The SMB Online Presence Blog

WELCOME TO WEBSPLANET'S BLOG. This is where you’ll come to discuss SMB Online Presence in all its aspects – marketing and selling it, offering true value to your customers, your own plans and most of all – sharing knowledge on this increasingly important ecosystem. Please feel free to ask, speak and even challenge (kindly).

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Whats so great about a platform? Reduced operational cost & complexity, increased revenue

When it comes to Online Presence, it’s true, there are some great products out there and new ones are popping up everywhere you look. But what sets us apart from any competing software vendor? Our platform approach and our expertise will help you hit the market with a comprehensive offering, quickly and with reduced complexity and costs. How? 

Here are 5 ways that working with our platform will help you keep it simple and increase your profitability:

Minimal complexity, maximal offering. Deploying our platform to offer Online Presence to your business consumers enables you to hit the market with a broad offering quickly – and without adding operational complexity.

Centralized deployment, reseller optimized. Deploy a single instance and let your resellers brand and customize their interface, with localized languages, widgets and templates.

Offer more, sell more. Multiple solutions, powered by the same platform enable you to meet the varying needs of a broader audience of business consumers without having to integrate and manage an additional technology.

From fremium to premium and beyond. Empower your brand with our white label technology and continue to bundle integrated Value Added Services with your offering to increase your revenue and encourage customer return. Benefit from our interface’s in-built upsell capabilities and tailor your bundles as you see fit.

Consumer-driven UX. We have years of experience in implementing micro and SMB VOC (Voice of the Customer) and we continue to develop our platform to meet the needs of your audience. Our website and mobile site builders are designed for the everyday business owner. 

 That's whats so great.

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Part 1: MY Top 5 Reasons for partnering with WebsPlanet: Sales

Part 1 in a series: MY Top 5 Reasons for Partnering with WebsPlanet to Roll Out Online Presence to Your Business Consumers

Contributed by Robert Priscu, Director Sales & Account Management, WebsPlanet

Yes, I’m a sales person and everything I will write will have a sales pitch tone to it. However, I would like to think that some of us (sales people that is…) still have some integrity left, and in the end of the day – when I’m pitching, I truly believe that I’m offering the best solution for his very specific and special needs. 

That said, I do find that WebsPlanet consistently delivers value that is common to many prospects, and have therefore decided to share a few insights with you, Enjoy!

1.     Our site builder solutions are the best the industry has to offer

Go ahead; raise an eyebrow at the sales guy, but I really think so. I have witnessed prospects making comparison tables, have seen competing product demos and used them hands-on – and I challenge you to prove me wrong.

I have yet to see a single competitor pull up such a friendly and easy-to-use editor that enables simple creation of Web, Mobile and Facebook sites from a coherent, unified interface. The experience of creating a complete online presence just “naturally unfolds” as you work with our platform, rather than intimidate you when you get to the “tricky” parts like creating a Mobile site or (heaven forbid!) changing a theme (yes, you can change the theme and leave the content intact…).

It also surprises you in a good way. You naturally discover that the templates are responsive, so your site looks great on any device or platform, you can have dedicated content for your mobile, and if you want an e-shop – well, you just drag and drop it into your site, just as you would do with any other widget.

In addition, we have made all this goodness accessible for professional production teams (DIFM) as well as to the end users (DIY) – and did I mention that we can even mass-produce business-branded sites automatically?

 2.      We will help you market and sell Online Presence

See, WebsPlanet has been around for almost a decade now, and developing the platform for mass production of Online Presence is our core focus. We are providers for some of the biggest names in the industry and guess what – we have learned a thing or two along the way, and we are more than willing to share the knowledge.

In every sale I make, my team and I are engaged in talks not only with the production guys, giving the obvious in-depth training (to us it’s obvious, anyway…), but also with the Product and Marketing, sharing best practices to help define the best product and packages for the market. We even talk with the sales guys to give them the pitch points that will help them close the sale on that next phone call or visit.

Who else does that!?

