Yahoo Small Business Advisor

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Make your website work for you

If you own and operate a small business, you know it’s more important than ever to have a well designed professional website with an appropriate domain, a business email to match, and a reliable hosting provider to make sure everything runs smoothly.   

Your online presence does more than just store your business information online. It can drive traffic and convert sales, streamline operations, boost credibility, and more. 

Having a professional online identity can be your competitive advantage, and is crucial for growing your small business. 

A study by Adaptive Marketing found that 97% of consumers go online to find and research local businesses, while a research team from Stanford revealed that 75% of consumers admitted they based a business’s credibility off of their website design. The eCommerce Foundation reported that one bad experience on a website makes consumers 88% less likely to visit that site again. 

With tight budgets and an endless list of to-dos, most small business owners simply don’t have the resources available for the extensive research and complex tools it takes to create and maintain a great online presence.  

While some business owners choose to spend precious time building their own site and finding the right digital providers, others overspend on third party design firms for theirs. 

There hasn’t been a service that bundles hosting, domain, and email with website design, creation, and ongoing management all together at a great value...until now. 

With our new service you get fast and secure hosting, a wide variety of domain options, business email to match your domain, and a professional team of experts to design, build, and manage the WordPress website of your dreams, all with one convenient plan. WordPress, established in 2003, is one of the largest content management systems in the world. Over 60 million users trust WordPress’s collection of diverse themes and 54,000 plugins to power their sites. WordPress reports that 34% of all internet websites are built off of their service. With beautiful designs and unparalleled functional versatility, your WordPress Website can do almost anything you need it to. 

Introducing Website Design Service by Yahoo Small Business, the most efficient and affordable way to build your professional online presence. 

 Hosting and domains 101

Your website’s hosting service and domain are crucial to your online presence. You can’t have a website without them, so what are they?

Your domain is your online home address. It’s the name users type into their browser to visit your site. If your name is Mike and you run a bike shop, a great domain name would be MikesBikeShop.com. With Yahoo Small Business’s Website Design service, it’s easy to browse from a list of available domains and choose the one that’s right for your business. 

Your hosting service, on the other hand, is your website’s home. Hosting determines how many pages your website has, how much data it can store, how fast the pages load for visitors, and the overall security of your site. Having slow and insecure hosting can cost your business revenue, sending potential customers to competitors with faster and more secure websites. 

Small businesses are the most susceptible to online cyber-attacks and can be attacked several times a day. The last thing you want to worry about is whether your hosting service can keep your business and customers safe from online threats. 

With Yahoo Small Business as your hosting provider, you can count on 24/7/365 monitoring to keep your website’s server safe from hackers, malware, and other cyber intrusions. Your site also comes with an SSL Certificate to protect your customers’ contact information, email addresses, login credentials, credit card numbers, and other sensitive financial and legal information. Plus, with an SSL Certificate, your website is automatically ranked higher in search engine results. 

Yahoo Small Business’s Website Design Service means your expertly designed and managed website comes with a quality hosting service that offers great performance and reliability, paired with a fast and simple way to find and claim an online domain with matching email all in one place and all at an affordable price. 

You’ve got mail

You can use your own email address for business, but when professional messages are sent from a personal email you may lose credibility, making it harder to get and retain customers.

Let’s go back to Mike and his bike shop. Let’s say he keeps his personal email address, [email protected], to use for business communications. While it works, using his personal email could cause potential customers to think he’s working out of his home’s garage instead of the five-employee, brick and mortar operation he’s built over the last 5 years.

If he uses an email address that matches his domain at MikesBikeShop.com, then his customers will receive and send emails to [email protected], building credibility for him and his company.

This is a must-have when talking to customers, and helps build a cohesive online identity around your business. Your competitors have the proper email for business, so it’s important that you do too.

With Website Design Service by Yahoo Small Business, your online presence comes fully equipped with a professional business email account that matches your website’s domain.

Expert websites built by website experts 

You only have one chance to make a great first impression, and in the online world, that chance only lasts a few seconds. After that, your site needs to make it easy for potential customers to do business with you. 

Having built over 25,000 WordPress websites, our experts put users first by efficiently using white space and clean user experience design to create aesthetically pleasing and easy-to-navigate sites that are optimized to look great on your desktop, tablet, and smartphone. 

Some websites need more complex functionality, such as providing quotes, accepting reservations, and other customer-facing processes. A Kinsta study found that WordPress powers 34% of all websites on the internet, creating an incredible ecosystem fueled by a vast network of versatile functionality plugins. Our design experts find and implement the best plugins for your site, helping streamline business operations to save you and your employees time and energy. This added functionality helps your WordPress website continually generate leads and convert customers month after month. 

As part of your Website Design Service, you’ll be able to coordinate with our experts on annual website redesigns to include new design trends, WordPress updates, functionality plugins, and more for the expanding needs of your business. 

Your Web Design Service team also includes professional copywriters and content specialists who will regularly update your site with new content and SEO optimizations upon request. 

SEO is an online strategy that helps push your website to the top of online search results. Introducing topics and competitive keywords to your website in the form of headers, image captions, metatags, body content, actionable CTAs (call to action)you can increase your site’s ranking in search results and make it easier for prospective customers to find your business online. 

Our content specialists help choose the best images for your website, and compress to ensure a cohesive online identity, while optimizing file sizes for a website that’s optimized for lightning-fast load times. Each month, you can have your website experts add new images, customer testimonials, updated business information, and more. 

Whatever your needs, our Website Design Service team will be there every step of the way to make your WordPress site runs as smoothly as your business does.  

How it works 

Hiring one team to handle your hosting, domain, email, and website is a big decision. You’ll start with a free consultation with our experts to figure out if Yahoo Small Business’s Website Design Service is right for you.

