Since shopping online implies there is no personal interaction with a sales person, many customers grow frustrated if they encounter issues with the website or an order. To make matters worse, lots of online businesses fail when it comes to customer service by offering slow, delayed responses — or not offering them at all. Poor customer service can drive customers away faster than anything else. In fact, 3 out of 5 customers have not completed a purchase due to poor service.

eCommerce Customer Service Ideas

Providing stellar customer service with your e-commerce business can do wonders to make your company stand out amongst the competition. This process is not always simple, but it can mean a world of difference when it comes to sales. Here are 5 ecommerce customer service ideas to consider.

1. Have an Easy-to-Understand Return Policy

One major concern many online customers have is the hassle of returning a product. Since anywhere from 15-30% of online purchases are returned, having a clear return policy for your online business is extremely important. Writing out detailed instructions, of which are listed multiple times on your site or in emails, assures customers they can purchase with confidence.

Be sure to clearly state if you provide a full refund, partial refund, or offer store credit. You may also want to consider extending your return window, or even offering a lifetime guarantee. Offering easy and free returns influences 68% of online purchases, so you want to make the entire process as simple as possible for your customers.

Purple, an online mattress company, offers an excellent example of a well-defined return system. Their site lists out details for each product, from bed sheets to mattresses, and clearly states which returns will be refunded and which will not. If customers have further questions or concerns, Purple also includes their return department’s email address and phone number so customers can contact a customer service representative directly.

2. Personalize Each Experience

Online customers crave a more personalized buying experience. In fact, over 70% of American consumers expect personalization from online businesses. Personalization can include offering customers personal shopping account logins that record past purchases, shipping addresses, and suggest related items for their next order. One easy way to offer some personalization is by using marketing automation to send out triggered emails with special offers tailored the past shopping behavior of each customer.

Personalized shopping can take many forms. Don’t be afraid to get creative with it. More importantly, use personalization to address customer concerns in shopping online vs. at a physical store near them. For example, Bluestone, an online jewelry company, found a unique way to bring their brand experience to the next level. Customers can set up an appointment online and a consultant will come directly to their homes, allowing them to try on the jewelry in the comfort of their own home.

This “try before you buy” service gives customers some peace of mind (especially before making an expensive purchase) as well as provides a personalized shopping experience by allowing the customer to choose which pieces to view. The company even offers a “design your own” feature for rings, earrings, and necklaces – providing a truly personal experience for each customer.

3. Ask for Feedback

As the great musician Stevie Wonder once said, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” Customers are not very likely to leave a review, especially a positive one, if you do not ask. Sending out a follow-up email asking customers to rate their experience or to write a short review increases the likelihood they will leave feedback. Make sure you include their comments on your site or social media; as customer reviews play a major role in purchase decisions.

Take the instance of an online purchase for an air vent cover for a HVAC. Unless the item or purchase experience was exceptionally wonderful (or terrible), it’s highly unlikely for such a product to receive a review. However, one company sent out a follow up email to its Amazon customers with links that made it easy for the purchaser to leave a quick comment and rate their experience:

4. Provide Live Chat

Having a live-chat option can increase customer satisfaction by leaps and bounds. Plus, it’s an easy way to answer questions and concerns instantly. Rather than waiting for an email response, customers can receive assistance right away, which means they are less likely to leave your website without purchasing.

Outsourcing an online chat service is a great strategy, especially for smaller online businesses who can’t afford to hire round-the-clock customer service reps. Sites like Influx will handle online chats 24/7 for your e-commerce business and provide peace of mind for you and your customers.

5. Provide Service via Social Media

Customer service via social media is expected by e-commerce customers today, and they want responses instantly. Many customers use social media because it’s easy for them to find a business and contact them directly.

There are, however, some downsides to using social media for this purpose. The big one being lack of privacy. Many companies reply to concerns with a link to their customer service page or respond with a private message.

Determine which of your social media platforms has the largest number of followers or activity, then promote your support services there. You can use social media monitoring tools to alert you when your brand is talked about online so you can respond to inquiries quickly.

Final Thoughts

Providing a remarkable customer service experience from your e-commerce business gives your company an impressive competitive advantage. Focus on making the whole buying experience easy and personal for your customers throughout your site. Clearly list return and exchange instructions, and ask customers to review their experience to help your business improve and attract new audiences. Most importantly, don’t shy away from thinking outside the box!

