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Take care of your business from the palm of your hand! Times are changing and it’s easier than ever to contact clients, manage your business and get your name out there when potential customers are browsing establishments in your area.

Smartphone use is constantly expanding and mobile users are increasing their use of local business searches. Yelp and Facebook are just two ways people find businesses in their area. Business owners can use this information to make themselves more accessible in the online world.

With smartphones you can keep your business organized, attract new customers and keep track of the ones you already have. Find out how to make the most of your smartphone and your business by downloading our ebook!

Download the E-Book Here: How Smartphones Change Everything for Your Local Business 

Want free advertising and a quick way to generate buzz? Of course!

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to promote your business to new customers is through Foursquare. The free app provides a simple way to measure your success in terms of check-ins, reviews and tips. It also gets your name out there when potential clients browse the businesses near their location.

We’ve created an e-Book to guide you through the reasons it’s important to join this social network and track your visitors. We’ll cover:

1) The Explore Feature

2) Offers, Specials and Mayorships

3) Tips, Reviews and Lists

4) Your Business Profile

Download the free e-Book to get started:

 A Few Notes About Foursquare for Your Local Business

From: “…definitely my girlfriend and I wouldn’t return again.”   To:  “Best pedi/mani ever!” 

Why you should read this post ASAP:

You are a small business owner wanting to attract new customers utilizing the excellent resource that is Yelp!

Yelp is a powerful community of consumers sharing their experiences at thousands of businesses by word-of-mouth and 1-5 star ratings. Whether you own a restaurant, spa, or salon, you can be sure that before anyone tries out your services for the first time, they will research you on Yelp. According to Yelp’s blog, 85% of consumers use the Internet to find local businesses.

“Being a visitor to the city, I was a little nervous about just walking into a waxing salon. So, I did the natural thing, and yelped brazilian waxes in the area I was planning on visiting.” -Yelp Review: http://bit.ly/YtrHBo

 What You Don’t want to see on Your Yelp Page:

“After seeing the final product, I cannot in good conscience recommend [this place]  for their brazilian waxing.” – This reviewer gave the salon 2 stars

“Hate to give this place a low rating, since the women were so nice, but my pedicure left me pretty disappointed.” – Again, 2 stars

While a poor review on Yelp may feel like a personal attack, take a deep breath and think carefully about your response. If done properly, you can turn the situation around and even convince your unhappy customer to give you a second chance. Thank them for their feedback and for trying out your services, and include any changes you have made as a result of their comments. Yelpers will frequently comment on their negative reviews if their experience improves and give a higher rating. More from Yelp: http://bit.ly/iW4wRY

More About Us:

LocBox helps local businesses generate revenue and foot traffic with targeted campaigns that run on multiple channels – Email, Facebook, Twitter, Text – all from one dashboard.

We bring businesses from the Dark Ages of unsustainable discounting and Email Marketing into a sustainable revenue plan.

Additional Reading:

1.) http://www.reviewtrackers.com/practices-responding-online-reviews/

2.) http://www.reviewtrackers.com/respond-negative-reviews/

Mobile commerce is expected to increase significantly – from $1 billion in sales in 2009 to a projected $100 billion in 2015 – according to Mashable. In order to take advantage of this potential profit, you need to adapt your mobile site to provide a positive shopping experience for your customers.

While it may seem as easy as inserting a page to accept credit cards and facilitate the buying process, there are a number of other adaptations you’ll need to make your mobile commerce site easy to understand, navigate, and purchase from.

Design

The screens of mobile devices are much smaller than those of a laptop or desktop computer. In order to prevent your mobile site from overwhelming the limited screen size of your customer’s device, you need to produce a clean and efficient mobile web design.

• Reduce the amount of information you include on your mobile pages – both graphics and text. You don’t want to overwhelm your customer with a wall of text, nor should you overload with multiple graphics and photos. According to WhiteBoardMag.com, “It’s important to build your image with large enough resolution so it doesn’t appear pixelated, but not too large that it requires too much power or time to load.”
• Your mobile design should feature limited scrolling and pinching. Scrolling should be enabled in one direction only – either horizontal or vertical.
• Use large, mobile-friendly buttons. Most mobile devices now feature touch screens; if the button is too small for your customer to easily select with their finger, they may become frustrated with the design and, by extension, your mobile site.

Navigability

According to a study from Google, 61% of mobile shoppers reported that if they could not find what they were looking for right away on a mobile site, they would quickly give up and leave. Make it easy for your customers to navigate your site, view your products, and make purchases on their mobile device.

• Give plenty of place to your search bar so that customers can easily find what they are looking for. They should be able to find and view the requested information in just one or two clicks.
• Provide customers with quick access to your contact information, and enable click-to-call for your business phone number. 74% of customers use mobile to find a business’s location or hours; 64% use it to contact the store. If customers can’t find this information, they will leave your site without going on to make a purchase.

Purchasing

The easier it is for your customers to make a purchase on their mobile device, the more likely they will do so. Multi-step checkout procedures are frustrating.  If customers have to type in all of their information on the small screen every time they make a purchase from your site, they are more likely to become one of the 66.22% of customers who abandon their shopping card without completing the purchase (Baymard Institute).

• Give customers the ability to sign in to your site and save their payment, billing, and shipping information. Signing in enables customers to utilize single-click checkout. It also helps you capitalize on shipper interest by providing shopping suggestions and coupons to customers based on their interests and prior purchases.
• Increase the speed of processing mobile payments by using high-speed transaction processing that is optimized for the lower bandwidth of mobile devices.

Preparing your mobile site for purchasing is a multi-step process. The design, navigation, and purchasing process should all be optimized to keep the customer on your site and lead them to making a successful purchase.

Megan Webb-Morgan is a web content writer for ResourceNation.com. She writes about small business, focusing on topics such as mobile transactions. Follow Resource Nation on Facebook and Google+, too!

Having a highly trafficked website for your business is something that everyone desires, right? We can guarantee you that the more of these you have on your website, the unhappier the overall user experience will be. Here are some tips on what NOT to have floating around your businesses’ webpage:

• Pop Up Ads: Need we say more?
• Multimedia Playing When Your Page Loads: “Where is the stop button?” “How do I mute this?” “I think I’ll just hit the back button and not even stay on this website at all…” We assume this is probably what goes through most of your heads when discovering a website that forces music upon you. Our Tip: If you want music on your website at all, give the user the option to play it…don’t force it on them.
• Disorienting Animations: Blinking graphics, animations, and videos when the user first enters the site detracts user attention significantly. Keep the user focused: Use clear headlines and explanatory copy.
• ‘Contact Us’ Form Instead of Contact Information: We all know how frustrating this is when all you want to do is simply contact the business directly; without having to spend a few minutes filling out a form. Quick Tip: Always have your contact information visible and accessible for your user.
• SEO-Driven Copy: Most users, if not all, will be instantly drawn away from your website if it is covered in paragraphs and paragraphs of copy.  Our Tip: Use search engine optimized content. Keep your copy simple and to the point.
• Not Including Social Sharing Buttons on Your Content: Rather than having the user copy and paste your URL, simplify this task for them and always have social sharing buttons. “Tweet This” or “Like This” cuts the time in half for your user. Plus, having your site seen on various social media sites allows for more lead generation opportunities for you.
• No Blog: You want your visitors to learn about you, don’t you? Allow visitors to gain a better understanding of who you are, who your business is, what your employees and work place are like, and let your personality shine through a blog for your business.