Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Build a Website That Drives More Business

Smart Answers August 23, 2011, 11:40 AM EDT

Build a Website That Drives More Business

First, determine what your business does best, then develop a strategy for a site that will show clients why they should hire you, rather than your competition

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I own a travel and tour-operating company that sells tourism packages and air and railway tickets. I have capital and want to use it in a unique way. I would like to stand out with an unusual travel website. Do you have some starting tips? —P.K., New Delhi
The best way for your business to stand out is not through a quirky website, but through a value proposition that differentiates you from your competitors and appeals strongly to a well-defined target market.
Since you’re already in business, think about what unique offerings make your company successful. Are you the best-priced option for family tour packages? Do you have personalized service that makes life easier for your corporate clients? Are you a terrific resource for cultural information on visiting India or another destination?
Define your niche and then design your website to maximize your appeal to that niche, making sure that your marketing campaign emphasizes your company’s strengths, says Gabriel Shaoolian, founder and chief executive officer of Blue Fountain Media, a New York website-design and online-marketing agency. "This is not about smoke and mirrors. There are no gimmicks to doing business online. Your website isn’t going to drive your business model. It is your business model that will drive your website," he says.
One trend that you might consider is incorporating mobile Internet applications, such as iPad and iPhone, into your site, says Brian Morgan, CEO of Adventure Life, a boutique travel agency in Missoula, Mont. Especially when they are on the road, your customers are likely to access your site using mobile devices.

Target Specifically and Energetically

By the way, take a look at the Adventure Life website to see how it immediately conveys Morgan’s niche: Latin American destinations for active, adventuresome travelers. His business clearly appeals to a narrow slice of consumers and his website reflects that target audience accordingly. Your clientele may be totally different than his, but that’s the kind of messaging clarity you want to aim for in your own site.
Morgan recommends also that you incorporate social networking into your site from the start. "Use any way that you can to encourage users to share what they find on your website: Cool travel tips, travel journals" and so forth, he says.
Kristin Lamoureux, director of the International Institute of Tourism at George Washington University, agrees. "All the research shows that social media is where the travel and tourism industry is investing its marketing efforts. Your traditional website has to be well done, clean, and neat, but it also has to be fully integrated into social media," she says. "Give people a place to tell their travel stories, share their best photos, and talk about things like their favorite vacation meal. It can even be a quirky thing like a poll on what tourist site has the cleanest restrooms."
Hospitality and travel businesses have introduced a lot of clever ad campaigns in recent years, including contests and charitable tie-ins. Some offer a hands-on volunteer experience as an option for corporate conference attendees or vacation travelers, for instance, Lamoureux says. Others hold competitions that give away trips that are then documented on video and posted online. Once your own site is up and running, take a look at some of these to get ideas.
Since you have some capital budgeted for the website design project, look for an agency that has experience at not only building attractive, functional websites but that also understands how people shop and buy online, Shaoolian says. "They should understand the principles of effective online messaging and the science of online user behavior." You will save money on your website if you can present clear goals and a success strategy up front, rather than paying the design firm to help you define those things. Good luck.
Karen E. Klein is a Los Angeles-based writer who covers entrepreneurship and small-business issues.
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BlackBerrys Work Through Quake While Calls Fail in Boon to RIM

BlackBerrys Work Through Quake While Calls Fail in Boon to RIM

BlackBerry e-mail worked as usual after Tuesday's earthquake while calls failed, which could help Research In Motion's bid to win back market share

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(Bloomberg) — BlackBerry e-mail messages were delivered as usual after an earthquake struck Virginia today while calls failed, a potential boon to manufacturer Research In Motion Ltd. as it tries to win back lost market share.
The device, indispensable for many bankers, executives, lawyers, politicians and Washington lobbyists, relies on thousands of RIM servers for its e-mail service instead of phone companies’ networks. Some calls failed because systems of carriers including Verizon Communications Inc. were clogged as people tried to reach friends, relatives and colleagues.
The BlackBerry, after its debut a decade ago, became the No. 1 smartphone in the U.S. by ensuring clients’ communications are reliable, a selling point that helped it attract users including President Barack Obama. RIM is now trying to revive sales growth after losing its lead position to Apple Inc.’s iPhone and devices running Google Inc.’s Android software.
“RIM certainly has a reputation for being reliable when it comes to messaging and being secure and that’s what they’ve built their success on,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Teaneck, New Jersey.
RIM’s service has operated normally all day, said Marisa Conway, a spokeswoman for the Waterloo, Ontario-based company. Verizon, AT&T Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp. experienced a surge in phone calling and said they had no immediate reports of network damage after the 5.8 magnitude earthquake.