Ecommerce Business Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "5 Ways to Provide Exceptional Customer Service in eCommerce" was first published on Small Business Trends

Looking for a unique new business idea? Consider starting a virtual reality arcade.

That’s right — arcade businesses no longer need to consist only of video games from the 80’s and cheesy prizes. There are already businesses around the world that are integrating this new technology into their offerings.

Take the case of Playdium Virtual Reality arcade in Causway Bay, Hong Kong. It’s located directly above Razer’s Hong Kong store and is decked out with all of the latest VR equipment. There’s even a virtual boxing ring that offers a workout akin to an afternoon at the gym.

Basically, this new technology offers businesses an opportunity to update an old concept. Most people consider arcades to be fun places to visit. But if all you have is a standard assortment of old games, there’s nothing to set yours apart from all the rest.

So instead, you could invest in some VR equipment and offer games and experiences that work with the technology. You could even have customers choose the experiences they want, like a boxing ring, racing game or even a flight simulator.

The possibilities are only increasing when it comes to virtual reality. And businesses that take advantage of those new opportunities could find a lot of early success.

Image: Playdium

This article, "Looking for a Great Business Idea? Start a Virtual Reality Arcade" was first published on Small Business Trends

Who says Millennials are more into vacations than work?

Millennial Side Hustle Statistics

New data from Bankrate shows that 28 percent of Millennials, between the ages of 18 and 26, are working on their own on the side right now. That means, in addition to their regular source of income, the youngest members of the workforce are putting in extra work for some extra pay.

These don’t seem like pursuits to purchase more of the things that Millennials want, either. If that were the case, it’d be more likely that these “side hustles” would be one-off gigs to earn a few extra bucks here and there.

But a deeper dive into the Bankrate data shows that these side hustles are more like side businesses, even if they lack the proper business structure or systems in place. Take a look at these other numbers from the study:

• 61 percent of Millennials working a side hustle are at it once week or more;
• 96 percent are at their side hustle at least once a month;
• and 25 percent say their side hustle earns them $500 a month or more.

Yeah, that sounds more like a business than a hustle, right?

In fact, the average Millennial participating in the Bankrate study uses their side job or jobs to make at least $200 a month.

So, what are some of the more popular side businesses right now? Check out this list of 50 popular side gigs right now.

Investing Right

Of course, this data from Bankrate makes no claim about where these Millennials are spending their money. They could be spending it on lattes after all.

For Millennials reading this and identifying as one of the 1 in 4 who are padding their income, if an entrepreneurial spirit runs through you, don’t waste this money. Begin to save this money that does allow you to live outside your normal means to invest in a business pursuit.

Rather than calling it a side business, that seed money stashed away could be the money that allows you to eventually strike out on your own.

Guy at Laptop Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "More Than 1 in 4 Millennials Work a Side Hustle" was first published on Small Business Trends

These days, having an online presence for your business seems almost mandatory. But that doesn’t mean that every business needs to completely focus on the internet. In fact, there are still plenty of offline business opportunities for entrepreneurs who aren’t super tech savvy to consider. Here are 50 offline business ideas.

Offline Business Ideas

Cleaning Service

You can start a house or office cleaning service where you travel to your clients and use local advertising or word of mouth to build your business.

Child Care

Child care is another popular in-home business idea. You can run the business out of your own home or go to your clients’ homes.

In-home Elderly Care

There’s also a big demand for in-home elderly care. You can provide services to clients in your area daily or on a semi-regular basis.

Coffee Cart

With a coffee cart business, you can bring your cart to the areas where customers are likely to congregate, meaning you don’t even necessarily need a website or other online presence.

Food Truck

Though it may be beneficial to market food trucks on social media platforms, you can set up this type of business completely offline and use local events to attract customers.

Gift Shop

It’s also possible to set up a local gift shop without any kind of ecommerce store, as long as you’re in a great location that customers are likely to visit.

Caterer

For those interested in food businesses, you can start a catering company to provide services for events, individuals and businesses.

Baker

You can also start your own business as a baker, either with your own bakery storefront or by providing baked goods to other businesses and bakeries in your area.

Gardener

If you’re looking for an outdoor business idea, you can set up your own gardening business and provide services to customers in your community.

