Scalability is Essential to Planning

When it comes to crafting a platform for a new business, concept, or digital product, it's easy to find developers that claim they can build you the best system. Hit up oDesk or any freelancing site, and you'll probably find plenty of people at bargain prices. When you do, however, ask yourself whether it's worth building your entire business on a bargain when your goal is to do more or "scale up".

Marketing Week: SEO, PPC, & Other Alphabet Soups

I'm often asked about my opinion on search engine optimization (SEO) and paid online advertising (usually pay-per-click or PPC ad campaigns). The short answer is that it can certainly help, but ultimately you should make the decision based on what your business needs are.

How Does Your Web Team Approach Security?

Security was on everyone's mind last year, including mine. One of the things I was keenly aware of was that most people talk about it fearfully - including me. I wanted this article to be different. We all know there are people out there who want our information - that hasn't changed. As a web development company, however, we must do our part to make obtaining that information more difficult.

Nights Out for Cause can Recharge Your Batteries

Plenty of things can change in a week and I find it easy to forget I need to do things besides work when deadlines are looming, but I made sure to take time out for some important events last week. Thanks to some great events that carried celebration through the weekend, I hit the ground running on Monday.

New Plugins for Financial Advisors Released!

Last year, we had the opportunity to work with one of our clients to put together a site that did a great job explaining financial planning in plain English. I stress those last few words because most of the financial advisors I've met in my life think that throwing out big words is better than a client who understands what's going on and the strategy involved. While creating that site, we created some prototype financial calculators (with plans to put some more together over time). On February 19th, we released the refined version of those calculators, easily installed into any Joomla Web site.

Web Week: The Biggest Challenges for Ecommerce Businesses

Getting an ecommerce site up and running is anything but a small feat. There's products information, descriptions and photos, pricing considerations, not to mention the typical stuff you need for a Web site (policies, company profile, awesome landing page). It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of launching and forget to plan for the things that come after.

Marketing Week: Being Effective with Email Marketing

When it comes to email marketing, there's plenty of good information from a lot of sources about how to your email should indulge the customer to get a click. I recently came across a great article that was a bit different. I wanted to share that could change how you go about your email marketing.

Last Month in Security News

It seems like there's a data breach at some large company nearly every day. I'd rather my readers be informed, but I don't want to dwell on the events themselves. In our third series to launch in the new year, we'll be summarizing some of the events and let you know about fixes that may apply to you. You may already be aware, but it's important to stay on top of fixes for both your home and work computers to prevent problems. So, last month in security news...

Music Week: Tunes for the Productive Audiophile

I'm a music nut. I love all genres and I'm often slow to answer my phone because I need to mute the music streaming out of my tablet station behind me in my home office. This may not have much to do with business, but does everything have to? This is a new monthly blog segment in which I'll be talking about non-business things and how they link to your business.

Web Week: What's on the Horizon for Small Business?

It's no surprise that technology is on everyone's mind, particularly small businesses who face a unique challenge. In order to stay relevant, they need to update their technology, but often that means bootstrapping a solution better suited to large enterprises or costly custom development. Neither is appealing to small businesses who often have small technology budgets. The solution lies in MVP.

Marketing Week: Expert Predictions for 2016

This week, we'll be holding our first training workshop to help small business owners entrepreneurs with their email marketing. During the rise of social media, you may have heard "email marketing is dead". Well, I assure you it's not - and many experts agree with me.

Last Chance to Sign Up

This is the final week to sign up for our first training workshop. We'll be teaching small business owners and entrepreneurs how to build or increase their email marketing list without adding more tasks to their plate. Interested in email marketing in 2016? We'll help you get started and build your list or grow your existing list doing the same things you're already doing - networking with other business owners.

You can register online at www.tektalk.co.