After moving forward with Website Design Service, your website will kick off with a design consultation to outline your goals, preferences, and needed functionality. We will send you a summary email from the first meeting, and then you’ll send us necessary assets like your logo, after which the team begins design and build your website.

When we finish building your WordPress site, our team lets you know it’s ready for the first round of your feedback. Our team iterates on your website until you’re satisfied and ready to take it live. Once completed, we’ll do the final legwork to get your site up and running, and ready for business. As time goes on, our team will be there to monitor and maintain your site, with WordPress updates, new content, and annual redesigns.

Are you ready to take your professional online presence to the next level? It’s time to take the first step towards a better professional online presence. 

Schedule your free consultation today, and see what Web Design Service by Yahoo Small Business can do for you.

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Business Maker launch empowers budding small business owners with a guided ‘one-stop shop’

By Iravati Hingne Yahoo Small Business Product Management

Yahoo Small Business has taken the confusion and guesswork out of starting a small business, clearing the way for new entrepreneurs to confidently take their ideas to market and start finding customers. With today’s launch of Business Maker, small business owners will now embark on a guided journey as they start and grow their ventures through a unified dashboard that is personalized for their needs.  This mobile-first platform walks  small business owners through an intuitive step-by-step process and highlights logical next steps for launch and growth.

Business Maker moves away from the concept of an app marketplace, which typically creates more work for business owners as they have to review multiple solutions to every problem, create multiple accounts and learn a variety of interfaces just to start managing their solutions. Instead, Business Maker customers are guided on their path to success, with products recommended specifically for them, based on factors that include their industry, their stage of growth and their goals. Business owners also get assistance via to-do lists, content, and expert advice which all helps them efficiently manage the products and focus more attention on actually running their business. 

Yahoo Small Business has partnered with industry-leading software products that businesses need, and has integrated them into Business Maker to  allow a seamless exchange of data in a secure and reliable environment. With the options for free trials and customizable plans at competitive prices, Business Maker equips small businesses with essential tools to run their business efficiently and securely. 

Key Platform Features & Benefits

Unified Dashboard:  A single dashboard to view and manage all the products in a centralized location accompanied by  analytics 

Industry leading solution providers: A growing ecosystem of hand-picked partners for best in class solutions

Simple billing: Customers get a single bill for all  products purchased through Business Maker. 

Single sign-on: Customers can access all their Business Maker products with one login ID. 

Support: 24/7 support is available via phone and through content in product.

Who should use Business Maker

Whether you are a first time entrepreneur thinking of starting a business , a seasoned business owner looking to upgrade to new digital systems or a brick and mortar business trying to increase your visibility, Business Maker will help speed your journey and reach your goal. 

The following products are currently integrated within Business Maker.

Online Presence:

Having an online presence is critical for any small business; a professional website helps store your business information online, drive traffic and convert sales, boost credibility, and more. YSB’s Online Presence package includes an easy to use Website Builder, a free Domain and 5 email boxes.

Legal Package:

This product enables small businesses to legally incorporate their business. Customers can quickly transform their idea into a business via our reliable, fast and simple process. Our trusted partner, Legalinc will file all the paperwork; it takes less than 20 minutes to fill out the questionnaire. The following services are included:

LLC, C-corp or nonprofit

Federal Tax ID (EIN)

Business license report

Registered Agent service

Point of Sale:

YSB’s home-grown mobile Point of Sale solution enables customers to take multiple forms of payments (credit, debit and cash) anywhere and anytime. An intuitive user interface designed to enable efficiency, combined with the security and trust of PayPal’s payment processing capability, will enable customers to easily manage their inventory and catalog and perform checkout and easy returns

LocalWorks:

Localworks gives a small business the ability to increase visibility of their business and to stand out from the competition with easily managed profiles in more than 60 top online directories. Customers can enhance listings with photos, videos, menus; easily create promotions and drive more traffic. Centralized analytics and monitoring tools help measure performance of the listings

Business Plan Creator:

The quick and easy Business Plan creator helps a customer plan their business and stay on top of things. It enables a small business to think through every aspect of the business and helps them make sound decisions throughout the lifecycle of the business. 

And this is just the start. Our product portfolio for Business Maker will continue to grow and address the growing needs of a small business, with new products and services planned to be added in the coming months.

How to Get Started:

Begin your journey with us by completing a short onboarding questionnaire and get your personalized product recommendations. You have the choice of selecting a recommended bundle of products or build your own or a free trial. Pick an option,  checkout and begin using Business Maker!

We will continue to enhance our product portfolio with new products and services; meanwhile we hope you enjoy using Business Maker. We are excited to have you start your journey with us - ready, start, grow!

Visit https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/businessmaker for more information.

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Provider Yahoo Small Business Advisor

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Website Design Service launched for small businesses ready to grow

By Ramesh Padmanabhan & Owen Hsiao, Product Management Yahoo Small Business

Yahoo Small Business has introduced Website Design Service to take the headache out of building and maintaining a professional website, and allow small business owners to instead focus their attention on taking care of customers and growing their revenue.

Website Design Service provides the design, engineering, creative and support services required to create, build, launch and manage a professional website with little time and effort required from the small business owner.

Additionally as your business evolves, your website will grow too thanks to the continued support and updates included as part of Website Design Service. Regular content updates and additions to your site will keep it fresh and accurate, as well as potentially increase your appearance in online search and your ability to get new customers.

In order to help websites continue to operate efficiently and securely, Website Design Service includes proactive updates to security plug-ins, and review of all website content for search engine optimization (SEO) before and after launch, which can help the site get higher page rankings and increased organic traffic.

