RESOURCE CENTRE

Your EnterQuest Bulletin - 23 March 2005

In this week's issue:

• four things every small business owner should focus on
• how to optimise your website copy for search engines
• everything must go - what you can and can't say about your prices during a sale
• what you can do with broadband
• the Inland Revenue website reviewed
  

Small business answers

If you have any questions about your business idea, are lacking some basic data about your target market, or simply need help tracking down a grant, subsidy or other source of business support in your local area, then send an e-mail with your query to the EnterQuest information team and we'll do our best to help.

Send your question to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.

Weekly stir

Four things every small business owner should focus on

Last month, the chief executive of one of the world's biggest businesses, Carly Fiorina at Hewlett Packard (HP), lost her job. Why? Because her company had lost its focus on its core business and most profitable market, and as a result its competitors grabbed a chunk of their market share.

So what's that got to do with starting and running a small business in the UK, you might ask? Well, quite a lot, and a serious lesson can be learned by us all, so read on.

HP is the world's leading supplier of printers and, of course, the highly profitable replacement cartridges that are needed to make them print. But in recent years, the company has also been competing head to head against its major rival, Dell, selling PCs.

In the end HP lost out in its battle in the PC sector, but more significantly, the distraction also resulted in it losing its focus on its core printer business, which got whacked by its competitors in that market.

So a large company lost some of its market share in its most profitable market and a chief executive lost her job, but they will both survive to fight another day.

If this sort of thing had happened in a small business, however, it's unlikely that the enterprise would be able to recover or survive at all.

A story like this can be used to illustrate four very important points, which could easily prove to be the difference between staying in business and going out of business very quickly.

1) Stay focused on your market niche

It's absolutely vital for a small firm, any firm in fact, to recognise and understand its niche, and stick to it. If you know where your strengths lie and your most attractive opportunity exists, focus on it like a laser rather than getting distracted by every spurious opportunity that presents itself to you. If you don't focus on your niche, then your rivals eventually will and they'll steal it away.

2) Stay focused on your best customers and prospects

Within any market, there are ideal customers, such as those who are likely to spend the most and to repeat buy the most often. Study your market very carefully to identify the characteristics of these ideal customers, and channel your marketing efforts to appeal specifically to them. You'll not only end up selling more, but also selling more over the longer term.

3) Stay focused on what people want and make it easy for them to buy from you

Market needs change. Regularly. So make sure you talk to and get lots of feedback from your customers and prospects so you can make the buying experience and the service you offer as attractive, convenient and enjoyable as possible.

By doing this you'll spot trends in buying patterns and behaviour, and will also have an effective competitive radar that spots what your rivals are up to as early as possible.

4) Stay focused on your profits

Increased revenues and higher volumes are important, but only if they're profitable. If you can identify the areas of business or specific markets that you are making the highest margins from, then this is always where you should concentrate your business efforts above anything else. If it's profitable and it's working for you, then work out how you can do more of it, and fast.

This is a fairly simple approach to running a small business, and of course there are many more factors that will come in to play, but if you are focusing on these four key issues you will increase your opportunity to succeed over the longer term.

Marketing tip

How to optimise your website copy for search engines

Getting a good search engine ranking is developing into a complicated science that you'd be forgiven for thinking you need a degree to understand. In previous marketing tips, we've explained how to select the right keywords for your product or service, as well as how to increase the number of websites linking to yours. We've also looked at how to make your site more content-rich, as the search engines prefer sites that have lots of content included on them.

You can improve your ranking still further by making sure that the content on your site is properly optimised for the search engines. This may sound horribly complex, but is essentially a case of thinking while you are writing to make sure that you give consideration to things like the placement of keywords within the copy, and the length of sentences.

Here are a few key resources to help you optimise your website copy.

• Marketing Words is a US firm that advertises itself as a resource to write your search-engine-optimised copy for you. However, if you ignore the sales pitches there are some extremely useful and practical tips on optimising your web copy, as well as on sales copywriting in general. In particular, its article archive contains dozens of practical tips related to all types of copywriting.
  
