Is WixStores the Best Ecommerce Platform for Small Business Owners?

The answer to that question is a resounding yes! In fact, there is a recently-launched platform with the small business owner’s needs totally in mind, WixStores.

WixStores homepage

WixStores is Wix’ new online ecommerce store builder. If you haven’t heard of Wix – the company have long been known for having the most feature-rich, hosted site building platform online, allowing for much more design and interface-tweaking flexibility for “non-coder” types who don’t like the generic and rather limited nature of most WordPress themes.

Their new ecommerce CMS has the smoothest drag and drop site-building interface I’ve ever seen, and they’re definitely equipped to compete with the likes of other more expensive hosted shopping cart solutions like Shopify.…

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4 Reasons Why Events and Exhibition Stands Go Hand in Hand

Tradeshows and commercial events are gaining steam in every vertical market because the fight for limited corporate spending budgets has been gravely intensified by uncertain markets.

Busy trade show

New and old companies alike will often visit trade shows and their ilk to scope out the competition; silent sharks swimming through a current of vendors and exhibitions, passively observing their competition take another bite out of the market.

Just kidding. There’s nothing predator-like about being a silent observer. You might feel like James Bond scoping out your competition, you might even engage with them and act like a customer undercover to learn more about their strategies but as you engage them – you’re standing inside the most powerful tool in their arsenal: their exhibition stand.…

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How to Crowd-design your Way to Entrepreneurial Success

You don’t need to seek out the services of a fancy design firm, or risk wasting hours of time communicating with an online freelancer to get the best logo, website and other graphics you need for your business.

Logo design samples

In fact, after using an online design marketplace for the first time, you’ll soon realize that the traditional method of requesting samples (which can easily be copy/pasted – ie., stolen) to attempt to identify if a designer has the skill-set you’re looking for – then picking a designer or firm you think might work out – then going through the hassle of waiting on delivery and revisions – potentially ending up with something that you’re not happy with, but which you’re so often expected to pay for nonetheless!…

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Expanding Your Small Business Abroad

In the past, only larger businesses could afford to target new markets overseas, but the internet has made this a valid option for small businesses too. It would be short sighted for a struggling small business owner to write off the possibility of expanding overseas.

Business communication with foreign clients

Just because you are having trouble in the domestic market, doesn’t mean you should shy away from foreign ones. World trade is pushing ever closer to a borderless global system and even the smallest business owners should consider which foreign markets they can move into.

Obviously this kind of expansion requires prior research. You need to find out where your product can be sold, in which countries there is a gap in the market and what the local competition looks like.…

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Increase Consumer Engagement with Video Conferencing

One of the keys to building a successful business or brand is capturing long-term consumer interest. The best brands in the world know this. Uniqueness plays a huge factor, of course. Finding a need in the market and fulfilling it in a way no one else can or will ensures there will be a long line of customers beating down your door.

Video conferencing

But unless your company is Google or Facebook, then you might be in for some stiff competition. The minute you launch your business, you’re already competing with a ton of other companies doing the same thing you are, with all of you trying to win over a larger slice of the consumer pie.…

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Is It Time to Expand Your Business?

When a business is doing well, it is often tempting to leave things well alone on the basis that if it isn’t broke, why make changes. But this is somewhat short-sighted and many businesses will benefit from expanding in order to grow. So how can you tell when the time is right to embark on a business expansion programme and what the best way to go about it is?

Business growth and expansion

Build Your Customer Base

There are lots of different ways to expand a profitable business but the most obvious one is to build your customer base. Firstly, look at ways to keep your existing customer base happy, perhaps by offering new products and services.…

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How Comindware Process Change your BPM

Business Process Management (BPM) is all about making sure that business processes and workflow is executed in a more effective and efficient manner. BPM also concerns about your company’s capability to adapt to changes.

Business Process Management

With that said, you need BPM software (BPMS) that is reliable and easy to setup to help you manage your currently active business processes.

The problem is, not all BPMS is created the same. And many BPMS fall short under the “integration” category: While those software are perfect in managing business processes, integrating them with, for example, project management is a painless experience, if not impossible.…

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Benefits to Choosing a Virtual Private Servers for Your Startup Business

Part of having a successful startup is ensuring that you have developed a strong web presence. In order to do this however, you must have a high quality website that draws the attention of your target audience. As such, one of the first steps to developing a company website would be to find the appropriate web hosting company.

Server rack

Since there are literally hundreds of web hosting services out there, having a few guidelines to compare to would be beneficial. Below are some factors you should consider when choosing the best web hosting service provider.

Know What Your Hosting Needs Are

Before you can determine which web hosting service would be ideal for you, you’ll need to have a clear understanding of what it is you need.…

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Captivate Business Conference Guests With Their Own Devices

There’s nothing worse than meticulously planning a meeting replete with carefully crafted PowerPoint slides, handouts, and a speech you worked on for weeks, only to look up and discover that everyone is playing Angry Birds and checking the weather on their devices. You want to storm out in disgust. But you have to soldier on.

Using a smartphone at a conference

This frustration is magnified tenfold for conference planners. Every detail is carefully plotted. Yet the only thing anyone talks about afterwards is the great party they were able to arrange on some social networking startup app during the boring speech about web design best practices.

There was a time when everyone hated their phone.…

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5 Steps to Build Processes That Safeguard Your Most Sensitive Data

It seems like major corporate data breaches have become all too common. In fact, they’ve become so common that you might have become immune to such news.

Business data security

If you own or run a small business, you might think protecting sensitive data is not something you have to worry about. But you’d be surprised by the amount of information you collect and need to protect. From credit card numbers and addresses to phone numbers and financial and medical information, it starts to add up pretty quickly.

That’s why you need to establish processes for handling sensitive information.

Of course, creating solid processes for handling data is common in the corporate world, but oftentimes, small business owners are so focused on the details of day-to-day operations that they don’t focus on creating data processes.…

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