Web based businesses have always been in great demand since the time of its inception especially for the people who do business globally. Internet as we know have totally changed the way we ever communicated and with information technology running on cards since last 10 years or so, its improving day by day and bringing us the processes which are getting user friendly and more and more people are getting hooked on to Internet in their daily lives. If you are running even a small store its high time you get online because the advantages the web based businesses offer, although the initial investment may cost you dear (that is only for bigger enterprises where they have huge database) but for small enterprises, a simple looking website would do the trick.

Below are some of the simple tools which I would like to share with you, and if you are a go-getter you are surely going to win the battle with the advantages the internet based businesses offer and in the longer run they are going to pay you for your small investments (even then, your big investments you made now, will seem very small by the number of profits you had be making).

• Nothing in this world is perfect – keep this thing in mind till the end of your tenure with the online business (I hope that doesn’t come ever). Get this misconception, off your mind, many of the people I know have spent loads of money in making their website perfect but none of them are a real rags to riches story. Chuck the idea of perfect looking website, by this, I don’t mean your website has to ugly, it should be clutter free and great content should be put up. Even the simplest of website designs have worked wonders.
• Simple looking websites are the most popular – people often think that the more features their site would have, the more their popularity but that is untrue. Even if you have simple looking website with less features you can make your website look like a million bucks.
• Respect your users opinion – it is after all the visitors on your site that are driving your site, respect their comments and you can even ask for their feedbacks for major changes if you wish to make in your site.
• Give the best services and make your visitors trust you – even if you might be 100% sure of your services, the audiences will be a little hesitant. Try to make them from potential customers in to actual customers by making them realize the genuineness of the site by:

• Adding testimonials – these are the best objects which can help your audience realize about your services. Don’t put fake ones, give away your products to people for use and let them write what they feel about it, there should not be any forcible good saying testimonials.
• Putting badges will help your customers realize how much valued your website is and help them know better about your services, may it be some trademark policy badge or a money guarantee badge, they surely bring trust in the relationship.
• Let your audience communicate with you, along with email address, put phone numbers and live chat options so that they can get their doubts clear regarding the product or your services.
• You can put your personal video clip in which you describe them about yourself, your company and your products and services. It will help build trust for they personally see you.

Let your visitors know if your website is showcased in a local newspaper, blogs or magazines.

• Optimize your site for bigger conversion rate – even the slightest changes to your site like the change in the color of the banner, or putting a few more buttons can help you gain more conversions. Try with new experiments with your site that can help your site earn more at the end. Given below are some of the few things you can try in your site for greater conversions:

• Try to use different typographies that will enable users to read more clearly.
• Keep testing different copies of your website, the main things like paragraphs and the text help increase the conversion rate.
• Avoid different elements in your paragraph, the lesser the better that will help you get more conversions to your site.
• Try variations with different background color of the site.
• If you ever know anything more about conversions then you can even try using the google website optimizer, you can even take some hints from big sites like amazon who has invested millions of dollars in optimizing their conversions.

The best of the best you can do to make your website popular is by doing search engine optimization, start taking smaller steps and steadily you shall reach a top most positions in blogging networks. Some of you might not simply have time to follow all the tips that I have stated above, for hurry some individuals I have one short list which you can treat as a priority for the SEO of your site:

• Keep your URL structures clean, try avoiding characters that are not alphabets. Try to avoid underscores as well. With no option you can use a dash mark.
• Keep your meta tag and title tag unique for each of your pages in the website, the tags should be descriptive about their functions, also try putting keywords in your title and description tags.
• You can get lots of traffic to your site by putting google image search on the site, describing the images would make all the more appealing and will attract more visitors to your site.
  
• Try putting the XML sitemap on your site having all the URLs and submit them in major search engines.

• The most important aspect of SEO is the links, the more number of sites that link to you, the higher the chance of driving traffic to your site. Create a good attractive site that will attract audience and help you get the links to your site.

Other than the above stated, there are varied other things that can help you get good traffic to your site but if you follow which I have just stated above then there is nothing more you can ask for. Today there are number of social networking sites helping you to get even more popularity and if you have your company fan page on facebook – you have more leverage by getting tweets from Twitter. There are number of things you can do to make your site popular as you want, you just need pure logical methods that will do the trick.