Landscaping Service

Likewise, you can offer lawn mowing or other landscaping services without a website or extensive online presence.

Pet Cleanup Service

There’s also a market of pet owners looking for businesses to help them clean up their yards .

Home Staging

For design oriented entrepreneurs, you can start a home staging business where you help local homeowners set up their homes to appeal to potential buyers.

Home Painting

You can also focus on home painting, either interior or exterior or both.

Handyman

If you’re good at fixing things around the house, you can also start your own business where you provide general handyman services to homeowners.

Print Shop

Print shops help customers print anything from signs to t-shirts. And you can even provide a place where customers can complete their own printing and copying jobs, all from an offline location.

Direct Mail Marketing

If you want to help businesses with offline marketing, you can start a direct mail business that focuses on printed materials sent the old fashioned way.

Party Entertainer

For those who are musically inclined or have other skills like juggling or balloon sculpting, you can offer your services to local customers looking for party entertainment.

Bed and Breakfast

If you have a large enough space, you could set up your own bed and breakfast where you welcome visitors.

Personal Shopper

You could also start your own personal shopping business where you go with clients to stores and help them pick out the best items.

Event Planner

Or you could focus on event planning where you work with clients in person and deal with vendors mainly over the phone.

Errand Service

It’s also possible to set up a general errand running service. You can do things like pick up groceries or finishing up laundry.

Food Delivery

Or you can offer food delivery services to people in your area who want to order from restaurants that don’t offer delivery.

Florist

A flower shop is another great offline business opportunity. You can open your own location and deal with customers mainly in person.

Farmers’ Market Vendor

If you sell flowers, plants, food or similar items, you can also procure your own booth at local farmers’ markets and sell your goods that way.

Jewelry Maker

If you make jewelry or similar items, you can sell them in person at craft fairs or even wholesale to local boutiques.

Clothing Designer

For those who make clothing, you can also focus mainly on selling your items wholesale to local stores instead of setting up your own ecommerce site.

Tutor

It’s also possible to build a business as a tutor. You can focus on a specific subject and focus on in-person one-on-one sessions.

Dog Walker

If you’re interested in starting a business where you get to hang out with cute animals all day, you can offer dog walking services to people in your neighborhood.

Pet Grooming

Or you can offer pet grooming services, either in your own dedicated location or as part of a mobile business.

Mobile Retail Boutique

Another mobile business opportunity, you can set up a retail shop in a trailer or similar setup and sell goods at fairs or other events.

Car Wash

You can also start your own car washing or detailing business without having any kind of online presence.

Bicycle Repairs

For those who are skilled with bicycle repairs, you can create a business around that skill in your garage or a local storefront.

Mobile Phone Repairs

There’s also a lot of demand for mobile phone repairs. So you can set up a storefront where people can bring their devices with cracked screens or other issues.

Farming

If you have enough land and the skills to farm crops or other types of food, you can offer your food items to retailers, restaurants or other businesses.

Corn Maze

There are also other options for those with some land to work with. For instance, you can create a corn maze and some complementary attractions and welcome customers to your location.

Christmas Tree Farm

You can also grow pine trees on your land and welcome visitors to come pick out their own trees during the holiday season.

Tour Guide

If you live in an area that’s popular with tourists, you can set up a tour guide business where you show visitors around.

Security Service

You can also start your own security service, providing protection for businesses or individuals on a contract basis.

Artist

For artistic entrepreneurs, you can create your own artwork to sell at galleries or special events.

Massage Therapy

You can also work with clients in person as a masseuse or massage therapist.

Personal Trainer

Or if you’re a fitness minded entrepreneur, you can start a business as a personal trainer, working with clients at local gyms or from your home.

Antique Shop

You can also start your own antique shop where you sell items out of a storefront, antique mall or at local events.

Author

While ebooks have increased in popularity in recent years, you can still build a business by writing and publishing actual books as well.

Speech Writer

Writers can also build a business around writing speeches on a freelance basis.

Dance Classes

If you’re a skilled dancer, you can offer dance classes out of your home or a dance studio.

Music Lessons

Similarly, you can offer music lessons to people looking to learn a musical instrument or improve their vocal skills.

Career Counseling

It’s also possible to build a business where you help people find careers by working with them one-on-one.

Moving Service

If you have a truck and some moving supplies, you can offer moving services to local consumers.