3.    We will help you acquire and retain more customers

Well, although we won’t mark your targets for you – we will open up a lot of options that you will not get anywhere else. Specifically, our Automatic Site Creation solution can be implemented to support a truly proactive approach – the kind of approach that will enable you to give a put up a stronger fight for that additional customer, without exhausting your resources. Imagine being equipped to approach any prospect with a ready-made site – with his real business design and all his business’s details, i.e. phone number, address, and map. Now, imagine a prospect being kindly “invited” to view, fine-tune and publish his business Mobile or desktop site! 

Doesn't this seem better than expecting him start from scratch by locating and clicking control panel icon or passively listening to a sales rep pitch?

Speaking of the latter – we can provide a wizard, so sales rep can create that website for the customer as they speak (!) be it on the phone or on premise - bring him to the digital world on the fly! Wouldn’t your sales reps appreciate such a tool?

4.      We move quickly

Once you have decided, you want to be up-and-running ASAP. So do we. My personal record with a Tier 1 customer: signed-agreement-to-production in 20 days (branding, configuration, training, testing, unexpected set-backs etc.). 20 days - beat that. Next.

5.      You are crazy, we can execute

Our platform is great as-is, I know. But working with big names means that you need to adapt and cater for special requirements, and be there for the customer if they want to execute special projects. If it wasn't still confidential I would share some really neat stuff that we have pulled off recently – I can’t, but I will say this: WHEN WE SAY WHITE-LABEL PARTNER – WE MEAN EVERY WORD! We have the resources, know-how and experience to execute complicated R&D projects. White label does not mean I’ll-give-you-the-platform-my-other-customers-are-using-you-can-put-your-logo-here, we understand that, most others – just don’t.

 If you read this far and found it interesting, let’s take it to the next level – drop me a line let me help you too! Robert…

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Bad Mobile is Bad For Small Businesses

“Bad Mobile Creative Not Just a Missed Opportunity, It Damages Brands” is a recent post by Greg Sterling on his (much appreciated) industry blog “Screenwerk”. The post refers to the missed opportunity that many advertisers are missing on mobile, mainly due to lack of prioritization. Greg gives some nice examples of automated conversion of web-based ads into a mobile format that not only does not work. He started out with an example of how an inappropriate ad was placed by a machine on a prestigious brand's page.  His point - "bad mobile" can really affect a brand’s credibility.

I was of course quick to make the direct connection to mobile websites and the missed opportunity that occurs when the need for a mobile site is filled by using an application to convert your site in an automated manner.  

It’s not something we aren't aware of; marketers can often overlook the connection between media and the message. But when it comes to micro and small businesses that are working with limited to no marketing resources and habitually targeting local audiences - the importance of the mobile site reaches a whole new level of urgency.

Mobile sites need to be functional and this functionality needs to be inherent in the site builder because small businesses need to focus on their core activities, not become marketers. They need to provide the information that will be most important to a mobile reader who might be looking for directions to the business while sifting through your desktop site. 

So, while I am all for automation of processes, I guess we still haven't reached that point where its okay to rely on their "judgement". 

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Cute way of representing the capabilities of a responsive web page? We think so.

[adri3nn]

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.

Charles Darwin (via adriennwiebe)

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Are you dedicated to SMBs?

According to vSplash's SMB DigitalScape report more than one-quarter of SMB websites cannot be found in online searches. So, although SMBs are getting online - they might not be doing it quite right. The report (that we much appreciate as it seems SMB Online Presence data is still quite hard to come by), also states that SMBs are missing out on digital commerce opportunities due to deficiencies in key online and mobile presence features and functionality. 

For us all this means is that companies that are rolling-out Online Presence services to SMBs, have to deploy a strategy that is aimed at meeting SMB needs specifically. Under this strategy, they have to prioritize deployment of a site-builder that was designed for SMB websites, mobile sites and social activity. Websites and Mobile sites created with our Eclipse platform's site builder solutions are left with little to no room for end users to make these mistakes. 

vSplash is a great source of information for me and my associates. Are you tapping into any resources to get valuable information about SMB Online Presence? 