Which Businesses Should Use Website Design Service?

In today’s competitive business climate, small business owners need to be able to focus on running and growing their businesses - not learning how to build and manage their websites.

But, a professional website with fresh and up-to-date content is a must-have for small businesses to be successful. Yahoo Small Business Website Design Service provides an easy and affordable solution using the popular WordPress platform to help businesses stand out from their competitors.

A quality website provides a business with a professional image that will make prospects confident in your ability to service them. A website is also often the primary place prospects will look online for businesses like yours, so it’s essential to be able to control what is shown about your products and services. Websites also make it easier for your customers to find you – by sharing hours, locations, products and services, support and more advanced features like appointment setting and quotes.

What Website Design Offers

YSB’s Website Design Service includes two offerings:

Standard: focused on delivering an elegant, professional site with all the functions most growing businesses need.

Premium: ideal for more sophisticated websites with advanced features and capabilities, including accepting reservations or appointments, issuing quotes, customer login and more frequent content refreshes.

Both offerings include SEO, reporting and regular content updates to support small business owners with the tools they need to grow their online presence. All websites are optimized for mobile.

How to Get Started

To get started, Yahoo Small Business offers an easy step-by-step process that includes consultations with an expert designer to discuss your business’ brand and goals, along with how your new website can help you build your online presence while leaving you free to focus on growing your business.

Visit https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webdesign for more information.

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New Yahoo Small business research highlights opportunities for SMB retailers to better compete against larger online rivals

Today at IRCE, Yahoo Small Business revealed findings from a recently conducted consumer survey, highlighting new opportunities for SMB retailers to meet the evolving preferences of consumers when it comes to shopping online so they can better keep up with their larger competitors. In a time when consumers can choose from a wide range of online retailers, it’s important that SMBs understand what they need to do to actively compete against larger retailers online.

The good news: a vast majority of shoppers (75 percent of those surveyed) want to shop at and support small businesses. However, 63 percent of consumers feel they get better prices and value at larger retailers. Clearly, consumers appreciate the small business experience, and smaller retailers should flex their muscles on what make them unique, but they also need to ensure they are creating opportunities to provide value in the same way as their larger competitors.

The survey findings also highlight areas for SMBs to focus on as they seek to better compete against larger retailers:

Marketing and promotion: Familiarity with retailer was the top factor influencing whether a consumer would shop small (selected by 38 percent of respondents). Regular marketing, together with promotions and discounts, helps smaller retailers not only ensure they remain top of mind for potential customers, but also that they are getting the value they demand.

Expertise in their field: Nearly one-third of consumers said they will choose a small retailer over a larger one because of their expertise in their market or their knowledge of the products that they are selling.

Human touch: Even on digital platforms, human touch is important – 38 percent of those surveyed feel large retailers lack personal touch, and 37 percent still want to speak to someone directly when shopping online.

Payment choice: More than one-third of respondents (38 percent) said it’s very important for them to have a range of payment options to choose from when shopping online.

Stay ahead of the tech curve: Outdated and inefficient websites/payment options were identified as a gripe by shoppers twice as often at smaller retailers (26 percent) versus larger ones (13 percent).

Keeping customers and their data safe: Security continues to be a top concern for shoppers, whether shopping at large or small retailers – more than one-third of respondents identified this as worry for both large and small retailers.

New Yahoo Small Business services empower SMB retailers

The message is clear: small retailers can compete with larger ones, as long as they have the tools to do so!  

Yahoo Small Business is committed to helping small retailers maximize their online potential and recently launched a range of new features to its ecommerce platform, in addition to new features from its developer partners. These updates are specifically designed to make it easy for small businesses to scale their operations and deliver a customer experience more in line with what they’re used to experiencing with large internet retailers.

Key among these are:

More payment options: Seamless integration with PayPal Smart Buttons allows merchants to intelligently customize payment options for their customers. For the first time, this will introduce Venmo as a payment option on the Yahoo Small Business platform. New APIs also allow online merchants to utilize custom payments and work with additional payment processors of their choice.

Expanded subscription and promotion services: Enhanced subscription capabilities let customers schedule orders for items they regularly need, with the ability to offer discounts. Additionally, new promotion services let merchants easily offer instant and timer-based discounts, flash sales, buy-one-get-one-free promotions and more, simplifying the creation, scheduling and execution of promotions similar to large online retailers.

Improved marketing tools: A new range of customizable designs streamlines the process of building custom, branded HTML email templates for personalized communications throughout the customer journey, for everything from order confirmation and shipping status to gift certificates and sale notifications.

Navigating new tax complexities: With new legislation, the onus is now on small retailers to figure out how to collect taxes from some 15,000 different taxing jurisdictions in the U.S. This new feature helps sellers to simplify the process by integrating third party solutions for sales tax management.

Expanding reach through other leading retailers’ platforms: A web-based multi-channel order management system helps smaller retailers expand their reach and manage orders across the platforms of leading retailers – including Amazon, Lowe’s, Hayneedle, Home Depot and Walmart.

Yahoo Small Business has also introduced improved security delivered via an end-to-end SSL, advanced order exports for faster delivery of data, and additional developer tools for new ecommerce services.

With these new features, Yahoo Small Business is changing the game for small retailers and committed to helping small businesses compete with their larger competitors like never before. To learn more, please visit Yahoo Small Business.

Methodology: Survey was conducted online among 1,008 consumers in the United States, age 18 and over, between June 10-12, 2019.

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Yahoo Small Business: Now heading to 2019 ecommerce & retail event

Ecommerce and retail merchants will be converging on Chicago this week for the Internet Retailer Conference & Exposition and RetailX shows, and Yahoo Small Business will have a major presence with two separate booths staffed by leaders from across the business, as well as key partners and developers.