Tax Preparation

You can also help people and businesses prepare their taxes by meeting with them in person.

Fundraiser

Fundraisers are also in high demand in some areas. You can help businesses and organizations raise money through events and other campaigns on a freelance basis.

Online/Offline Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "50 Offline Business Ideas" was first published on Small Business Trends

Cyber criminals have come up with yet another way to get you to open an email. This month’s Comodo Threat Intelligence Lab report has identified a new type of phishing email. According to Comodo, the new scam involves emails disguised as a reply to a previously asked request for information. The emails also appear to come from a legitimate contact or familiar brand, the report says.

A New Type of Phishing Email

The particular phishing email campaign mentioned in the report occurred over a seven hour period on July 6, 2017. And while it lasted less than a day, it was able to target 50 enterprise customers with thousands of users.

The perpetrators of the attack used 585 different servers with IP addresses in North America, Europe, Australia and Turkey. Comodo says the speed and coordination to develop and deploy the attack shows a considerble level of sophistication and advance in phishing evolution.

The emails have been designed to look authentic. And if you are busy, a quick glance might lead you to believe it is a legitimate request. But once you click on the link, you will be directed to a different site, which will deliver its remotely deployed malware payload.

This screenshot shows an example of the phishing attack.

Fatih Orhan, head of the Comodo Threat Intelligence Lab and Comodo Threat Research Labs (CTRL), explains:

“Phishing emails come in numerous types and formats. Cyber criminals always find new methods to trick users and convince them to click a “bait” link. This latest method is also an example of how they can be creative to attack enterprise business users.”

This phishing campaign attacked more than three thousand enterprise customer users from 585 IP addresses. Comodo identified the following countries, with the US making up the lion’s share of the IP addresses.

What is a Phishing Attack?

Finding The Right Solution

Comodo analyzes millions of potential pieces of malware, phishing, spam or other malicious/unwanted files and emails 24x7x365 in over 190 countries around the world. Whether you choose Comodo or another vendor, make sure it monitors and protects your digital assets at all times. This is critical in order to catch the latest attacks and prevent any harm to your small business.

Help From the FTC and SBA

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and he U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) have launched a new website – ftc.gov/SmallBusiness – to address phishing and other digital threats to small businesses. The site has articles, videos, and other information to help owners identify, protect and avoid scams from cyberattacks and additional vulnerabilities.

Phishing Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "Beware! New Phishing Attacks Disguised as Replies to Previously Asked Questions" was first published on Small Business Trends

A new platform aims to make small business advertising on Facebook and Instagram even easier.

Digital has surpassed TV ad spend, and the gap is growing at robust pace. According to eMarketer, the almost $1B lead digital had at the end of 2016 will increase to more than $25B by 2020. For small businesses, if they want to succeed it means making their presence felt on digital channels. needls has created a RoboAgency platform to make this possible, by simplifying social media advertising while making it affordable.

The CEO and Co-Founder of needls, Justin Hartzman, says only around four million of the more than 65 million businesses on Facebook are leveraging the Facebook ads platform. He also goes on to ask, “Why?”

The Answer

Simply put, for small businesses it comes down to the lack of technical know-how, and not having the budget to hire a digital agency. Even though there are DIY solutions, they can be complicated if the business owner doesn’t have online advertising experience. And when it comes to digital ad agencies, the cost for small businesses, in most cases, is prohibitive.

But as digital continues to grow as the preferred medium for consumers, it has opened affordable advertising opportunities. And this is where needls has established its presence, with two of the largest social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram.

The needls RoboAgency

But needls claims it has the Internet’s first RoboAgency. This makes it available 24/7 to start new campaigns any time and provide real-time automated optimization.

The needls platform creates hundreds of ads, and it then monitors social media sites to continuously optimize the ads and target new business. The company uses data science and programmatic buying techniques to make the ads effective by monitoring social media conversations. This technology allows it to determine the perfect target audience for these ads in real-time.

The company says, “needls is the only platform where people receive ads for what they need, when they need it.”

How the needls Social Media Advertising RoboAgency Works

Here are two examples of how it works.

When a User Posts:

When a User  Posts:

The Process

The first thing needls has going for it is simplicity. If you want to create a campaign, all you have to do is answer some questions about your business, and it will create the ads. According to the company, it is as easy as that. It then proceeds to target and optimize the ads.