‘Heavy Call Volume’

“You have to call several times to get through some places,” Peter Thonis, a spokesman for New York-based Verizon, said in an interview. “It’s very temporal. I know of no network issues at this time” on the wireless or landline networks, he said.
Scott Sloat, a spokesman for Overland Park, Kansas-based Sprint, said the company is “experiencing an intermittent mass calling event, as is expected following an incident of this nature.” Sprint Nextel has had no reports of “impact to its network” and encouraged customers to send text messages rather than place calls to reach family and friends, he said.
“We have no reports of network damage, but we are seeing heavy call volume,” said Mark Siegel, a spokesman for Dallas- based AT&T.
RIM rose 99 cents, or 3.7 percent, to $27.50 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The stock has lost 53 percent this year.
Miller is a reporter for Bloomberg News. Kharif is a reporter for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek in Portland, Ore.
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Oil-Rich Libyans Won’t Need Financial Aid in Post-Qaddafi Era

Bloomberg

Oil-Rich Libyans Won’t Need Financial Aid in Post-Qaddafi Era

August 23, 2011, 8:57 PM EDT
By Alaa Shahine and Vivian Salama
(See EXTRA for more on the Libyan conflict.)
Aug. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Libyan rebels needed NATO’S military might to bring Muammar Qaddafi’s rule to the brink of collapse. About $50 billion in cash abroad means they can do without foreign aid to rebuild the country after a six-month conflict.
Air strikes and logistical support from North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces helped reverse the tide in Libya, stopping the advance of Qaddafi’s troops on rebel strongholds and allowing the opposition to score military victories that culminated in a sweep into Tripoli this week.
As the rebels hunt Qaddafi and his remaining followers in the capital, world leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel are urging the release of frozen Libyan assets abroad to help in the transition to democracy. Those assets and Africa’s largest oil reserves set Libya apart from neighboring Tunisia and Egypt, which sought outside financial aid after popular revolts ousted their leaders this year.
“We don’t need loans,” former Libyan Central Bank Governor Farhat Bengdara, who broke with Qaddafi’s regime in February, said in an interview in Dubai. “Libya has huge financial resources and oil reserves. What it needs is the cooperation of the international community to lift the freeze on Libya’s assets aboard.”
The Libyan economy suffered as much as $15 billion in damage during the conflict, according to Bengdara’s estimates. An economic recovery and the release of frozen assets will depend on how fast the rebels can stabilize the country and establish a government, say analysts including Paul Sullivan, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington.
Bank Deposits
The central bank and the Libyan Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign-wealth fund, have about $168 billion in assets abroad. About $50 billion of that is in bank deposits in European countries including Germany, the U.K., France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands, Bengdara said. The two institutions also hold about $40 billion in U.S. and European government bonds, he added.
The resources will offset the losses that the economy has incurred, according to Suliman Al Shahomy, chairman of the Libyan Stock Market, who broke with Qaddafi’s regime in February.
“The infrastructure hasn’t been destroyed,” he said in a telephone interview from Cairo.
Oil and equity investors rejoiced after the rebels entered Tripoli. The prospects of Qaddafi’s four-decade rule ending helped shares of Eni SpA, the biggest foreign investor in Libya, Ansaldo STS SpA and Total SA gain. Brent oil fell, narrowing its record premium to the main U.S. grade, on bets Libya’s output will recover.
No Debt
Libya doesn’t have outstanding debt. The conflict prompted Fitch Ratings to withdraw all of its credit ratings on Libya on April 13, citing “extreme political instability” and the loss of oil production.
Libya’s oil output, at about 1.58 million barrels a day before the revolt according to Bloomberg data, slumped to a trickle after fighting broke out, according to the International Energy Agency. Output may reach as much as 350,000 barrels a day within three months “if we’re lucky,” said Samuel Ciszuk, the London-based senior Middle East and North Africa energy analyst at IHS Global Insight.
“Until we see stability, it will be hard for the oil industry to recover,” Ciszuk said by telephone. “It’s all about bringing what is there back on stream as soon as possible. Some will be a bit hard to bring back on stream. There’s been some long-term damage to some of the older oil fields because they were shut down in a rushed and disorganized manner.”
‘Sudden Takeover’
Even so, oil production will recover more quickly than forecast after the “sudden takeover” of fields and export facilities by rebels, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said in a report this week. Libya will probably boost supply to 585,000 barrels a day in the next 12 to 18 months, Goldman said.
Qaddafi came to power after he toppled Libya’s monarchy in a 1969 military coup. His attempts to export the self-styled revolution to other countries put Libya under U.S. and United Nations sanctions in the 1980s and 1990s. Qaddafi’s government also was accused of sponsoring terrorism, and a Libyan man, Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi, was convicted of the bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.
After 2000, Qaddafi renounced terrorism and gave up a nuclear-weapons program. That led to international sanctions being lifted and boosted the economy, which expanded 4.2 percent in 2010, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Oil aside, the economy offers investment opportunities in industries including tourism, mining, agriculture financial services, according to Bengdara, 45.
Unicredit License
International and Arab banks including HSBC Holdings Plc, Standard Chartered Unicredit SpA and Mashreqbank PSC had applied to set up units in the North African country. Unicredit, Italy’s biggest lender, said in August last year it had won a license.
“Libya can become the star of the region,” Bengdara said. “Libya’s economic output, which was about $80 billion before the revolution, can easily double in no longer than 10 years.”
Even so, lingering protests, labor strikes and political bickering in Tunisia and Egypt show that the transition toward democracy in Libya may not be easy, Raza Agha, a London-based economist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, said in a report on Aug. 22. In fact, Libya may have a harder time, according to Sullivan of the National Defense University.
‘Gutted the Government’
“Libya may have the toughest transition of all of them in North Africa,” Sullivan said by e-mail. “Qaddafi gutted the government and there is really seems to be almost no understanding amongst many there about how to transition to a vibrant economy and democracy. Platitudes and hopes are not policies that can be implemented.”
Uncertainty about the nature of the post-Qaddafi government may also delay the release of frozen funds, Stuart Levey, a former U.S. Treasury undersecretary, told Bloomberg Television’s “In Business with Margaret Brennan.”
Having the assets still frozen can be used “as a point of leverage for the United States and its allies to ensure that they have a legitimate government they can trust in Libya they can give this money to,” Levey said.
--Editors: Eddie Buckle, Andrew Atkinson
To contact the reporters on this story: Alaa Shahine in Dubai at asalha@bloomberg.net; Vivian Salama in Abu Dhabi at vsalama@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net; Claudia Maedler at cmaedler@bloomberg.net
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Facebook Seeks Acquisitions to Fend Off Google Competition: Tech