This year marks the 21st year that Yahoo Small Business has been helping small businesses find customers and sell products online. During that time we’ve supported over $70 billion in transactions for our merchants, and have earned the reputation as the most reliable and customizable hosted ecommerce platform. These are just a few of the reasons that many of our merchants have been with us over a decade – and some for our entire 21 years.

We’ll be sharing more reasons this year at our booths (#1752 and #2258), where we will be highlighting new products and features, as well as showcasing plans for what to expect in the next few months. 

Booth 1752 will focus primarily on ecommerce and we will be joined by nine of our expert developers who will each have demonstration stations and will be meeting with merchants, providing free site evaluations and will be available to consult with ecommerce sellers looking to start or grow their businesses. Developers in the booth this year include: Your Store Wizards, Ventura Web Design & Marketing, 4Psite, Web Stores and More!, Nakamoa, Choose Your Company, All Web Promotion, YTimes, and Practical Data.

Meanwhile, in booth 2258 we will be focusing on the spectrum of products and services that Yahoo Small Business provides for both local and online businesses, including domains, business mail, web hosting, and directory listings management. Additionally, we will be demonstrating some new small business offerings, including website design and management services, and a new point-of-sale solution.

We’ll also be hosting a merchant and partner appreciation party Wednesday evening – so if you haven’t gotten your invitation, contact your account manager or stop by one of our booths.

Hope to see you in Chicago!

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March is mad for women

By Shirley Tan Developer Network Manager, Yahoo Small Business

March is a month known for many things… March Madness, St. Patrick’s Day, Mardi Gras, National Celery Month (who knew?). The list goes on and on. But the most significant celebrations are National Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day. These two events honor the past, present and future of the empowerment and achievements of women everywhere.

Women have become a powerful force in Small Business. As of 2018, women own 4 out of every 10 businesses in the U.S. They employ nearly 9.2 million people and generate $1.8 trillion in sales!* And it’s clear, we’re not stopping there. Women owned businesses with revenues over $1 million increased 46 percent - compared to 12 percent for all U.S. businesses - in the last decade.** Way to go ladies!

While there’s been a lot of success and much to celebrate, there’s still a lot of work to be done. Whether it be improving our ability to secure funding, inspiring more women to lead or training women to harness the power of technology, it’s clear that it’s not time to rest on one’s laurels. We have the ability (and momentum) to continue to make significant change and contributions in the communities in which we live and work.

To that end, I’m proud to be a part of Yahoo Small Business. We’ve been supporting entrepreneurs and small business owners - many of them women - for more than 20 years. And in celebration of women everywhere, we’re hosting a free webinar on March 27th. This is part of an effort to inspire you to follow your dream of starting your own business (or keep on going!) with stories from a panel of women business owners who will share what they’ve learned and what they would NOT do again. We’ll also provide you with the latest technology tips and tricks needed to launch, manage, and grow a small business. I hope you’ll join us!

Register now for our free webinar.

*Source: https://www.wbenc.org/blog-posts/2018/10/10/behind-the-numbers-the-state-of-women-owned-businesses-in-2018

**Source: https://www.inc.com/guadalupe-gonzalez/state-women-owned-businesses-report-2018.html

About Shirley Tan Shirley was an early e-commerce pioneer who founded a wedding gift company and grew it to $6.5M annual revenue with 30 full-time employees before selling it to The Knot. She is also the author of Ecom Hell, how to grow your e-commerce business and not get burned. Shirley is now part of the Yahoo Small Business team.

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    Provider Yahoo Small Business Advisor

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WordPress hosting a new addition from Yahoo Small Business

By Owen Hsiao Product Manager, Yahoo Small Business

Yahoo Small Business now makes it easy for small businesses to leverage WordPress tools, templates and plugins on their own small business site. Widely known for its ability to host sites for blogging, web content and forums, WordPress hosting is ideal for a variety of businesses and is now available with Yahoo Small Business hosting, email and support.

What is WordPress hosting from Yahoo Small Business?

WordPress hosting is an open-source content management system (CMS) based on PHP & MySQL. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system. WordPress is the most popular website management system in use.

WordPress hosting allows you to install WordPress in just a few steps, while a new WordPress dashboard makes simple to manage multiple websites with a single interface. This new product supports WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg.

Benefits of having WordPress hosting:

Customer support - 24/7 phone, chat and online support

Domain name and business mail - Sign up and get a domain for your brand name and multiple email addresses to match your domain.

Unlimited website installations - Create as many WordPress websites as you like using a single account.

No limits on the visitors to your site - Grow your business and attract new customers with no worries about visitor limits.

Customizable & flexible - Create a site that reflects your brand’s unique style and personality

Safe & Secure - An SSL certificate makes your customers trust your website as it keeps their information in a secure Yahoo datacenter. SSL certificate included

Get essential online insights about your business using the Yahoo Small Business Insights mobile app.

30-day satisfaction guarantee

This WordPress hosting release is just the first step in our plan to help small businesses leverage all the tools available for WordPress sites. Future releases will support integration with additional features and third-party partners, as well as tools to help users manage site security and automatic plugin updates.

Visit WordPress hosting for more information and to sign up for your own WordPress hosting site.

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    Provider Yahoo Small Business Advisor

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Yahoo Small Business launches improved Localworks for small businesses

By Dilip Deshpande Yahoo Small Business, Product Manager

We’ve updated our Localworks product that allows businesses to build and control their local online digital presence. Localworks is not just a paid business listing service – it also comes with pack of features to help you gain a competitive edge in the current market.

