5 Things That Belong on the Front Page of Your Website

In business, you only get one chance to make a good first impression, and your company's website is no different. When customers arrive at your site they should instantly have a clear understanding of who you are and what you do. But statistics show that many small-business websites lack the basics, which puts them at risk of losing a customer with just one click.
The relationship between a customer and a business is based on trust. Is your website customer-friendly? Start with the five things that belong on the front page of every business website.
1. Contact information: A recent survey by Chantilly, Va.-based local media and advertising research group BIA/Kelsey indicates that nearly 75 percent of small-business websites don't have an email link on their homepage. And six out of 10 don't have a phone number.
Minimally, your site should have a clear email link and a phone number. If you have a physical location, consider including the full address with the state and zip code, as well as a map and directions.
2. Images that represent what you do: If you sell wedding cakes, for instance, the front page of your website should have a picture of one of your cakes. As basic as this sounds, many business sites use irrelevant graphics such as butterflies and family photos, or worse, no graphics at all.
But be mindful of how you display images. Think twice before making them spin or shake or do anything else that can be distracting or irritating.
3. Clear navigation with working links: The front page of your site should have a clear navigation system either across the top or down one side of the page. The buttons should be clearly marked with words that correspond to the content on your site and help customers quickly find what they're looking for. Also consider including buttons for shipping options, FAQs and background on your company.
It's also important to click your links on a regular basis to make sure they all work, or use Google Webmaster Tools to identify any 404 errors. Broken links not only prevent shoppers from completing their orders, they can also make it appear as if you don't care about your business.
4. An email signup box: One effective way to encourage customer loyalty is with a regular newsletter. Put a signup box on the front page of your website and offer rewards, such as a discount on a future order to anyone who submits his or her email address. Services such as Mailchimp offer simple ways of doing this.
5. Social media links: Help customers stay in touch by providing links to your social media accounts right on your front page. Use recognizable icons linked to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or LinkedIn. You can also use feed widgets to encourage instant follow-up as well as social media sharing.

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Resistance: A Stranglehold on Business

The ability to adapt and change is essential to business success. But not everyone embraces change so easily. These tips can help you identify and eliminate resistance in the workplace.
Anyone familiar with the Star Trek universe knows that resistance is futile. Unfortunately, real-life resistance to change is alive and well and often firmly entrenched in many small businesses. Common signs include ideas that never reach fruition and initiatives that go nowhere.
There’s a huge difference between taking a conservative approach and failing to adapt to changes in the market, in customer needs or in technology. Resistance on that level can have serious consequences and leave you wide open to competitors who are willing and able to adapt and capture your market share.
In an article at Small Business Computing, Rick Maurer, an organizational consultant and author of “Beyond the Wall of Resistance,” notes that workforce resistance causes approximately 70 percent of organizational change to fail. You can fight back using these steps to identify resistance and break down the barriers to effective change.
Step 1: Identify resistance
Blatant criticism is an obvious sign of resistance. However, the other side of that coin is the easy yes, and while more subtle, it’s no less dangerous. Employees or managers who agree quickly may not have thought things through thoroughly, whether out of a desire to be seen as cooperative or to avoid giving offense. Either way, they might not really understand what they’ve agreed to, and that quick yes can quickly turn into a protracted, passive-aggressive no.
Take the time to explain your thinking, and make that sure everyone understands the full scope of the changes and why they’re necessary.
Step 2: Identify the reasons
Employees resist change for three basic reasons. In order of severity: they don’t get it, they don’t like it, or they don’t like you. Look for someone on your team who’s harboring at least one of these perspectives anytime you have a project, processes or other business initiative that’s stalled.
Step 3: Fix it
If they don’t get it, you need to find a new way to deliver your message. Repeating yourself won’t help; they heard you the first time. Instead, try a different approach or provide additional education or training.
If they don’t like it, chances are someone finds something about the new process frightening or uncomfortable. Look at the situation from their perspective. This can help you present the information in a way that addresses their fears or concerns.
If they don’t like you, simply be direct and ask them. You may have to press further if all you get is a polite, but evasive response. Maurer believes these situations are usually a matter of trust. If you outrank the person or people involved, use an anonymous survey with a comment area to discover reasons behind the lack of trust.
Lauren Simonds is the managing editor of Small Business Computing

