell something else. The life blood of any business is revenue. Unless you’ve had past business successes and lots of capital (venture or otherwise) behind you, selling will be your #1 job. Early on, you will very likely sell the wrong things at the wrong prices. It’s okay as long as you protect the downside and don’t let any one transaction put you in a position that could put you out of business.

7. Decide what you should be selling. Now that you have sold a few things, decide if what you are selling is actually what you should be selling. I realize this may sound silly on the surface, but I learned early on what I could sell profitably and what I could not. Whatever your business is, you need to analyze your products and services mix often. Products that are profitable and awesome for your business today could be putting you in the red a year from now.

Once you have an ongoing concern, make sure to look at your books a minimum of once a month. I’m not talking about a glance at the financials. I’m talking about a solid hour or two of uninterrupted time figuring out what is working and what is not. Once a year, I look at all our monthly expenses and commit to cutting them by 20% no matter what. It’s never been difficult to do so.

Obviously, every startup will be different but I suspect the steps that work for you will be approximately the same. Did I miss any important ones?

Photo Credit

Learn More About the Author

Jim Raffel is the CEO at ColorMetrix Technologies, LLC a company he co-founded in 1996. Jim earned a B.S. degree in Printing Management at Rochester Institute of Technology in 1986. After graduation Jim worked as a quality control manager assisting in the start-up of two 8/9 unit web presses. Jim then engaged in two years of independent consulting while developing an early version of the ColorMetrix software. The consulting assignments were diverse and took Jim to places as far away as New Zealand. Next, came a position as a special projects manager with a large web printer. Jim worked on and managed projects related to quality and productivity enhancement through the use of technology. One project alone added over two million dollars to the company bottom line. During this same period Jim earned an MBA from Keller Graduate School of Management in 1994.  In addition to managing the day-t0-day operations of ColorMetrix Technologies, LLC, Jim writes daily at JimRaffel.com with his unique inspirational storying telling public speaker and small business CEO perspective.

Follow him on twitter @jimraffel

Enhancing the Customer Experience Via ATM

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ATM keypad 1/4

I am always looking as a consumer great customer service just as most of your customers look for the same. If you are one of my clients I am always seeking for ways to improve the experiences their customers have. I use various channels to communicate where they can improve and how they can reach a better experience.

Our friend @tonytorero on twitter shared the following tweet demonstrating an enhancement of customer experience with an ATM by @BBVA:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/tonytorero/status/26540769611354112″]

Like some of my clients (and like myself a few years ago) @tonytorero is part of the Banking Industry. Something that dissapoints me about banking industry is that their is really no outstanding emerging technologies and even when there is one the rest of the industry takes a lot of time to implement it. For the reason this video was very refreshing and invite you to watch it.

If you can’t see the video, click here.

This video captures some main goals and topics many industries including the banking industry should focus on such as:

Humanizing Technologies. Someone that is a big advocate at humanizing business is my friend @chrisbrogan one of the reasons he created Human Business Works I invite you to join his newsletter. @BBVA decided to enhance the banking experience for their customers and you should also enhance the human experience of your customers. I have a new client Myriad Benefits which sells insurance one of the advantages of working with them is that they have a call center that guarantees you in getting a real human being on the other side. Instead of going thru the dial this number to reach a certain extension or menu mayhem. Do you prefer to call and battle it out with the automated system of having a human solving your problem once the phone is answered?

Are your clients reaching you without any obstacles caused by technology?

Better Privacy. As part of our services for a few selected clients we do physical and logical security assessments (by coincidence for the banking industry) to evaluate how strong the security around protecting their customer’s information really is. Since I have been involved in multiple social engineering and physical inspection assessments I have become paranoid every time I can see  a strangers information on screen.  The  design by @BBVA enhances the security of their customers.

How are you protecting your customers information and keeping it safe?

Simplicity. I am usually testing out many technologies and most of them I throw to the side because of the lack of simplicity. I think some of the features @BBVA has included such as a one slot, touch screen, and a customizable interface for the customer reaches out to all types of customers. For those advanced users you can even synchronize the online banking experience at your ATM terminals by letting your users create their on menu or easy access to repeat transactions via your online banking platform.

How do you simplify things for your customers so they can get the most of the technologies you use?

Fun Factor. By visualizing each transaction on the terminal as it happens you entertain your customers and keep them happy while they wait.  How many times do I see people getting impatient waiting in line or while something happens.

How do you keep your customers busy or entertained while they wait for a transaction to happen?

Building from the User Up. Most effective technologies lighten the pain of the user. If you build a technology thinking of the user first then it makes it easier. Many times I see how most of us try to solve a problem from the top down instead of going towards the root of the problem.

How are you removing a problem and making it easier for your customers with new technology?

Improving Communications with Customers. By personalizing, improving interaction, and entertaining I can see a higher probability of customers wanting to listen to @BBVA when they have something to say. Many businesses are still marketing and promoting their services to their customers. The right approach is to enhance the experience and have your customers become your advocates in selling and promoting your products and services like it is explained in the book by @ducttape The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself (affiliate link).

How can you implement new technologies and make your customers become part of your sales force?

Making it Even More Human. The pilot program helps in actually improving the system by identifying the issues to have them corrected or improved. By listening to their customers and refining the tools they created they are well on their way to making a unique and practical user experience. Making it more human and like they said in the video more Delightful.

What technologies make your business be more delightful?

Conclusion

I would really like to see one of these machines working and functioning. I can see a world of opportunities from the main goal which is Customer Experience to many security enhancements protecting customer data.

How do you improve your customers experience with your new technologies?

What technologies are currently not improving your customer experience?

What is more important security or functionality? How do you balance both?