Pricing

The second thing is the price. Compared to a DIY solution, advertising platforms, and traditional agencies, needls comes in at just $100 per month. For this, price your small business will get the ad creation, targeting, and monitoring features along with advanced analytics, custom reporting, and live chat and customer care.

If you are an ad agency, the Agency platform provides all of the above features with a multi-user dashboard to manage your clients, download reports, direct customer billing, and more. The price for this tier is $200 per month for the first 5 clients and $35 per additional client.

Conclusion

Social media advertising is now just as important, or more so depending on the industry you happen to be in, as other platforms. Until now the complexity of the technology, lack of understanding in digital advertising, and the cost has kept small businesses away. With needls, you don’t have to be an expert, and with an entry price point of only $100 virtually any business can have a go at it.

Images: needls

This article, "Can needls Platform Automate Small Business Ads on Facebook and Instagram?" was first published on Small Business Trends

When it comes to analyzing data, having accurate visualizations can make the the task infinitely easier. And new technologies like augmented and virtual reality can potentially help businesses create those visualizations.

And that’s exactly what Virtualitics specializes in. Read more about the company and how it uses new technology to create better data visualizations in this week’s Small Business Spotlight.

What the Business Does:

Provides data visualization services.

Co-founder and CEO Michael Amori told Small Business Trends, “Virtualitics Inc. is a data visualization company that merges artificial intelligence, Big Data and virtual/augmented reality to gain insights from complex data sets. Its collaborative environment for data exploration is suitable for both data scientists and non-expert users, allowing them to uncover multidimensional relationships in data, which may not be discoverable by any other means.”

Business Niche:

Integrating virtual and augmented reality into its visualization services.

Amori says, “To our knowledge, no one else provides VR/AR to visualize multidimensional data with easy-to-use machine learning tools, Natural Language summaries and a streamlined data analysis process. Additionally, our adaptable VR/AR platform can provide practical methods for translation, rotation, remapping, selection, replotting and toggling while immersed in data. Users can collaborate in a shared virtual environment online, sharing insights and giving guided tours of data.”

How the Business Got Started:

By bringing together several different specialties.

Amori explains, “Starting in 2007, George Djorgovski and Ciro Donalek began their work on an Immersive Data Visualization and VR platform, called iViz. Scott Davidoff joined the team in 2013, bringing along his AR expertise, and that following year (2014), Caltech awarded the team with an Innovation Initiative (C12) grant. At that time, I was the head of a large data science team, and in 2015, I joined the team after I saw what the other co-founders were building and thought their work could also be very useful in a business setting. In August of 2016, the company officially started and moved into the Pasadena office.”

Biggest Win:

Getting a positive response from users.

Amori says, “Building groundbreaking technology is a great achievement but it means very little if it cannot be used in a practical environment. With that said, our biggest win has been the enthusiastic response we’ve received from our beta users, as this reaffirms our mission and overall potential.”

Biggest Risk:

Becoming its own entity.

Amori says, “Leaving Caltech and becoming a stand-alone business was probably the biggest risk we took, but doing so has also given us more freedom and mobility to grow.”

How They’d Spend an Extra $100,000:

Working capital or a vacation fund.

Amori says, “We’d likely be practical and just put it toward working capital. Or maybe we’d put it in a vacation fund for the team and (someday) treat everyone to a well-deserved company vacation.”

Favorite Quote:

“I sent my soul through the invisible, some letter of that After-life to spell: And by and by my soul returned to me and answered: I myself am both heaven and hell” ~ Omar Kayyam

* * * * *

Find out more about the Small Biz Spotlight program

Images: Virtualitics

Top Image: (from front row, left center to right) George Djorgovski (Co-Founder & Chief Virtual Reality Officer), Ciro Donalek (Co-founder & CTO), Michael Amori (Co-founder & CEO), Kate Cameron (COO), surrounded by most of the Virtualitics staff

This article, "Spotlight: Virtualitics Specializes in Visualizing Data for Business" was first published on Small Business Trends

If you’re hoping to have a pizza delivered by drone to your house soon, you might have a wait. One industry expert sees a different future inspecting remote pipelines and such for drones. Brandon Declet knows what he’s talking about.