Readers are more than invited to share any suggestions, tips, tricks or comments, If any.

In our daily lives, there are so many things waiting in our hit list to get fulfilled and at the end of the day there are still more to finish, even after spending the whole day working on fulfilling them they are still remaining or spring up from somewhere or the other, these are little pit holes in our lives which makes our lives congested and confused. If we do a little of time management we can conquer any race or any battle. Time management have been taught to us from the very beginning, may be when we were in our 1st grades but in a different manner, even you might not be knowing that time that those were time management lessons we were learning at that age, take for example, reaching your class on time, doing homework on time, playing sports on time, drinking milk on time, etc. these are just some of the examples which we were used to, when in school and as we grow up, these become more important for passing our semesters, you work upon different projects, collect databases, etc. if you don’t do any of these, are you going to fulfill the need of your assignments, its no, right?

Managing time is important to grow in life and achieve what you are striving for, there are a number of management lessons and at the same time there are even lessons which helps you get free to manage some time with your family or loved ones.

Work is not just the only criteria to fulfill in life, as men grows in life, there is more meaning to life and rather than just money he feels a need to belong, belonging to a family, and that can only happen if you fit in that family in your fully packed professional schedule. What I am trying to portray you here is as much as time management is important to you from a professional point of view, you need to manage the same time with your family, below is one example which I recently came across during one of our management classes and I am really keen on sharing that stuff with you.

The class was fully packed with going to be management graduates and everybody had to share some illustration and give presentation, starting with the professor, he bought out a wide mouthed glass jar and started pouring some big rocks inside, until there was no space left for other stones to fit in, asking excitedly to the class if it was full? They answered yes, but he shoved some gravel inside and filled up the parts left empty by big stones. Again he asked the class whether it was full, this time the class said “No”. Again the professor started pouring in some sand and it did fit in the parts left empty by big rocks and the gravel and asked the class whether now it was full, the class said “No”, more excited he started filling sand inside the jar and asked the class whether it was now full, still the class said, “No” so he got a glass of water and poured it inside and this time he was sure the jar is full and even the class agreed, he asked to students what did they learn from this illustration, there were various answers, and cool logics relating to management in that question answer session but what really made my heart sink was the answer from one shy guy sitting at the back row, the answer was amazingly perfect and reached everyone’s heart without a doubt.

Now, you guys must be as anxious to know the answer as I was that time, it illustrates that the big rocks if not fitted first inside, you never will and the big rocks indicate your children, your family, your dreams, your education, your health, your personal time, and many other important things. It teaches us that you should put big rocks first otherwise you will never get them at all, if you look after little things in life like gravel, sand which will fill up your life, these are actually small worries and office tensions that will occupy your mind so first give preference to big rocks and then give attention to smaller things of life so identify the big rocks in life and put them in your priority list first. I myself learnt so much from it and each person I meet up who is rushing towards life achievements I remind him or her of this story.

Hiring the best in the industry is not the end for your quest for success. Just collecting great minds is not enough; you’ve got to create the culture of excellence in your organization to bring out the best from the best. After all, human abilities are a product of nature and nurture, and the onus of nurturing excellence in your work environment lies largely upon you.

Nowadays, I find a lot of organizations taking the trouble of identifying the potential and existing skills of their employees and encouraging them to hone them up. Organizations are spending huge amounts of money in getting their employees trained in soft skills for working towards a healthy work environment devoid of petty politics and disputes. The other day I visited an organization for imparting lessons on corporate communications. I found that most of the time the executives out there were fighting over petty issues. Their goals were so trivial. They were simply satisfied by being in the good books of the boss. They weren’t really bothered about enhancing their quality of work for the greater goal of company welfare.

Clearly the culture of this organization is negative. The leaders of this organization should introduce the “culture of excellence” in this organization. Standards for excellence should be set and the employees should be asked to meet them. People will automatically develop the behavior, attitude and habits that are necessary for excellence. As some senior officials of most companies opine, no matter how good your strategy for coping with a challenge may be, if you don’t have a culture of excellence in your workplace, you’ll not be able to achieve complete success in your endeavors.