  
• It also offers a page of examples of sites that have had their copy optimised for search engine submission.
  
  
• And this handy tool from SEO Resource explains how to optimise any PDF documents you have on your website.

Read more about promoting your business website in Chapter 30, 'Internet marketing strategies for local small businesses', of the UK Small Business Marketing Bible, where you can also find hundreds of ideas, tips and techniques for increasing sales no matter what sector you're in.

Legal tip

Everything must go - what you can and can't say about your prices during a sale

The Easter break is a good opportunity for retailers, online shops and mail order businesses to clear out old stock with a sale. But encouraging customers by reducing your prices can raise a few tricky issues. Chief among these is how you display your sale prices.

The law covering pricing is the Consumer Protection Act 1987. Sale prices come under the heading of "price comparisons", which are defined in the DTI's code of practice for traders on price indications.

These guidelines have been extended over the years, and it's difficult to find the relevant information about pricing within the guidelines, which run to 17 pages. So here's a quick guide to the most important points about sales and sale prices:

• Firstly, when you drop your prices and display the price as a sale price, the previous price you show should be the last price you charged during the previous 6 months.
  
  
• The higher price must have applied for at least 28 consecutive days in the last 6 months. However, this requirement doesn't apply to food or perishables with a shelf life of under 6 weeks.
  
  
• As your sale goes on, you might want to reduce your prices further, and many shops cut the sale price every day during the closing stages of the sale. This is allowed, as long as you display the original highest price, all the intervening prices, and the current sale price.
  
  
• These rules apply not only to shops, but also to mail order catalogues, Internet sales, and any offers you publicise by leaflet.

For more on pricing or describing goods, as well as hundreds of legal scenarios, factsheets and FAQs relevant to all small businesses, you can check out the UK Red Tape BUSTER.

IT tip

What you can do with broadband

A recent BT/Computer Weekly survey found that UK businesses are taking up broadband more enthusiastically than ever, but may not be getting the best out of the service. Simply being able to surf the web more quickly is only half the benefit of having a fast connection. There are plenty of things a new or growing business can do to make the most of the connection.

• Take, for example, Instant Messaging (usually abbreviated to IM). This involves a small piece of software which you can download free of charge, and allows you to stay in touch with colleagues anywhere in the world using written messages - a bit like e-mail, but quicker and with fewer spam-related problems. Microsoft's MSN Messenger is one of the most popular IM programs.
  
  You might also consider Yahoo's IM, which allows video and voice chat, ICQ, or the very versatile Cerulean's Trillian which is compatible with all the others.

• VoIP - or Voice over Internet Protocol - is a very useful invention for businesses with fast connections, as it offers low-cost or free telephone calls using the Internet. Start by downloading a program that is VoIP-enabled, such as Skype. You can then make free calls to other VoIP users, and you can also make cheap calls to landlines.
  
  
• Shared Internet connections. We described how to make a small home network a few weeks ago, and explained that two computers could share a single telephone line to connect to the Internet. If you have a broadband connection, two people can surf the web, send e-mails or download files at the same time. The connection will be a little slower but still faster than traditional dial-up Internet connections. See Gyre Technology's practical overview of this issue for more details.
  
  
• Web-based businesses find broadband allows them to set up impressive customer services from their websites. Instead of having to write or telephone to get in touch, customers can ask questions about your business when they arrive on your website, using one of the many live, real-time customer service software systems on the market. Check out this review of some of the most popular for an idea of what is available.

These four examples show just a few of the ways in which you can make the most of your existing broadband connection to increase sales, improve your customer service, or just make it easier to balance home and business life. And if you're still on dial-up, you'll be encouraged to find that broadband is now around the same price as dial-up connections were about a year ago.

New business idea

Here is this week's idea:

• Curry Making Kits

Just one word

Regularly improving your vocabulary is not just about learning a new word and its meaning. It will improve your general knowledge and make you feel and act smarter in all sorts of personal and business situations.