Talking Drone Rules and Regulations

Declet is the CEO and Co-Founder at Measure, one of the first companies to offer drones-as-a-service. The firm was  invited to Washington recently for an American Leadership in Technology Event at The White House.  Declet spoke with Small Business Tends recently about where the industry is going and how regulations need to change.

Drone Service Operator

First Declet spoke about his company’s experience at the White House.

“We met with senior administration officials including the Deputy Secretary of Transportation, as well as officials from the FAA and officials from The Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House,” Declet said. One focus was finding ways to allow for more commercial drone operations in America.

Current Friendly Administration

Measure operates in DC and has fifty employees. The company finds the current administration friendly to companies operating drones in American commercial airspace. Measure hopes one operating regulation specifically might be tweaked.

“To scale our operation into a big business, we’re looking at opportunities to fly beyond the visual line of sight,” Declet says. “This would open up new possibilities like inspecting transmission towers and pipelines.”

The Visual Line of Sight

This regulation prohibiting operating a drone beyond the visual line of sight of the operator certainly creates a limit to uses of the technology.  The visual line of sight is the distance the operator can physically see without using any monitors.

There would be several jobs drones would be able to take over with the  right regulatory changes. These jobs include inspecting remote wind turbines,  checking on cell towers so workers don’t need to climb them, or even providing real time news coverage.  Declet understands some bugs would need to be worked out first, however.

Key to Adjustments

“The big fear is that if you’re flying beyond visual line of sight, you can’t see your own aircraft or others that can be in the way,” he says. Any adjustments would include protections for both manned and unmanned aircraft.

Still waiting for drones to start delivering your groceries and box store purchases soon?  Declet says that might not be the norm for five to ten years, if then. His company has done some of these deliveries, and found the costs high.

“Deliveries in urban environments might prove difficult,” he says. “To be honest, what drones are going to be really good for are the dull, dirty and dangerous jobs.”

Drone Service Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "Reality Check: Drones Will Take the Dull, Dirty, Dangerous Jobs" was first published on Small Business Trends

When most small business owners go about creating a business brand, they tend to think about hiring designers, graphic artists or other creative types to help. Or, to save time and money, they muddle through on their own, with a rudimentary understanding of what they think looks good. Now, thanks to innovations in machine learning, the next wave of business branding might actually be created by machines. Can a machine create a brand better than a human?  And what does that mean to your business as you build your own brand?

Can a Machine Create a Brand?

Branding and the 400 Milliseconds …What it Means to the SMB

I’ve often written about how important it is for small business owners to develop their own solid personal brand. It’s critical for building authority in your field, and engaging an audience. The same is true for your company’s brand, maybe even more so, in fact.  Consumer research shows that 90 percent of consumers expect a brand experience to be consistent across all platforms and channels, and first impressions are incredibly important.

It goes far beyond simple brand recognition; your brand elements build important emotional connections with your audience.

“People should feel something when they connect with your brand,” said online marketing guru Neil Patel in an interview with Jeff Charles.

Consistent and professional brand elements make it easier for customers to recognize your company and develop those feelings of trust that are so important in driving a purchase.

Yet for many small businesses, the cost of a professional branding solution is prohibitive. Brand strategist Pia Silva of Worst of All Design estimates that for a small business brand, you can expect to pay anywhere between $2,000 and $15,000. At that rate, it’s no wonder that many brands attempt the DIY approach.

Yali Saar, CEO of Tailor Brands, sees an alternative: “Every logo, and every branding element, is a combination of color, shape and meaning,” he explains. “Although your logo may seem like a small piece of your brand, it is the first thing your prospect encounters,” Saar explains. “And within 400 milliseconds, the human brain makes decisions about how it feels about what it perceives. You have that much time to make your first, and potentially lasting, impression.”

Saar’s believes his company has found the sweet spot where design best practices meet machine learning, to bring big-budget style branding design within reach of the small businesses.

The Science Behind Building a Brand

Your logo is not just some arbitrary symbol. As Saar explains, “A logo provides the visual representation of your business to your customers. It holds you accountable to the brand promises that you made. And it conveys this to your audience, helping ensure that they come back to use your business over and over again.”

Budget-route graphic design is too often subjective to really nail this down. I’ve heard so many small business owners talking about their own DIY attempts, based on what they like. They don’t necessarily take into account their brand promise, their relationship with their audience, or the emotions that need to be conveyed. A hired graphic designer often will probe these questions, but as I pointed out earlier, that route can be too expensive for small biz budgets.