With three different plans, users can choose the package that fits their business needs. Updating listings information in the Yahoo Local website directory has never been this easy. With Localworks Starter packages that include Yahoo Local and six other essential directory listing sites, your business information will be updated in real-time. As a business owner, you will have full control of your business information, and you will be able to upload enhanced listing content such as a photo gallery, videos, calendar of special events, and promotions. You will also get access to our “Digital Assistant”, a text bot that will assist you in updating your hours of operation, adding photos, and many other items using your mobile phone. The starter package also offers robust analytics to track your business performance, all at a very affordable cost.

With nearly 60% of searches happening on mobile devices, millions of users are looking for business addresses and phone numbers, hours of operation, driving directions, menus, photo galleries, and reviews before they make a visit to the physical location of a business. As a business, if your listing information does not include this enhanced content, or if you are not monitoring your business reputation, you might be losing customers.

For businesses that want to control their business information across most of the local directories on the Internet and closely monitor user reviews, understand user sentiment and how they compete in local search, Localworks by Yahoo Small Business is a comprehensive solution.

With our higher end packages, in a single dashboard, businesses can

Publish business listings in 60+ directories (Including maps, GPS, social media sites)

Eliminate duplicate business records appearing in the Local Search ecosystem

Connect to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter

Monitor and reply to user reviews from all major review sources

Compare with 5 other competitors (local or national)

Generate reviews through our website widgets

Understand customer reviews with Sentiment Analysis

Receive In-depth analytics

Yahoo Small Business also offers a free business listing scan tool, where businesses can easily find out how their information is listed across 60+ directories and clearly identify errors in location data across local listing networks before signing up for a premium Localworks service.

About Yahoo Small Business For the past 20 years, Yahoo Small Business has helped millions of businesses get online and grow their presence on the Internet. Whether you hope to start a side business or are currently running a multi-million dollar venture, you can trust Yahoo’s proven online business experience, powerful yet easy-to-use solutions, and broad community support to help your business succeed online. Learn more at: https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com

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    Provider Yahoo Small Business Advisor

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The Wise Way to Buy Your Website Domain

More than just your address on the ‘net, your domain name can also be one of your best forms of advertising. This is why it’s important to choose carefully when you buy your website domain name and register it.

Domain names serve a number of other key purposes.

For example, if you decide to move your site to another service provider, your customers would never know the difference with your new URL linked to your existing domain name.

With advantages such as these in mind, here’s the wise way to buy your website domain.

 Have A Number of Options in Mind

Odds are that clever domain name you’ve come up with has already been thought of by someone else and registered. To save yourself some grief—and time—brainstorm several possibilities before you begin your search. That way, if your first choice is taken, you’ll have other ideas at the ready. This could save you from impulsively buying a domain name from someone at an exorbitant price because you had no other ready ideas.

 Consider the Following Naming Tips

Name choices should be both easy to type and easy to remember.

Avoid slang, as popular culture changes over time and you could date     yourself with a domain name like “awesome.com”.

Exclude numbers so people don’t have to wonder if they should     spell “for” or use the digit “4” when you recite yourLet’s  domain name aloud.

Short is better than long (it’s easier to remember).

Avoid buying a name too comparable to that of another company (especially a more prominent one). You’ll send traffic to them every time a user’s autocomplete defaults to the better-known spelling.

Make sure you can also get the name on the social media sites inhabited by your ideal user.

A .com extension is the best choice, but if you can’t get one, find an extension relevant to your business to help make your name more memorable (being careful not to violate rule six above).

 Choosing a Registrar

Depending upon the nature of your site and its purpose, your best deal can be choosing a registrar offering a free website to go along with it. That way, you can get everything done in one fell swoop. Ideally, the registrar will offer features like domain locking to prevent the unauthorized transfer of your domain. Private registration will keep your name and contact information out of sight of crackpots. Other useful features to look for include DNS management and 24/7/365 customer support.

This is the wise way to buy your website domain. Another smart choice is using Yahoo Small Business to help you choose and register your domain name.

It’s fast, easy and inexpensive. Try it today

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    Provider Yahoo Small Business Advisor

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How to Compare Web Hosting Services

It’s one of the most significant choices you’ll make regarding your online presence. Your web hosting service can be the difference between presenting a reliably robust site and one that spends more time down than up. For this reason, gaining a good understanding of how to conduct a hosting compare is essential to your success in this regard.

Here are few key things to look for.

 What Your Site Needs to Do

Before you can make any sort of a comparison, you must first have a clear idea of what you need. If you’re building a huge eCommerce site with the potential of drawing Los Angeles rush-hour traffic you’re going to need a lot of bandwidth, a lot of storage capacity and exceptionally robust security protocols.

 How Unlimited Is Unlimited?

While you’ll see a number of providers toss that term about, the reality is unlimited is provisional at best. Delve into the terms of service and you’ll usually find unlimited is indeed unlimited—up to a certain point. Again, if your site is going to be drawing lots of traffic, you want to make your chosen host’s “unlimited” is the most unlimited you can get.

Conversely, if your site is a basic one with only few pages and light traffic, you won’t have those concerns. Going forward, if you need more features, what are the upgrade options? Additionally, how responsive is the server? Slow load times can cost customers as people grow more impatient about waiting for sites to load every day.

 Is That Introductory Rate Really a Good Deal?

A lot of companies offer super low “introductory rates, only to jack the price up substantially after the trial period ends to make up the difference over the balance of the contracted period.

And oh, by the way, to get that super low rate you may well have to agree to a three-year contract to ensure they have time to recoup that loss leader pricing. In some cases, renewal fees can be as much as four times the sign-up rate. What’s more, can you get a refund if you’re not happy with the service?

