Discover What Technology (Gadgets!) Can Do for Your Business—Part 2

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We pick up here where we left off in Part 1 about technology—the great game-changer for entrepreneurs—and how the right tech tools can make your business hum with efficiency, pop with productivity and speed up the timeframe for your financial goals.

You'll have to swallow any fears you might have about tech—you really do need to embrace it to play in today's fast-moving, ultracompetitive marketplace.

“And pay special attention to keywords not only in your content, but in the design of your site.”

There's more to successful business than working hard. You have to work smart, and using available technology will do it for you. It's not all that hard thanks to the wealth of information on the Web, with StartupNation as your resource HQ.

Here are some more gadgets and other tech tools that we've used with great success in our own entrepreneurial adventures:

Web Site

Without this, there'd be nothing else. StartupNation lives on the Web, and even if you're a brick-and-mortar outfit, adding a company Web site is the single best tech tool you can have for spreading your brand and reaching an enormous new market.

First and above all, your Web site should:

• Present information about your company, products and services, including all of your contact info.

• Make it clear and compelling why you're different from the competition, and why the customer has no better choice than to do business with you.

Here's a well-tested tip: Give customers free advice they can use right now. Present it in blog format. Add a link so they can easily register for more free but valuable information in your online newsletters.

Creating your Web site can be fun and a rewarding learning experience. There's plenty of basic, low-cost—and sometimes free—all-in-one design packages intended specifically for newbies.

And pay special attention to keywords not only in your content, but in the design of your site. Without the right ones, you'll always be lost in the massive swamp of e-commerce.

Search Engine Optimizers

So, you're now on the Web and ready to dazzle visitors with your company's business acumen and unequaled service. But if a business booms in cyberspace, does anybody hear it?

One of the more technical challenges of having a Web site is understanding how search engines—Google, Yahoo, MSN and many others—find your site and point Web surfers to it before your competition.

There are mind-boggling numbers of Web site pages in their databases—last time we looked, Google alone had more than 8 billion! Your task is to be among the top results when potential customers do a search of all that data. Here's how to start:

• Just to get the picture, use a search engine ranking tool to see where your Web site ranks relative to others in your business category.

• Stunned to find you're ranked 3,000 or even 3 million? You need to do some Search engine optimization (SEO). This is the process of making your site more visible to the search engine "robots" that

Web Site Analytics

Now there's a scary sounding techie term, but don't be put off of this essential tool for understanding your Web site customers and traffic.

Online analytics is a tool that lives in your site's back room, always watching, keeping track of everything that's going on. Many versions can be downloaded from the Web, again at little or no charge.

Let's say you get 400 visits a day, but only 10 orders. What's happening between the time people first land on your site and when they leave?

Online analytics will help you learn to close more sales by tracking how many repeat visitors you get, the most popular pages, exactly where your customers decide to leave, and much more vital, hard information.

Finding out what's happening as it's happening, instantly and efficiently, can't be done in other form of business.

Wireless Tools

Have you caught on to Wi-Fi? Wireless Fidelity lets you connect computers in a given location using a radio network.

Wireless broadband network subscriptions are available from Verizon, Cingular and other telecom companies. You can also tap into a Wi-Fi network on the spot, usually for a small fee, in places that offer the service away from the office:

• Hang out in the local bookstore with your laptop and do business at the same time.

• Gotta have that latte? Coffeehouses often have their own Wi-Fi network for customers.

• On the road? You can even access wireless networks in your car.

One more thing about wireless tools: It's not complicated or expensive to set up a wireless office. All it takes is a wireless router and network adapter. It works something like a cordless phone and base station. Routers cost $100 to $200 for a small office, but prices are always falling.

Intranet and Extranet

Let's say you have a staff of several people or more. Setting up an intranet site just for them is easy, and allows you to communicate key information, confidentially, to some or all of your team whenever you want.

It can be used to handle sensitive human resources matters or just tips on doing a better job. Any collaborative work is easily handled on an intranet: Your sales team can define their target markets and work together, privately, on conversion and customer retention strategies without having to be in the same room.

An extranet, on the other hand, allows you to communicate similarly important information in private with outside contacts—such as customers. Give them a password to your extranet site and a presentation you've posted there for prospective clients. Similar travel—and time-saving benefits are endless.

Smartphones

If you haven't considered one of these since they first hit the market years ago, take another look. Not only are they smaller, sleeker—cooler—than before, some are equipped to handle just about anything you can do on your office computer.

You can respond to e-mails, pull information off the Web, update your calendar, search your database for contacts and more—from anywhere!

The well-known BlackBerry and Treo product lines, and the newer "Q" from Motorola, all offer these functions. Whether you're on a Caribbean cruise or just picking up the kids from school, you'll stay on top of business and have a huge edge on old-school competitors who can only say, "I'll get back to you later."

That's working smart!

By Rich and Jeff Sloan