Read more: Resistance: A Stranglehold on Business | TIME.com http://business.time.com/2013/10/07/resistance-a-stranglehold-on-business/#ixzz2l142d9ga

Interview Techniques for Effective Hiring

Stop wasting time and money hiring the wrong people. It’s time to improve your interviewing skills.
Hiring is a risky business given that so much of your company’s success rides on tapping the right people for the job. Interviewing is really more art than science and, all-too-often, job candidates who look good on paper and ace the interview process completely choke once they actually get the job. Bad hires are more than an inconvenience: they’re expensive. According to research from CareerBuilder, 41 percent of companies say that a bad hire costs them at least $25,000.
How can you better your chances of making a good hire? In an article on CIO Insight, Dennis McCafferty culls interviewing tips from “The Winning Manager’s Playbook: 6 Practices Every Manager Needs to Succeed” (Career Press), by John Cioffi and Ken Willig. These tips may help you and your managers to hone your interviewing skills and improve the chances of choosing the best people for the job.
Before you begin the interview, have candidates sit near some of your employees for 10 or 15 minutes. Do they interact with their potential future coworkers, and if so, how? Their behavior can give you insight on their personalities and show how they may or may not fit with your office culture.
It often helps to gauge candidates’ powers of observation and perception. If they’ve interviewed with others in your company, ask about their impressions of those people. Are they accurate?
Ideally, an interview should be a two-way exploration so that both parties can determine whether the candidate is a good fit for the job and the company.  Look for candidates who ask questions about you to find common interests or shared values.
Remember, you can glean a lot of important insight into how someone thinks and relates to others by asking questions that don’t directly relate to the job at hand. For example, ask candidates what they do for fun. This can help you understand whether they look for creative or competitive activities. Have they ever won a contest? Again, it doesn’t have to be work-related; ask them what it was and how they earned it.
Your interview shouldn’t consist of simply checking off a list of job requirements. You want to see the person behind the resume. Which candidates think clearly? Pay attention to whether they dig deeper for details.  Do they listen well and retain knowledge? Ask them to summarize information you described earlier in the interview.
Finally, ask candidates to describe their very first job and how they got it. If they got a job when they were young to earn spending money or to pay for school, it’s a sign that they developed a strong work ethic early in life.

Shopping Local for the Holidays

As we gear up for the holiday season, know what your customers are thinking and planning for their gift shopping






 As a small business owner, you rely on customers who are committed to shopping local, especially around the holiday season. Our friends at Deluxe have released their Annual Holiday Shopping Survey, which details when, where and why people shop local versus going elsewhere.

Some highlights:
57% of people who shop at local businesses do so because it is important to support local businesses
35% of people will shop at small businesses this season, up from 27% in 2012
47% like to be appreciated by small business owners in the form of a a discount on future products or services

iMedia Connection's 10 Most Innovative Email Campaigns of 2013

Looking for email marketing inspiration this holiday season? These ten award-winning campaigns will help you drive your message home





Christopher Marriott of iMedia Connection has named the top 10 most innovative marketing emails of the year. As we head into the holiday season, when email marketing will reach a fever pitch, it's important to get inspired and grab your customers' attention.
Hopefully some of the emails here will spark your imagination, and improve your email marketing. Email marketing doesn't have to be complicated, but it does have to be strategic.
Where are you driving customers? What are you asking them to do? What is the hook or offer that will bring them in?
Design and send with these things in mind, and your emails are sure to strike the right chord with your email list. 
Categories awarded include:
Best abandoned cart email
Best coupon email
Best request-for-feedback email
Best deal of the day email
Best welcome email
Best triggered email
Best drive-to-retail email
Best newsletter
Best re-activation email
Best timed email

Getting Started on Facebook

Looking to learn your way around the world's most popular platform? Read on for how to set up your business page and get the most from it.

 We talk on Small Business Patch all the time about engaging customers on Facebook, adding personality to your page, and ROI on Facebook, but what if you don't have a business page and are looking to get started at square one?

This post, from our friends at MarketingSherpa, has a great breakdown of how to get started from A-Z on Facebook, and some tips for setting up your page the right way.

Learn the difference between a personal page and a business page, between a profile photo and a cover photo, and get all the specs for each. Getting setup on Facebook may take an hour of your day, but it will allow you to interact with the huge audience there and make your business show up higher in search results!