 When, Where and How Support is Provided

It’s more a question of when support will be needed, as opposed to whether support will be needed. Problems have a nasty habit of developing in the middle of the night in the middle of a weekend—during your biggest sale of the year.

When it’s your turn to deal with it, you’re going to want to get a live body on the phone to talk you through the solution. That’s why anything less than 24/7/365 live support is simply not good enough. You also want to know the provider’s average response time to problems.

Speaking of downtime, what are the host’s server reliability and uptime guarantees? You also need to take a look at the site backup options to ensure you can get back online quickly if yours crashes.

As you’re considering how to compare web hosting services, examining these factors will help you choose the best provider for your needs today—and into the future. Speaking of which Yahoo Small Business hosting stacks up nicely in all of these regards. Check it out today!

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Tips for Getting the Most Out of a Domain Finder

Indispensable to the process of securing a good name for your online presence, getting the most out of a domain finder is simply a matter of applying a bit of planning, research and creativity. Key to establishing authority and credibility, reinforcing your brand identity and promoting your business, the right domain name can absolutely make your business. However, finding a good one that’s not already taken can be a bit of a challenge.

These tips will help you get the most out of a domain finder.

 Think Creatively

At the last count, there were well in excess of one billion websites registered. This makes the odds of getting your first domain name choice with a .com pretty slim. While this extension remains the most desirable, there is now a wide array of new, more descriptive top-level domains (TLDs) available. If you exercise a degree of imagination, you can get the name you want—with a different extension. If yours is a blog site, try going with .blog. If you have a small restaurant, consider using .cafe. You can find a list of the currently available TLDs at a site maintained by ICANN (International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

 Keep it Logical

If you can communicate your domain name verbally without having to spell it out, you’ve got a good one. So basically, you’ll want to avoid using deliberate misspellings or slang. And yes, we know there are all sorts of trendy domain names out there breaking this rule, but they also have huge marketing and advertising budgets to ensure the world knows who they are. If you do too, more power to you. But your road will still be easier to travel if you resist the temptation.

 Keep it simple

Long, complex domain names invite confusion. Do you really want to type 26 characters into a web browser just to find a nice pair of shoes, when Zappos.com does it in 10? You also want to make sure the name you choose is easy to pronounce. People tend to have difficulty recalling words they don’t quite know how to say. Even if they’ll never speak your domain name aloud, making it easy to pronounce in their minds also makes it “sticky” for their brains. Another advantage of simplicity is it will usually be easier to spell. This makes users more likely to find you.

These three tips for getting the most out of a domain finder will help you come up with a name likely to resonate with your customers, while describing your business perfectly. The domain finder at Yahoo Small Business is easy to use, fast and you can conduct searches free of charge. Try it today!

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Ways to Minimize Web Hosting Services Cost

In the highly competitive world of web hosting services, you’ll find a broad array of plans with varying features and perks. To get the best deal, you’ll have to take a bit of time to dissect each offering to see what a supplier’s web hosting services cost really is. Things aren’t always as cut and dried as they can appear to be.

With that said, here are some ways to minimize your web hosting services cost.

 Know Your Needs

Before you go out looking for a hosting services provider, the smart play is to take some time to identify your requirements. After all, how will you know a good deal when you see one if you have no idea what you ought to get?

The volume and type of traffic you’re expecting are key considerations.

If you’re conducting flash sales, you’ll need a lot of bandwidth to handle the sudden spikes in traffic. If you’re just putting up an electronic brochure for people to read and it will always be the exact same size, you can get by with minimal disk space and data transfer rates. Will you need thousands of email addresses? That’s yet another consideration. Long story short, it’s important to get a firm handle on your needs so you can compare apples to apples when you take the next step.

 Shop Around

It might seem obvious, but it’s something a lot of people overlook. All hosting services are not created equally. If you want to get the best one for your situation, you’ll need to spend time scouring the marketplace for features best suited to your needs at a price you consider reasonable.

However, don’t choose based upon price alone. Yes, the goal is to minimize your cost, but costs are about more than just money. You’ll incur downtime and opportunity costs if your hosting service is unreliable and your site crashes frequently. Consider reliability right along with the price.

 Watch Out For Hidden Charges

Provider “A” offers a $7.00 monthly rate, while Provider “B” charges $8. However, provider “B” includes features you need such as unlimited disk space and unlimited data transfer along with private registration for that price. Meanwhile, Provider “A” also offers those services—at an extra charge. So even though they have a lower introductory rate, when you add the features you really need you’ll pay more.

 Reputation, Reputation, Reputation…

When you’re considering a provider, dig around on the net a bit and get a feel for how they’re viewed by the community at large. Anyone can promise the moon, sun and stars—and many companies do. However, when it’s time to deliver, a lot of them provide more excuses than performance.

In other words, you’re looking for a reliable partner in addition to the lowest number. Your best deal is going to come from someone offering the exact features you need who will be there 24/7/365 delivering cheerfully provided support.

When you’re looking for ways to minimize your web hosting services cost, If a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is. Peeling back the wrapper and examining the offering carefully is the best way to find a great deal. Or, you could just save yourself a lot of time and trouble and go with one of these.

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When Locally Targeted Marketing Makes Sense

Even though it’s called the World Wide Web, online marketing absolutely can be conducted on a local basis. In fact, there are a number of situations when locally targeted marketing makes sense, even for national brands. What’s more, marketing using local listings also conserves capital, even while maximizing your potential for success.

 Building Local Brand Awareness

Different regions of the country are unique in a number of ways. This makes marketing specifically to them easier and more effective. Catering to the particular needs of customers in these areas can give those shoppers reason to identify with your brand. In addition to enhancing brand awareness, promoting local deals leads to more engagement.

