three ways to quickly compare your site with your competitors’

Easily compare sites’ social media presence, traffic and Google rankings with some great free tools, suggests Ann Smarty (great name!) at Search Engine Journal.

hello, hello – internet phoning for small business

Two new, free phone services announced recently hold heaps of promise (and cost-savings) for small businesses.

Yellow (the Yellow Pages people) has announced free Skype calls to any of its listed businesses.

(If you haven’t tried Skype, it is really dead simple to use and includes inbuilt video calling. Download the free Skype software and then all you need is a web cam and a mic, plus headphones if you don’t want anyone else to hear the person you are talking to. Visit Skype here.)

And, in the U.S (though not yet in N.Z), Google has announced a service that offers dirt cheap calls but best of all its sweet range of fancy high-tech features — such as a single number to ring your home, work, and mobile phones; a central voicemail inbox that accessible on the web; text transcriptions of voice messages; and the ability to screen calls by listening in live as callers leave a voicemail.

A video explaining Google Voice is here:

the Google cloud with the not-so silver lining

A glitch saw a small number of private Google Docs files stored on the net made public – and could put a big dent in people’s confidence in ‘cloud computing’, the National Business Review comments.

And we would have to agree at this stage. Huge potential for small businesses but not enough transparency or control around data security at this stage, especially considering it is the second reported glitch in Google’s service in only  a couple of months.

online advertising shows strength of online business

While traditional advertising revenues plummet, online advertising is holding up well, showing – I think – the strength of online business and shopping, the online environment’s ability to pull customers even in difficult times and, so, the need to keep your e-business humming!

The New Zealand Herald reported that interactive (online) advertising wound up 2008 with revenue up 43 per cent compared with 2007.

The result increases online’s big lead on outdoor advertising. And it takes it within striking distance of its ambitions to pass magazine advertising revenue later this year.

The Herald reported that advertising revenue from search and directories was the biggest growth area increasing 75 per cent from $34.1 million to $59.71 million. Display advertising grew from $42 million to $58.1 million.

And new figures from the Advertising Standards Authority show online has increased its share of advertising revenue from 5.8 per cent to 8 per cent.

make it easy for the customer and make it cheap

Some good lessons here for small online businesses from one of the superstars of online trading: Amazon is making healthy profits in hard times. Its motto: Make it easy for the customer and make it cheap.

As well as value, Amazon also offers convenience and greatly improved delivery times.

six ways to make Web 2.0 work for your business

Six ways to effectively use the five main groups of Web 2.0 and social media tools in business have been detailed in a report by McKinsey.

A bit dry and jargon-heavy to read but full of good, informative stuff.

For example: appeal to people’s egos and needs—not just their wallets!

Boost the reputation of participants in relevant communities, reward enthusiasm and acknowledge the quality and usefulness of contributions. Research has found that when prizes for contributions were handed out at prominent company meetings, contributions were far higher than when the awards were given in less-public forums.

online shopping to become more social network focused

Between 2008 and 2013, the number of social network users in the US will increase by an estimated 44.2%, to nearly 115 million, emarketer estimates.

Emarketer’s most interesting tidbit for small businesses, though, is that with that big increase in people social networking will be mainstreamed and consumers will be more likely to turn to their online contacts for shopping advice and recommendations.

Even today, word of mouth recommendations are some of the key drivers for people’s purchasing decisions.

Social networks are also a venue for discovering new products and services virally, through friends linking to things that interest them.

So … the shopping process will become socialised. So … e-businesses, you will need to understand the impact of social network communication on the purchase processes of your products.

how to track yourself on the web

Here’s eight useful tools for tracking mentions online of you and your business. If people are talking about you, your products, your service, whatever, you surely need to know about it. These days, it’s a key tool in your management and PR toolkit.

four web businesses amongst top Kiwi start-ups

To see what is hot in the e-business space right now, check out four of New Zealand’s top start-up companies for 2008 — four web businesses praised for their strong ideas and great execution.

Here’s an article explaining them, and below are links to their websites:

Bookhabit – an online book store with an innovative business model for self-publishers
Endemic world – an online design store for N ew Zealand products
Unimarket – an online (SaaS) multi-tenant eProcurement solution
Celsias – a website that helps people and organisations do practical things to combat climate change.

shoppers turn to the web for discounts

It seems many shoppers are increasingly looking for their bargains online where they can easily compare prices and products.

The internet is also growing naturally and is becoming a mainstream medium: eMarketer estimates the US Internet population will grow to nearly 200 million users this year. By 2013, some 221 million people will be online.

Two goods reasons, then, to keep your e-business well-tuned and operating effectively, especially in an economic downturn.