What Saar has discovered is that these artistic decisions on color, font, size, placement and palettes can now be made intelligently, based on science and data, rather than subjective preferences. And that opens up a whole new level of branding for small businesses.

How Small Brands are Leveraging Design Science for Big Results

Can a machine really design better than a human? According to Jury Vetrov, who has been following the field of algorithm-driven design, the answer is a definite yes.

“The tools of the approach [for better web design] can help us to construct a UI, prepare assets and content, and personalize the user experience,” he writes, noting that it wasn’t until last year that “the technological foundations of these tools became easily accessible, and the design community got interested in algorithms, neural networks and artificial intelligence (AI).”

Vetrov is speaking specifically of website design; the same principles can be carried over into other forms of design as well. Machines are learning to be creative (NPR.org), especially when given input into the intangibles like your company’s mission, language and purpose.

At Tailor Brands, Saar sees great potential in this intersection of creativity and data.

“Our users create a new design every 1.5 seconds,” he explains. “We ask for input about their brand, their mission, in an open-ended way that doesn’t limit their ideation.

“All of that creation means mounds of data,” Saar continues, “which helps us spot trends in branding that helps influence the next design. Our machines are constantly learning and getting better at what they do. “

It’s hard to overstate the importance of a solid brand look, no matter the size of your business or how long you’ve been around. From first impression to building engagement and growing solid relationships, your brand identity is crucial. Now, small business owners can leverage real science and put it to work for their company with brand elements that let them be amazing, faster than ever before.

Robot Painter Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "How to Create Machine Made Brands" was first published on Small Business Trends

Though we might think fondly of a Mad Men-styled office with cool mid-century décor and a bar in every room, those days are long gone. Not only do we have more diverse workplaces and different attitudes, but many of us don’t even report to a physical office. We’re free to roam the world while we grow our companies.

Essential Tools for Working on the Road

But mobility requires the right equipment. Here are my top requirements for doing business out of my backpack.

1. Phone

A reliable smartphone is the single most important piece of equipment for nearly everyone, and the entrepreneur is no exception.But in addition to your hardware, you also should look into VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol). VOIP lets you seamlessly forward calls to your mobile phone from a physical place like your home office, so your clients can reach you anytime and anywhere. VOIP can also provide significant savings, particularly when you factor in costly international rates.

2. Laptop

After the smartphone, your laptop is the second indispensible tool, giving you access to full websites (as opposed to mobile versions) and allowing you to get real work done from anywhere. My chief concerns when I’m shopping for a new laptop are weight and price. I like ‘em light and cheap, since my laptops inevitably have a fairly short lifespan. And if you do a lot of writing (like me) then you may want to invest in a great keyboard that is comfortable and durable.

3. Cloud-Based Apps

Accidents happen, both on the road and in life, and if you drop your laptop in a hotel pool, you don’t want the double whammy of losing your computer as well as all your important company files. If you’re storing data on the cloud, you’ll be back up and running as soon as you replace that soggy laptop. Cloud-based work makes it easy for you and your team to collaborate even if you’re continents apart.

4. A Backup Plan

As much as I’ve traveled, I’ve learned that absolutely every element of traveling and working at the same time can go to hell at a moment’s notice. From power outages to internet outages to missed flights and equipment failures, at some point you’re going to need a Plan B. So make one! Think of everything that can go wrong and figure out ahead of time how you’ll handle it. No internet in your hotel? A mobile hotspot saves the day. That laptop that fell into the pool? Knowing the location of a worksharing space can be your temporary fix. Planning for screw-ups makes it much easier for you to take them in stride when they inevitably occur.

And a final note about being a mobile entrepreneur: Some folks may think I work out of my backpack just so I don’t have to put on pants. And while a home-based day is nice once in a while, the real reason I’m on the road so often is because I know the value of meeting clients, readers, and colleagues in person.

If you’re not using your mobility in a way that genuinely benefits your company, then you’re not getting the most out of working on the road. Set yourself apart and be exceptional. Be memorable in a sea of people who just email one another and never interact in person.

Republished by permission. Original here.

Mobile Entrepreneur Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "Cracking the Mobile Entrepreneur Code: 4 Things You Must Have" was first published on Small Business Trends