 Striving to Improve Customer Loyalty and Retention

Employing local listings will enable you to speak specifically to your target audience in a given location. This is particularly true for mobile advertising, in which you can craft your messages to appeal to an individual based upon the location in which they happen to be searching. This helps previous customers find you more readily, enabling you to more readily keep them in the fold.

 Gaining More Bang From a Small Budget

In this case, a granular focus can produce greater efficiency. In other words, training your budget on a smaller area can have more impact than trying to make the same dollars deliver significant results over a larger region. In fact, wasted impressions often result from broader targeting. Going smaller can actually improve your performance, which, in turn, amplifies your ROI.

 Increasing In-store Performance

Ironically, thanks to the rise of mobile computing, shoppers are using hand-held devices to locate brick and mortar locations. In fact, according to a Nielsen study, the most popular methods of brand interaction via mobile device hinge on location. Some 50 percent of mobile users use their devices to find the location of a retailer. Another 39 percent call the business and 48 percent use smartphones to get maps and driving directions. Taking advantage of local listings with this in mind will attract more customers to your physical store.

 Breaking into a New Market

When you’re entering a market for the first time, you have to create an initial splash. Locally targeted marketing makes this much easier to do, as you can build your campaigns around the exact characteristics of the local customer’s mindset. Yes, this means you’ll have to take some time to get to know your ideal customer in any given area. But once you do, personalizing your messages in local listings has the potential to render them considerably more appealing.

Locally targeted marketing absolutely makes sense in these five scenarios. They are also when Yahoo Small Business local listings make it a lot easier for your business to be discovered online. Try them today!

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Domain Hosting Red Flags

Three of the key ingredients for the success of a brick-and-mortar business have always been location, location and location. Remarkably, it turns out this is true for e-businesses as well.

Your domain host can have a significant impact upon your ability to do business. Along with your domain name registration, where you decide to call your ecommerce site home is an essential aspect of its performance.

With that in mind, here are three domain hosting red flags of which you should be aware.

If The Deal Sounds Too Good to Be True

Unlimited bandwidth for only five cents per month? Yeah, let’s see how long that one holds up. If they’re making next to no money, how can they deliver reliable service?

They’re probably offering all sorts of things that should be included in the base price on an a la carte basis to compensate. By the time they’re done nickel and diming, you may have had an all-inclusive package for less money—with fewer headaches.

Know what services you need and do the math before you sign.

Indifferent Customer Service

When you call with a problem do you get through to someone knowledgeable right away? Are you left on hold for an interminable duration, only to get a rote response like “Did you try rebooting your computer?”

Granted, there are times when that might indeed be the solution, but why should you have to wait on hold for 30 minutes for someone to ask you that?

A far better solution would be to offer a variety of methods for you to get help; email, chatbots, a robust forum etc. By the way, problems also happen in the middle of the night, in the middle of the weekend, during a holiday.

Will they have a living, breathing individual available to whom you can speak?

Negative Buzz

Ideally, you’ll spend some time investigating the reputation of a provider before handing responsibility for your public presence over to them. Online reviews, forums, social media, Yelp and other peer review sites are good places to start your due diligence.

Yes, everybody is bound to have one or two negative reviews; after all, it’s nigh unto impossible to please everyone all the time. But if the preponderance of buzz is bad, seek another destination.

Slow Load Times

Get a list of the sites the host currently serves and observe their performance using a tool like Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

If you’re seeing lackluster speed across all of their sites (and you can bet they’ll give you the fastest ones to review) they’ve a problem in that regard.

These days, most users will give your site a maximum of three seconds to load.

After that, they’ll look for another source. If you’ve done everything you can to maximize the performance of your site, only to be potentially let down by your host, we suggest you do the same.

Spotting these domain hosting red flags will enable you to deliver faster, more reliable service, which translates into a better experience and more loyalty from your users. To enjoy the best web hosting, website themes, domain search tools and more, visit Yahoo Small Business today!

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Brainstorming a Domain Name

What’s in a name? Would pumpkin pie, if referred to by any other appellation, smell less like a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves? Of course it wouldn’t.

Similarly, your website will still be the same, regardless of the designation you give it. However, like pumpkin pie, the label you attach does establish a certain set of expectations on the part of the general public. Thus, it is indeed prudent to choose carefully when brainstorming a domain name.

1. The Group Method

Brainstorming must be conducted with a completely open mind.  Setting parameters limits your thinking. Get a group of people together who have a good idea of what you’re trying to accomplish and let them throw out whatever names pop into their heads—while you do the same. Don’t discard anything they say; write everything down on a whiteboard so the entire group can see it. This way, ideas will build upon one another.

Once you’ve exhausted the group, go through the list to see what resonates. Keep in mind; well over three hundred million domain names are already registered. Stopping at just one is folly as it’s likely to be taken. Try to come up with a list of at least five acceptable ideas.

2. The Conversational Method

Again, approaching the topic with an open mind, you’ll sit down with a friend or colleague who has an understanding of the nature of the site. With this strategy, you’ll just toss out ideas to one another until something strikes you both as being viable. Again, you’ll need to generate more than one, so try to come up with at least five upon which the two of you are in full agreement.

The strength of this approach lies in the ability for the two of your to instantly recognize a good name when it’s hit upon. This can work better than the first method for people who prefer to work in a less chaotic fashion. You can also work this approach with a name generator more readily. The danger here is you could overlook something fun.

A rowdy crowd tends to be a bit more creative.

Additional Thoughts

Stay away from existing brand names. Their owners will get around to serving you a cease and desist order at some point. Avoid stuffing keywords in the name too. Exact domain matches tend to be frowned upon by Google’s search engine.

