Website launch - spirefly.com

After running Nautilus Broadband for 5 years I came to a crossroad. One path was to sell the business and the other was to make a significant investment in it. After some serious consideration the team and I decided to invest. The investment meant money and a lot of extra hours to upgrade the systems across the business, write a new business plan, develop a marketing plan, streamline our processes, and add some key players to the team. We have been working our butts off and the first signs of real change are making it to the surface. Tomorrow we will have a soft launch of our new website spirefly.com. In the next week when our invoices go out we will invite our customers to see the new site. Next month our customer will get invoiced out of our new accounting system.

There has been so much behind the scenes work that has included customers websites and email transitioning to upgraded super-structures without them noticing any downtime. Even though the hours have been long and it seems like we have been eating, drinking, and sleeping all things Spirefly we have had a ton of fun doing it.

We still have a bunch of work to do but this is a notable milestone and I'm proud of the work we have done.

Comments and questions are welcomed.
Tim Symchych

Why putting up a website will not grow your business

I have been running a web hosting company since 2003 and have spent my entire career in the hosting industry. One common theme I see regularly from small business owners is misconceptions and wrong expectations about building a website:

• A great web site can improve my business by:
• Increasing sales
• Creating efficiencies
• Reducing operational cost
• Building a website is:
• Easy and anyone can do it
• Almost free
• Should be done because everyone else has one
  

Case in point; I had a customer who wanted a web store front with all the bells and whistles including merchant services for payment processing, real-time inventory tracking, etc. This was a large project for the small business which happened to be a single unit liquor store in a small town. After the project was complete the owner became increasingly disappointed because she had gone to all this trouble and the only visitors to the site were friends and family who bought nothing. Her regular patrons still went to the brick-n-mortar because they wanted instant satisfaction which is often the case with liquor sales.

After about three months the owner began to complain to me because her investment was not living up to her expectation. Keep in mind that I only hosted her site and the web developers who built the site had long since moved on. She began to demand refunds on her hosting fees because no one was buying from her online store. I explained that I was just hosting the site and was not responsible generating traffic and sales, her content, etc. I provided the analogy that I am the online version of the leasing company that provides her brick-n-mortar and that the digital world of business is no different than the analog business world. Both require analysis, planning, execution, and validation. She eventually took her website down.

Putting up a website does not equal success. A website is a tool and when used correctly can do wonders for your bottom line. When used incorrectly does nothing or worse hurts your brand and market appeal and costs you serious money. Look for my coming post on a surefire plan that will get any small business owner on the web without costly mistakes and inappropriate expectations.

Comments and questions are welcomed.

Tim Symchych

Where to Start?

The first thing that comes to mind is purpose. I ask myself if I'm on purpose often. Especially before I take specific action like writing a blog or or choosing a book on Amazon. Since I have some expectation that you will return or subscribe to my feed you should know my purpose for wring this blog. Simply put I want to help small businesses and entrepreneurs leverage Internet technology.

There are millions of tools with many features and benefits you can use but only a select few will be meaningful to your business. However, there are some that are absolutely essential if you want sustain your business long term. There are also tools that will absolutely help you grow your business.

Over the next few entries I'm going to cover some common misconceptions small business owners having about taking their business on-line and some key components that every business should have in detail. I will also provide some industry insights and trends that will affect your business whether you have a simple brochure style website or an interactive site that automates some of your business processes.


Tim Symchych