Your trade show booth is as important if not more so then your product

If you are a whole seller you already understand how important your trade show displays are. They are what sell your company to the buyers. Having an excellent presentation of your product increase orders, just the same way as having a good commercial will sell a product. Your booth is your ad or commercial and you must use it to sell your product. Retailers are looking for something that will sell in their stores, but you have to get them into your booth before they will buy.

Wholesale and trade shows are nothing but extreme competition these days. It truly is a world market now. At some of the larger shows you can have companies from all over the world all with Trade Show Display Booths designed to capture buyers attention. It is no longer enough that you have great product, prices and reputation you need to have a Trade Show Display Booth that will bring in new customers as well as old customers. Your booth has to sell not only your product line but must also brand your company image.

A booth is no longer a table and walls with product and info packs and cardboard displays, now they are mini stores and show rooms. They have to be very professional looking and give a company image that buyers will be using to judge your company even before they look at your product. It can be more important to invest into your booth then invest in any other type of marketing as this is going to be what the people who buy will see when they are looking to buy. It will have more impact at the time then a flyer or catalogue later on. It is as simple as this, you are not going to make sales to the end customer and create a demand for your product if you cannot get your product into stores and your not going to make the sales to the retailers if you don’t have the right display booth.

What you need to know before contracting a web designer or developer

We learned a lot over the last few years about the do’s and don’t when dealing with a web designer. We had some real problems. I would like to keep others from having the same or similar problems. The first thing you need to understand is that there is a big difference between a web designer and a web developer. A web designer will make pages for a web site and are wonderful if you have an information site. Web developers create the coding and programs that web designers use to create the web sites. Web design is the icing on the cake; the web developer made the cake the icing goes on.

If you are doing anything that is more then just an information site I recommend going with a web developer or learn to do it yourself. If you have just an information site that does not require the integration of other programs like a shopping cart then a web designer is the right person to go to. However, if you have the time and inclination you can also pick up a great book called “Beginning HTML with CSS and XHTML modern guide and reference” by David Schultz and Craig Cook. My husband used it to create our new web site.

There are some wonderful web developers who can integrate existing programs and software into the pages they create for you. The main purpose of a web designer is to design the look of your website and that the programs being used on your site function well together. The more complex the site is the more knowledge and experience will be needed. You need to understand what you want and need your web site to do before you design how it looks.

This means that you need to find out if pre-existing programs will work for you and will work together with any other programs you want. If they do then great find a web designer, buy the programs and let the designer make your site look and work how you want it to. If there needs to be a lot of tinkering with the programs you are interested to make them work the way you want and together then you need to make sure your web designer can do the work, or find a web developer who can make them work or create a new program that will do what you want. Do not assume that a designer can do it; their job is to design the look of the site, not create programs.

That is the biggest thing most people do not know, a designer creates the look, a developer creates the programs and can create the look you want. We made that mistake thinking that a designer was a developer. We needed a developer as our site was more complex then what our designer could do and he used up our service contract with our shopping cart program provider to get them to do the installations of their programs. We know this from the from our shopping cart provider after we forced our designer to transfer our shopping cart licence to us. We now have to buy a new service contract if we need their help with the shopping cart program. This would not have been the case if we had hired a web developer. Know what you need for your website and hire the right person for the job.

When hiring someone to create a web site do your homework

In the last two years we have dealt with three different web site designers, and learned a lot what not to do, and how to do things on our own. We are upset about the time and money we lost dealing with the different people but at the same time we are grateful things happened the way they did. We now have a wonderful website that James designed and created on his own. He decided that instead of paying more and more money to get people to work on our site that he would just learn how to do it. Now he has 100% control of the website and what is on it. I was forced to learn how to market a website with both hands tied behind my back. Now that we have a properly functioning website I can use the tools and skills I had to use before, but ever so much more effectively. We learned and changed because of our experiences, but I don't want anyone else to have to go through what we did.

With anything you need to do your research. Put the time into finding the right person or company that fits your budget and creative ideas. Never forget that it is your website and needs to reflect who you are or your companies image. Don't just go with the first person or company that fits your budget. You are hiring someone to do a job for you. Treat this as you would if you were hiring on staff, contact references and find out what other people have to say. Don't just look at what is posted on the persons website as reviews, actually call them and talk to past clients. You’re the boss, not the other way around.

Look on the Internet for other sources of information. If there is something negative about a designer or company it is probably out on the net, it is just a matter of finding it. See how many websites have links back to the designer. Try to find a couple that indicate that they were created or designed by this person or company that is not being used as a reference. Contact them and find out their opinion. Sure it is going to take time and work, but it can save you a lot of time, money and effort on your part.

When you have decided on a designer make sure you get a clear contract that stipulates exactly what you want the website to do and look, when you need the site up and that everything needs to be purchased in your name or your companies name so that you own the website, not the designer. You may also wish to include the term functional website in the contract, small thing that can make a big difference. This helps both of you to know what is expected and when. This way if something was not done you can refer to the contract and have the work done. If you find that the web site is not doing something you want it to do now the web designer can refer to the contract to show you it was not included in it and you can either re-negotiate the contract or do another one just for that part.

It is important to make sure that you keep on top of the project, not just assume things are being done when and how you want. Our first designer took 3 months and no website. He had all sorts of reasons for why there was nothing to see, but we knew there was something wrong. Our dead line came and went and still no website. We put some pressure on and finally was told our website was done, take a look. Then came the sucker punch, before he would give us our site we had to pay 3 times what we agreedapone. Why because it took him longer then expected and he wanted to be paid by the hour, not the job. So after three months we had no website, but a nice lawyer.