With that said, if you’re trying to buy a website domain, you’re in Pasadena, your name is Paula and you sell pumpkin pie—”PaulasPasadenaPumpkinPies” does have a nice ring to it. It’s also available as of this writing.

Whatever you think of, make it simple to spell and easy to remember. Don’t be afraid to go quirky either—some the best domain names had no meaning until they were applied to a business. Be careful to avoid secondary meanings though.

Ultimately, brainstorming a domain name is simply a matter of getting rowdy with a bunch of your friends around the idea of coming up with another name for pumpkin pie.

If you are looking to buy a website domain or find beautiful website themes, Yahoo Small Business is here to help.

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Essential Personality Traits for SMB Owners

While it’s true that just about anybody can be successful if they put their minds to it, certain personality types find the path to success easier to trod than others. The good news is even if you weren’t born with these essential personality traits for SMB (small or medium business) owners, you can develop them. Doing so is just as vital as having email for business.

Faith

There will be times when you’ll have to carry on in the face of unfavorable odds. In those times, faith, born of your desire to succeed, will carry you over the obstacle. A positive mental attitude is absolutely essential to success. If you think you can, you’ll try. If you think you can’t—you won’t. Also seen as confidence, faith in your ability to succeed is probably the most important of these traits.

Humility

With that said, you have to be careful to avoid having that faith come across as arrogance. You’re going to need people to help you along the way. Folks tend to respect quiet, unrelenting confidence. They abhor loud, obnoxious arrogance.

Don’t be THAT person.

Acknowledge those who help you and show gratitude. Remain grounded when success comes. Show grace in the face of acclaim and be humble about your talents.

Goal Orientation

The best way to accomplish any seemingly monumental task is to break it down into steps. But you must have a clear idea of what you’re trying to achieve to do so.

With goal setting, you can approach your endeavor bite by bite, rather than feeling you need to devour it in one great gulp. This also gives you a yardstick by which you can measure progress and milestones from which you can derive a sense of achievement along the way.

Passion

One of the easiest ways to be successful is to find something you love to do, learn everything you can about the subject, then set about monetizing what you’ve learned. Having a passion for what you’re doing makes it feel less like work and more like enjoyment. Earning a comfortable living doing something you love to do is a more than worthy goal.

Resilience

Everything you try won’t be successful the first time. Thomas Edison is reputed to have said he didn’t consider his unsuccessful attempts at the light bulb as failures; he considered them learning ways the idea wouldn’t work. While there will always be lots of reasons something won’t go, all you need to find is one way it will. You have to be willing to keep trying until it reveals itself.

Listening

Yes, the idea of the solitary figure who fashions a new reality from the depths of their imagination with their own hands is a pervasive one. While these individuals tend to be thought of as solitary figures, they generally aren’t. Steve Jobs didn’t invent the iPhone, he just recognized a great idea when he heard one.

Most successful entrepreneurs are geniuses with many helpers. However, they have to be willing to listen with an open mind, or a great idea can float right past them unseen.

A Kodak employee invented the digital camera in 1975, but the marketing team didn’t listen when they were told it represented the future. Having filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012, Kodak is now a shadow of its former self.

These six qualities are essential personality traits for SMB owners. People tend to believe successful people find success on their own. However, the reality is these qualities lead success to them.

For more tips, resources and your own business email address, visit Yahoo Small Business today.

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Should You Consider Upping Your Bandwidth Before Cyber Monday?

According to CNBC, Cyber Monday drew a total of $6.6 billion in 2017. The amount was up some 18 percent over the year prior. Given the trend toward greater acceptance of ecommerce and the comfort people are now exhibiting shopping on mobile devices ($2 billion of that 6.6 was mobile), you can bet that number will be higher in 2018.

So, should you consider upping your bandwidth before Cyber Monday?

Well, like so many things in life the answer to that question is—it depends.

The Ghost of Holidays Past

Look to previous seasons to see what you should do to be prepared for this one. Analyzing trends will help ensure the accuracy of your predictions. While you’re at it, you might also look to see what you need to do in terms of inventory so you can meet demand with no delays. Most online merchants generate approximately 30 percent of their annual revenue during the holiday season. If you’ve handled in the past with bandwidth to spare, you might be OK.

If not, then the answer is fairly obvious—yes?

The Ghost of Holiday Present

So, we’ve established that if you’ve already got a wide pipe and your past few seasons didn’t tax it, you’re probably good to go. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look into it, nor does it mean you shouldn’t look for other ways to improve your customer experience (CX).

Are your customers presently complaining about any aspect of your site? Are you experiencing any consistent challenges when it comes to dealing with your customers? Is your customer service team up to the task?

Untoward issues will be exacerbated with an influx of holiday shoppers looking to get what they want as quickly as possible. Even if bandwidth isn’t an issue, the CX you provide always is.

Anything you can do to resolve those issues now will only improve sales.

The Ghost of Holidays Future

Anyone considering how to build a website needs to take all of the above factors into consideration. When you’re planning for the future, it’s important to build in as much bandwidth as you think you’ll need over the course of the entire year. This makes a lot more sense than going lean until the holidays and counting on ramping up just in time for the rush.

What if you encounter a technical problem that takes your site offline during the run-up to that crucial period? It’s better to have capacity in place before you need it, rather than waiting until the last minute when everyone else is trying to get it too—and potentially missing out.

So, should you consider upping your bandwidth before Cyber Monday? Again, it depends. If you haven’t upped it already, then yes—you absolutely should. In fact, you should do so long before Cyber Monday.

For more resources and information about how to build a website, visit Yahoo Small Business today!

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