Facebook Seeks Acquisitions to Fend Off Rivals

Facebook Seeks Acquisitions to Fend Off Google Competition: Tech

August 23, 2011, 6:02 AM EDT
By Brian Womack
(Embargoed for use at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on Aug. 24.)
Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc., the world’s largest social network, is planning acquisitions that will improve site design, keep its service reliable and advance mobile features to stave off competition from Google Inc. and Twitter Inc.
The company aims to make about 20 purchases in 2011, up from 10 last year and one in 2009, Vaughan Smith, Facebook’s director of corporate development, said in an interview.
Facebook is betting that a focus on design will entice people to spend more time on the site, while adding mobile services can cater to the growing number of members using handheld devices. As it grapples with competition from Google and Twitter, Facebook also must bolster its system so the site runs smoothly amid rapid growth. The company has made 13 acquisitions so far this year, including adding a mobile group- messaging service it rolled out to users this month.
“Two years ago we didn’t have a track record in acquisitions,” Smith said. “While we expected them to work well, it was still a crapshoot how they’d turn out. We’ve built a culture that supports entrepreneurs, and it’s working incredibly well.”
Facebook makes money from advertising and by taking a commission when software developers sell virtual goods on the site. As a closely held company, Facebook doesn’t disclose financials. A person with knowledge of the matter said in May that the company is likely to generate more than $2 billion in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization this year.
In addition, Facebook has raised more than $2 billion from investors, including $1.5 billion from an investment led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., announced in January.
Google’s Cash
By contrast, Google has $39.1 billion in cash. Google, the biggest Internet search engine, unveiled a new social-networking service, called Google+, in June. It already had attracted 29 million people by the end of July, according to ComScore Inc.
Facebook, based in Palo Alto, California, has made mostly small acquisitions, with target companies sometimes having one or two employees. The company has a market value of $72.5 billion, according to SharesPost Inc., an exchange for private shares. That’s more than the valuations of publicly traded Internet companies such as EBay Inc. and Yahoo! Inc.
The company can use cash and stock for acquisitions, according to Lou Kerner, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc. in New York. Facebook also can sell shares in the secondary markets for additional cash.
No Hindrances?
“I don’t think a lack of cash, even on their balance sheet, is a significant deterrent for the acquisitions that they’re looking at,” said Kerner, who declined to estimate how much cash the company has for purchases.
Many of Facebook’s deals have been targeted at adding talent as the company vies with larger rivals for skilled technology workers. Google has announced plans to hire about 6,000 people this year globally.
“Facebook is just trying to get the smartest people possible in any way it can,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an EMarketer Inc. analyst. “The idea of bringing in new talent, smart talent, people who have created interesting products that Facebook can capitalize on, is going to be important to them.”
Facebook has been sharpening its focus on mobile, which is how more than a third of users access the site. In February, the company acquired Beluga, a startup that helped users send messages to groups of people through their mobile phones. Facebook earlier this month introduced its own application -- based on Beluga’s technology -- that handles messaging on Apple Inc.’s iPhone and phones based on Google’s Android software.
‘Top Priority’
“The future of all computing is mobile,” Wedbush’s Kerner said. “Mobile, I think, is the top priority at the company.”
Snaptu, a mobile startup Facebook acquired earlier this year, was bought for about $60 million, according to a person familiar with the matter. Smith said he is open to larger acquisitions, but declined to be more specific.
On top of its mobile-computing push, the company has added services that let users manage their friends by groups or ask others questions on the site. As new features pile up, Facebook needs to manage its user-interface design, said Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“The challenge is that Facebook does a lot more things than it used to,” Bernoff said. “To get that all to be easily navigable is not simple.”
Sofa, Push Pop
Purchases in design this year have included Sofa, a software and user-interface company, and Push Pop Press, which offered publishing software for touch-enabled devices.
The average U.S. Facebook user spends more than seven hours a month on the service, according to ComScore. With the jump in users -- to more than 750 million from 500 million in July 2010 -- as well as exponential growth in applications and products, the company is working to manage rising complexity in its vast computer systems. To help, the company opened a new data center in Prineville, Oregon, earlier this year.
Still, Facebook has yet to make an acquisition in computing, and may seek to buy companies with technology and workers that will help it strengthen its system.
“They have to over-plan for massive growth,” said Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at Altimeter Group in San Mateo, California.
--Editors: Jillian Ward, Nick Turner
-0- Aug/23/2011 10:01 GMT
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Womack in San Francisco at bwomack1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net.
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Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Self-Employment Should Play a Bigger Role in Jobs Programs----Bloomberg.com