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Bells, whistles and fanciful features....

When it comes to site builders, in the end it’s all about features and functionalities.

NOT!!!

I was recently asked to create a short video clip that would showcase the new features and functionalities of our platform for an industry trade-show in the U.S. Of course we immediately got working, because (of course) we had about a week to show time. However, But early on in the planning stages, I stopped to ask myself: is a “bell & whistles” tactic really how  we want to grab attention at a show flooded with site-builder solutions?

I would have to go with NO. I don’t even think our offering merits a comparison with another site builder and that’s what’s so GREAT about it – it’s a platform that powers site-builder solutions. It’s also a platform that is being developed, integrated and operated by a team of extremely experienced industry veterans. We don't sell technology in-a-box because we don't believe that this is all it takes to reel in and retain a mass SMB customer base.

My understanding of the site-builder industry is that - in the end - it is definitely NOT a war of features. It’s about rolling out a robust solution that meets the needs of our customers’ SMB audience TODAY AND FOR THE LONG RUN – and this is achieved only through know-how and experience.

I still work hard to develop materials that introduce our features and functionalities though – because we have great things to showcase – but also because people are really attracted to bells & whistles even if their decisions aren't founded on them.

What do you think? Would you choose a site builder partner based on the range of cool features their solution supports?

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Dedicated Mobile Sites – It’s the ResponsiVle Thing to Do!

From a platform point of view, we’ve solved a big Mobile Dilemma.

Taking the lead role is undoubtedly the most recent version of our Mobile site-builder. We are hugely excited about this as it seems that after a long, thoroughly drawn-out industry debate of the subject, we've managed to solve the BIG MOBILE SITE DILEMMA – responsive or dedicated?

We say both! Sites created on our platform will be optimized for any screen and we all know this has become mandatory. We've geared our platform to enable a highly-customizable merging of the two that will provide the SMB end user with an ultimate mobile solution. The design is responsive; however, the content can be either completely dedicated or adapted. We’ve also gone a step further to make the actual content on the site responsive. Yes, you heard right – our widgets are responsive.  This means that they can be told to behave differently on varying Devices. 

Let’s take our Map widget as an example. We can ask it to display itself as a map with a location flag on a website, or as a GPS positioner on mobile. It’s fantastic. You get all the benefits of a responsive site for SEO and aesthetic purposes, as well as a dedicated mobile experience – with a single content source! We are feeling very grown up about this and glad that we could offer an alternative solution to picking either side.  

If you’re still stuck in the mobile dilemma it could well be that you are also still stuck in the age of multi-platform (or single-service) service delivery and we’d like to help.

What are some interesting solutions you've come across?

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What’s your SMB strategy for 2013?

At WebsPlanet we believe that capturing and retaining a mass SMB customer base is about so much more than the quality of your site-builder. This may sound ironic to some who see us as a leading site-builder vendor, but it’s what sets us apart from the competition.

Over the years we gone to great lengths to make sure that the site-building solutions powered by our Online Presence platform are always top notch, but we’ve done so while we continuously invest in growing our assets as a leading industry player in the SMB service provider space. We’ve hired some of the industry’s top professionals to ensure that we can also uniquely deliver a true turnkey offering that serves our partners’ SMB strategies – from the get-go and for the long term.

We've maintained our white-label status and continue to stick to our partnership business model that leaves no room for competition with our customers. We also continue to partner with industry leaders across the value chain to consistently enhance our service offering and open up revenue-generating opportunities for our customers. Our technology continues to outdo any competing site-builder solution (despite the recurring attempts to label them a “platform”), in its unmatched robustness and integration capabilities.

But above all, we are adamantly focused on our core mission in serving the industry: to work with our partners and customers to create true value that goes beyond any friendly UI or cutting-edge features to meet the Online needs of the growing global SMB market.

In summary, to quote a great innovator who understood that the success of a technological solution lies in its ability to create valuable experiences: “Don’t settle”.