I’ve seen organizations with a culture of excellence remaining unfazed in the toughest of times. In keeping with the expectations of the culture, executives have been trained to cope up with challenges and their mindsets are tuned towards excellence in the toughest of times. People work in unison to achieve the common goal of excellence. You as a leader, should instruct your managers to identify the interests of the people. If you find that a technical recruit has good sales skills, give him a sales job if he’s interested. Don’t bind his creativity to one area of work. Just do anything to bring out the best in this person. Let him use his abilities to the best possible extent and you’ll find him excelling his work amazingly.

Well, you might feel that it is indeed obvious that a person who has abilities should be given the opportunity to hone and use them, but in reality it is not so. Hirers are interested in extracting the maximum from the hired, right from the first day of their employment. They are really not interested in giving them the time to work upon their skills and excel. They think training people in skills is a costly investment with little repayment value. But the opposite is true. It is seen that the investments that are made in training executives have great returns. You save a lot of money that is spent in overcoming crisis and problems arising from petty culture.

One advantage in developing a culture of excellence is that it nurtures a positive culture within the employees. The positive energy flows from the top levels to the bottom levels and every person of the organization is energized. As a leader, if you are positive and vibrant, you’ll set an example and people will follow suit. Your motto should be “be happy and keep others happy”. Within a positive culture, any problems owing to petty mentalities are dealt with at the level of the culture and not on an individual basis. So, most of the problems are kept at bay owing to the mandatory cultural standards.

To star with, here’s a simple exercise for you to establish a great organizational culture. Just pin up messages saying “I’ll work for excellence” on each and every work desk so that people are reminded of their true goals whenever they see that message. You can also announce attractive gifts for those who meet their goals.

You are welcome to share your views on this with me!

Last blog we discussed about Venture capital and the things that you need to keep in mind while raising finances for your business ventures. You got to have right amount of ingredients to mix well with business requirements, the investors have the money and you have the talent, just show your cards right and go home with a win-win situation for both the parties. Make use of intelligent and unique methods to impress your Venture capitalists and get ahead in expanding your business.

Understanding DECK

By now, I think I have improved my thinking about how venture capitalists work in a business world and how to make them more approaching to finance you; it will work best when you have a readymade Powerpoint presentation, commonly known as “Deck”. Deck can be used to pitch your Venture capitalists about your business; it will give them a clear picture of your project by the graphs, pictures, etc. I am going to help you to prepare that perfect DECK for your presentation; it should be including the following:

1. All the companies have their own mission statements, so make sure to mention all the details of what your company is into and where you plan to take it.
2. A company is made up of team, one person cannot run the company. You should be good in convincing people to work for your company than can you convince VC to invest money.
3. Once your company is established, make sure to do something out of box, like you can portray how your company has stood in the times of adversity.
4. Don’t just describe the problems that your company can solve, show them practically through slides, graphs and the product details.
5. Compare your company to other competitors in the field, list them down in your slide show, you can explain your plans to overcome the competition.
6. Do some research in the market and you can state the different problems which as a company everyone will face. You can offer simple solutions to such problems through slide show.
7. Have a brilliant business model showing a perfect sense of making money by hook or by crook. You can list out different possibilities in making money to your investors.
8. Marketing is one of the most important ingredients to sell your products in market, show a clear plan of act what you are going to execute in future.
9. State clearly as to how much finance you would require and what would be its purpose, when you state openly about your wants people will appreciate it.
10. Investors would want good returns for the money they are investing, so make an effort to show them how hard you are working to achieve the goals.

With all heavy inputs, I am sure you are going to be questioned from 360 degree angles. I know well how it feels when you are surrounded in a conference and heavy weights asking you questions out of jungle but if they are investing, it is their right to know the answer. My advice to you is simply, stay calm and have confidence in yourself and answer the questions honestly, if you are well prepared and studied your plan in detail, I don’t think any possibility of someone surrounding you. Some of the common questions that they ask during such times are:

1. What is your target?
2. Why you need finance from us?
3. Why should we finance you?
4. What makes your product different from the competitors?
5. What if you can’t get any finances?

Believe me, I have attended so many conferences, meetings, given presentations, one thing I found was that you cannot expect people thinking from your point of view, you can only try your best to explain them but the perceptions would never be the same. I remember, the times when I used to go crazy when asked with silly questions but I let it go, staying cool and calm, may be that they are trying to check my patience. You never know what’s running in their minds. So stay upright, lively and get kicking.