In the early days of the World Wide Web, long before search engines, long before banner ads, long before pop-ups, long before Amazon.com―in fact, long before some idjit coined the word “e-commerce”―there was link exchange, the oldest, most venerable, and most effective Web site traffic builder. I was there at the very beginning and built [...]
Content Management Systems
Web content management systems, called CMS for short, allow you to create, delete, and edit pages on your Web site simply by typing the content into a Web form. You don’t have to do any coding, programming, designing, or updating. You hit a few commands, do type like crazy, and check out for [...]
Ecommerce: SSL Certificates
Secure, encrypted transactions are a vital part of your e-commerce success. Your customers are sending you confidential credit card and billing information. If that information were intercepted―which is extremely easy to do―then it could fall into the hands of people who would use it to rack up thousands of dollars in fraudulent charges.
Encryption [...]
Ecommerce: Payment Gateways and Merchant Accounts
Unless you’re willing to have customers send you checks through the mail (perish the thought!), your Web site needs to process credit card transactions if you want to sell people anything. Taking credit card payments is a complicated affair. Credit cards need to be authenticated, the payment needs to be [...]
A wiki is a special type of content management system that allows not only you to add content to your site, but allows your users to do so, as well. Perhaps the best known wiki-based site is Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.com), an online encyclopedia totally written by the Web community. In fact, adding and modifying entries is [...]
Ecommerce: Shopping Carts and Catalogs
On the face of it, e-commerce seems simple enough. You get some products. You get a Web site. People shop your Web site, toss a few things into their shopping cart, and then send you money.
If only it were that easy! There are actually quite a few moving parts to an [...]
Search Engine Optimization and Copywriting
Why do people come to your Web site? It’s not your cool domain name. It’s probably not your cutting-edge design or spiffy back-end database. People come to your site to see what you have to show and hear what you have to say. When it comes down to brass tacks, the [...]
Domain Name Registration
We discuss domain name registration in great detail in our very first chapter since your Web domain name is an inseparable part of the process of naming your company. A great company name does not mean anything if you cannot match it with a reasonably close domain name!
Domain name registration, however, is one [...]
Dedicated Hosting
In the typical hosting service, you share space on a server with other customers. You get a certain chunk of the hard disk real estate and everyone else gets the rest. This can cause you problems―if people out there in Internet land are demanding resources from your site and from other sites on the [...]
Website Design and Development: Outsource Companies
One thing this world is not short of are Website design and development companies. It’s harder to find a McDonalds than it is to find some company that will do your Web site for you. Your problem isn’t finding outsource companies; your problem is finding one outsource company in this [...]
Web Design and Development: Marketplaces and Job Boards
We have structured this book as a reference book. On more than one occasion―hiring back office help or technology help―we’ve included a section on marketplaces and job boards. Those resources apply to Web development, as well: your best solution to your Web development needs is to turn to [...]
Most likely, your Web site is the centerpiece of your shoestring venture. It either serves as your primary marketing piece, lead generation device, or your online store. No matter what its purpose, you’re probably highly motivated to get it right―all of it. Getting things wrong means losing real money―people may not find your site, people [...]
The success of your business can hinge as much on your information technology infrastructure as it does on your product, your marketing, or anything else. Large corporations realize this fact and make significant investments in technology to give themselves a competitive edge. Technology allows companies to be more responsive, to understand their customers better, to [...]
Customer support is a very specialized communications fulfillment function that involves fielding customer questions, complaints, and inquiries. Customer support services require a much more intimate working knowledge of your services or products than telephone reception.
Why would you require customer support?
You are selling a product to many customers―you need a customer [...]
As social networking — particularly Twitter and similar short-form messaging services — becomes more and more important to disseminating product and service information across a wide audience, we’ve seen an explosive growth of “URL shorteners,” services that are intended to take those long http-colon-slash-slash-tonsofgobbledeygookydogpilesfromyourcontentmanagementsystem and make them short-form friendly. Since we’re adding an entire section [...]
I love this story which landed in my email box from Michael Josephson over at CHARACTER COUNTS! this morning. He’ll probably sue me from here to Thursday (he is, after all, a lawyer), but it’s worth sharing in its entirety. I have a much different take on it than Mr. Josephson — I see it [...]
Two recent articles in The New York Times deserve every entrepreneur’s close attention, the first dealing with small businesses caught up in the fireworks when their lenders go under and the second dealing with the impending bankruptcy of General Growth Properties, the second-largest owner of shopping malls in the country and the first major commercial [...]
You see, the trick is in telling the difference.
In discussing the delicate line that regulators must walk, he said: “The challenge faced by regulators is to strike the right balance: to strive for the highest standards of consumer protection without eliminating the beneficial effects of responsible innovation on consumer choice and access to credit.”. . [...]
What happens when your bank fails? Your overextended small biz loan becomes toxic.
Clashes like this are increasingly taking place across the country, as banks struggle through their worst crisis in a generation. And Mr. Williamson is part of a niche industry that buys at bargain-basement prices the hard-to-collect commercial loans that the Federal Deposit Insurance [...]
Today is tax day! April 15! My wife and I received our refunds months ago, but people all over the country are celebrating tax day with Fox News-sponsored Tea Parties. Teabaggers from Beverly Hills to Greenwich Village are protesting tax hikes that have not in fact occurred, making Tea Parties the first protest in history [...]