The second designer agreed to do the work in a timely manner and within our budget. He came back to us after three weeks and let us know that a retail website of our site was beyond his experience. He was fine doing information sites. We accepted that and appreciated his honesty, but were also glad we had a contract.

Always make sure that you change your passwords once the work is done and if you need more work you create temporary passwords for the designer. Also make sure hosting companies, licences and software are all purchased in your name, or companies name or signed over to you once the work is done. The third designer was hired because he could get the site up and running in two weeks and we were 4 months behind schedule. We did our research, and got a very clear contract. He did give us a site with in the two weeks that appeared to be functional. We had some problems and concerns but that was explained away as issues or restrictions caused by the shopping cart. There were things that did not do what we wanted and some of his explanations did not make sense to me, but he would not talk to me and explained everything away to James as a problem with the shopping cart that could not be fixed. Eventually the only solution he would suggest was to buy a new shopping cart and pay him to do all the work again.

Every couple weeks something would go wrong and it was $50.00 to fix it, or there was an upgrade that would make things easer with the shopping cart but again $50.00 for the designer to install it. I kept asking for contact information for our hosting company and shopping cart company. He would not release the information, so every time something went wrong or we had a question we had to go through him, and yes it cost money. We started to question things, had some independent web designers look over the coding only to be told that there was malicious coding causing the problems, not our shopping cart. We tried to contact the hosting company and shopping cart company only to find everything was purchased in his name and there was no record of us purchasing anything. We demanded the license be transferred to us, why had it not been transferred when the job was done. We had to threaten legal action to get the licence in our name. At that point he severed business ties with us.

What we found, he had charged us for installations and used up our service points with the shopping cart company to do a lot of the work, so we actually paid for it twice. There was what is called malicious coding causing our website to not function properly, our products would not index on the Internet and we were limited to the smallest pictures for our product. The shopping cart company discovered this, and they insisted that it was deliberate coding designed to prevent the shopping cart from working properly. This could not have been done by accident. Then Canada Post previewed the non-functional shipping calculator and discovered something called a siphoning code. It was designed to invoice a customer extra for shipping on their invoice, show the correct shipping on our copy and then deposited the difference into his paypall account. I guess he did not expect us to test it when we got it, we just thought there was a problem with the Canada post calculator and did not use it. There were quite a few other coding issues discovered and we were looking at legal action when suddenly our hosting company shut us down and we lost the site.

It seems he had kept the hosting company contract in his name so he cancelled it without warning and we lost the entire site. Or at least he thought we did. What he did not know is that James was already in the process of designing a new site. It was a work in process still and we did not have the shopping cart up and going but it was there. It took 4 days to have the shopping cart installed and be a working site. We also had backed up the old site the day before. All we lost was some time, though we have to re-enter our entire product manfully due to an incompatibility between the old shopping cart and the new one.

Over all we learned a lot, are able to do things ourselves now and have a much better website that is just going to keep on improving and growing.

Small business cash flow problems, credit cards solutions?

More business go under because of the discrepancy between the inflow and outflow of cash. What good is it if you have $1000’s in accounts receivable if you cannot pay your debts and daily operating costs today? This affects both small and large businesses, it is the way you handle the difference that counts.

If you have a cash flow problem you need to look at your payment terms and contracts. See what you can change. Can you do a % discount on the receivables if your customers pay in 15 days instead of 30 days? This can speed up the turn around from invoice to cash in hand. Also take a look at your budget, can you decrease the discrepancy by changing your budget. There are lots of ways to improve cash flow.

However, no matter how good your cash flow is you still have to deal with slow payers and no payers. This can have a large impact on your cash flow. Large projects can also place a strain on cash flow. So how do you supplement your cash inflow with out ending up with a crippling debt load?

Budgeting always plays a big part of business. You budget your expected returns and expenses but always try to leave a cushion of cash to off set the unexpected. Like having to go to court to get payment or having to write off a large account receivable, or actually getting an unexpected contract. When budgeting alone is not enough and you have to look out side for an influx of cash what do you do? Where do you turn to, what options are open to you? Well that depends on your existing debt load, how much you need and for how long.

Selling your accounts receivables is a good way to get ready cash with out going into more debt. The question is, will any one buy them and at what % on the dollar will they buy them. What good is selling off our receivables at a loss? It might help now but in the long term loses you money and throws off your cash flow and budget. Only use this when things are dire or you are selling off bad accounts you expect to have to fight for, or wait a long time for, or not receive payment.

A loan or mortgage lets you pay it off over a long period of time. This is good if you expect a long time between spending the money and getting a return on it. It is also good if you expect a long-term cash inflow from this investment of cash. Not so good a choice if this is for a short-term solution.

Short-term solutions, for when you expect a quick turnaround, are line of credit, over drafts and credit cards. If used properly these are great tools for day-to-day operations. Like when you have a cheque to be cashed on Monday but payroll is due on Friday. These options need to be used in the short term, when you can pay them off in days or weeks, not months or years. Real problems arise when people use these short-term solutions for long-term problems. These options usually have higher rates of interest then loans and mortgages can eat deeply into your profits if not paid quickly.

You need to know what your money needs are and find a financing solution that is best for each situation. All the planning, barrowing and such will not work if you don’t have a good understanding of your cash flow, develop a good budget and follow it.