Do you know the difference between 'mean', 'median' and 'mode', in terms of working out an average? Which of the following definitions applies to which word?

a) the number that occurs most frequently
b) the result of adding all the values and dividing by the number of values in a list
c) the middle value in a list of ranked values

Answer at the end of the Bulletin.

Website review

The Inland Revenue (www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk)

The Inland Revenue's site, one of the first ports of call for any small business with a tax query, is one of the two most visited Government websites, along with Companies House. By 2010, all firms are going to have to file their tax returns online at the site, so just how good a service does it provide?

• Navigation - it's pretty clear where you need to go if you're a business, an employer or just an individual needing information about tax. There's also a 'Do It Online' box which provides instant transportation to the relevant areas for self-assessment. But you need a username and password to access the self-assessment forms, and it's not especially clear how you go about getting these.
  
  
  

• Accessibility - this is the only site we've reviewed so far that doesn't have a link to information about accessibility from the homepage - in fact, just about all you can do from there is translate the site into Welsh, and even that tool is well hidden. We eventually found the right bit using the vast sitemap, and what's on offer isn't too bad - colour and text size can be changed, and there are practical tips for more information on accessibility.
  
  
  
  
• Content - the frequently asked questions included within the business section of the site are useful, but the site would benefit from more practical factsheets that users can download and use as reference tools. Although the explanations of different tax obligations are succinct, the subject area is complex and sometimes a more comprehensive summary would be helpful. That said, there are useful tools on the site, including handy tables detailing income tax, National Insurance and exchange rates.
  
  
  
  
• Relevance - there's already a comprehensive overview of the implications of the Budget, but there's no press release section and the 'What's New?' area is hard to find. Even when you do stumble upon it, it includes a load of "statutory instruments" which are of little practical relevance to small businesses.
  
  

So, a poor score of 9 out of 20 for the Inland Revenue - disappointing when you consider that this is one website that every single small business and self-employed entrepreneur will soon have to visit at least once a year.

Our rating - 9/20

Did you know?

Pharming is the new phishing

Pharming is the latest swindle affecting Internet users around the world. Similar to phishing, pharmers redirect users from legitimate commercial websites that they had intended to visit, leading them to malicious sites that look the same but can capture sensitive information such as login and password details. Experts say pharming could become a much more serious problem than phishing, as pharmers are able to target many victims simultaneously, rather than by sending individual e-mails, as happens with phishing.

Worth a visit

Backlinks for link popularity

Backlinks is a very useful tool that provides a list of the unique domains linking to your website, along with details of the sites that link to any of your competitors. This can be helpful when creating a target list of the sites that currently link to your competitors but not to you. There are no duplications in the list (which can happen if a site contains multiple links), which makes it much easier to put together a streamlined list of websites to target.

New keyword tool from Overture

This cunning tool from Overture is perfect if you're planning to submit your website to search engines but aren't sure which keywords to choose. You enter a keyword or phrase related to your website, business type or sector, and the tool tells you how many times that phrase or word was searched for in the past month. It also provides practical suggestions for alternative and related keywords that you may not have thought of.

Wayback websites

The Wayback Machine is a fun resource that displays archived versions of websites dating back to 1996. You can drag the tool into your browser's toolbar in order to access the 'wayback' versions of each website you visit, and you can also view selected archives of government websites, and sites relating to specific past events.

Worth a read

Aimed at businesses with a shoestring marketing budget, this book is a collection of real stories and events from the authors' experiences of developing the Harry Ramsden's fish and chip restaurant chain. It looks at combating the threat posed by large competitors, how to develop a marketing strategy and how to find a competitive advantage. Check out:

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Good luck

The EnterQuest Team

This information is meant as a starting point only. Whilst all reasonable efforts have been made, the publisher makes no warranties that the information is accurate and up-to-date and will not be responsible for any errors or omissions in the information nor any consequences of any errors or omissions. Professional advice should be sought where appropriate.