Self-Employment in Jobs Programs

Cammie Allie and Ann Costlow are small-scale entrepreneurs who aren’t trying to start the next Microsoft. Yet both have battled back from unemployment to create successful businesses, with the sort of government support that could help thousands of other jobless people, too.
Allie manages apartment buildings in Portland, Oregon; Costlow owns four creperies in Maryland. To get started, each drew on business coaching and income support from an unusual state-funded jobless initiative. These self-employment assistance programs provide 26 weeks of income support, typically about $10,000. Participants try to start enterprises, rather than being required to look full time for traditional jobs.
Founding a business isn’t for everyone. Hours are long, initial earnings puny, and the failure rate high even in boom times. A weak economy makes everything harder.
For some displaced workers, however, self-employment may be their best hope. Entrepreneurial aid to the jobless is typically aimed at older, educated workers who lost good jobs in battered industries. With the national unemployment rate above 9 percent, such candidates face slim odds of finding appropriate work through a standard job hunt.
In Oregon, people opting for self-employment get business pointers as well as detailed reviews of their startup plans. Examiners look for clear ideas about pricing, supplies, customers and competition. Only candidates judged to have at least a moderate chance of success can proceed.

Oregon’s Successes

Oregon recently surveyed 369 people who have participated in its program since 2000. Seventy percent had started a business; nearly half of those were hiring workers. The small survey’s responses might be skewed toward recipients who thrived. Even so, Oregon’s successful entrepreneurs each created an average of 2.63 additional jobs.
In New Jersey, about 600 jobless people a year try self- employment. Data on success rates is fragmentary, but state officials say participants have started businesses in at least 33 fields, including computer services and catering. When such ventures thrive, founders don’t just earn income -- they keep hiring, becoming job multipliers.
Self-employment aid closely matches the cost of regular unemployment benefits, which can run $400 a person per week. Britain, France and Sweden have operated similar entrepreneurial assistance programs since the 1980s, with good results. In the U.S., though, only about a dozen states have followed suit, and most programs are tiny.
Bureaucracy is partly to blame. Current state and federal rules don’t allow unemployed workers to pursue self-employment aid right away; instead they must qualify for regular jobless benefits first, which takes weeks. States also worry that some startup dreams might fizzle quickly, wasting taxpayer money.

Living With Risks

Making the entrepreneur’s path risk-free is impossible. Still, that shouldn’t stymie such aid. Three of the biggest states -- California, Texas and Florida -- are home to 30 percent of America’s unemployed. These states don’t currently offer entrepreneurial assistance to the jobless; setting up such programs would be a big help.
Two other changes could help make entrepreneurship a likelier path back to work. First, states should tell the newly jobless about the self-employment option right away, rather than making them wait a month or two before becoming eligible. And second, minor income from a side business -- capped at a reasonable level of, say, $750 a month -- shouldn’t be automatically counted against jobless benefits. In some cases this year’s hobby can be built into next year’s business.
When 4.7 people are out of work for every job opening, unemployed Americans deserve better odds of becoming their own bosses.
To contact the Bloomberg View editorial board: view@bloomberg.net.
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Some Gold Bullies Say It's Time To Cash In, Rally Overdue---CNBC.com







As gold prices near $2,000 an ounce, some bulls say its time take money off the table after the safe-haven rally extended too far too fast in recent weeks.
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