We hear from entrepreneur Caelen King on his aspirations for 2011, starting your own business and the best tips in his mind. . Read more about it here in our Stories Section. . .

• Tell us what your business does?

WhatClinic.com helps patients get treated at private health clinics. By providing price information, contact details, treatment lists and patient reviews for tens of thousands of clinics all over the world we make it easy for patients to find a clinic that suits their particular treatment needs and we make it is easy as possible for them to contact the clinic and start the treatment process. We cover everything from dentists in Manchester to fertility clinics in Spain to cosmetic surgery clinics in South Africa. The service is entirely free to patients.

We operate a “freemium” model for clinics, with the majority of clinics paying us nothing to be listed on the site. The clinics that are interested in growing their business pay a subscription which entitles them to a fixed number of enquiries from patients.

• Where did the idea for your business come from?

Years ago I had a small climbing accident in Thailand and I had no idea where to go to get treated, how much it would cost, or how good (or bad) the clinic would be. A similar thing happened later on when I was back in Ireland and I realised that the problem of finding a clinic was universal.

Understandably people often ask family or friends for a local recommendation, but what about people who move to a new neighbourhood, or a new city, or a new country? Or people travelling? Or people looking for a treatment they don’t want to discuss with others? I figured there must be a need for a service that could provide information about availability, pricing, and quality for private health clinics.

• Have you always wanted to run your own business?

Yes. While I enjoyed the career I had prior to starting WhatClinic.com, I always aimed to go out on my own eventually. I was determined to build the skills I needed to run my own business while I worked in other companies, and learned a lot from their successes and their failures over the years.

• What planning did you do before you started up?

I did market research by travelling to visit clinic owners in various parts of the world to make sure that they would be interested in paying for the service I was planning to build. In the beginning the company was focused on patients travelling from one country to another for treatment, so-called medical tourism. I did up a 40 page business plan and I secured funding before I started the company.

• Which entrepreneurs do you admire?

It will probably sound funny, but my answer is none. I didn’t start this business to emulate anyone else’s success, or to impress anyone. I did it as a challenge to myself.

• How have you promoted your business?

As an online business we have focused nearly all our marketing efforts into the online arena.

To attract patients at the start, before our website ranked organically, we paid for nearly all of our traffic using Google AdWords. At the same time we were doing this we invested a lot of time into Search Engine Optimisation, and eventually we were able to roll back our expenditure on AdWords as the organic traffic grew. Internally we continue to tweak our site to improve our on-page SEO and we engage in link building, guest blogging, Twitter and so on externally. We provide survey results and market trends to the press which can’t be found anywhere else. I speak at start up events as often as I can manage.

To market to the clinics themselves we use a combination of email campaigns, direct telesales, and sending them enquiries to pique their interest. The clinics that realise the value of the enquiries we send them often approach us before we even start selling to them. Word of mouth with industries and locations also drives business. Most clinics pay attention to what their competitors are doing, so signing up one clinic in a particular location often leads to many more trying out the service.

• Are you optimistic about 2011?

Yes, very much so. We continue to expand rapidly and open up new markets. The company is now self funding which gives us great freedom to explore new sales opportunities. We plan to accelerate that growth with additional capital investment.

• What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs?

There are a couple of simple pieces of advice that apply to anyone looking to run a start up:

Fail early, fail often, and fail cheaply.

It’s not about the technology. It’s a little about the team. It’s all about the market.

There has been a huge surge in the use of smartphones amongst Irish business owners and in the development of Irish smartphone apps. There are lots of online ‘top 10′ lists on apps for businesses but lets not forget those that are homegrown. There are plenty of Irish companies and individuals that have developed apps which are of great use to the Irish business person so let’s give them the credit they’re due. We’ll start the ball rolling….

Keeping up-to-date:

The Irish Times app allows you to keep up to date with the latest business news and news headlines. Just hours after launch, this app went to number one in the the iTunes Chart.

The Extra Extra app lets you quickly view the headlines of over 800 newspapers from around the world RTE News provides a 24 hour live news and current affairs video feed.

The Davy app allows you to monitor stock information and market research.

Getting Around:

Need a taxi? The Xpert Taxis app allows you Dublin–based business owners to book your taxi and track where your driver is so you are not left in the dark wondering when the driver is going to arrive. Driving to your meeting?

The Dublin Traffic app lets you take a look at snapshots of current Dublin traffic conditions and access news on latest traffic reports and  in Dublin and in the rest of Ireland.

Communication:

JellySMS app lets you send SMS texts internationally using low international SMS rates, keeping those bills down.

QR Contacts app allows you to share your contacts easily and quickly with other QR Contact users

Quick Win Digital Marketing app helps you marketers, entrepreneurs and business managers to understand and use digital marketing. It outlines techniques and tools for Twitter,  Facebook, LinkedIn, etc and tips on how your business can use them.

Learning Motion offers you a library of video clips on developing you interpersonal business skills. Topics include Build better Sales, Meetings, Presentations, Management and Feedback skills.

Being organized:

The myWorkTime app allows you to keep track of your tasks and client projects, helping you to manage your time accordingly.

Two useful apps for managing your bills are the ESB Electric Ireland Meter Reading app and the Bord Gáis Energy app which allows you to maintain control over electricity charges by submitting your own meter readings.

Are there any apps that you as a business person have found useful but that we haven’t included? Let us know so we can update the list!!

You’ve set up your Facebook Page, your ‘Likes’ are growing and you’re posting regular updates to let your fans know about your products/services, encouraging comments, feedback etc. Now, what do you need to do? One thing you should really consider is to create a customised Landing Page. By default, when you create a Business Page, your Facebook visitors will land on your Wall, where they will see your latest updates, comments etc. Your visitors can be uncertain as to what to do: should they look at the conversations, get a feel as to what your business is about?; should they ‘Like’ your Page and start engaging with your updates? Wall content is not usually interesting or appealing enough to get people to ‘Like’ your Page.

Remove some of the confusion, create a customised Landing Page that encourages your visitors to ‘Like’ your Page. An effective Landing Page will showcase what your business is about, display special content, offers, discounts etc. that are available to fans who click the ‘Like’ button. Stand out from the crowd, tell people you’re delighted they came to your Page and share your passion and enthusiasm for your product/services. Use graphics, videos to create a multimedia Landing Page that promotes engagement with your Page. Offer visitors something for becoming a fan.

Until recently custom tabs were created using an application named Static FBML; this has now been replaced by iFrame which allows a web page hosted on one server to be embedded (‘framed’) into a web page of another. Page administrators now have to use iframes to create a Facebook app in order to create a custom Landing Page. When you create your iFrame customised tab (called ‘Welcome’ for example), you now need to make it the default Landing Tab for viewers of your Page. To do this, go to “Edit Page” and select “Manage Permissions”. Under “Default Landing Tab”, scroll down, select ‘Welcome’ and “Save Changes”.

Click on the link below to see some great customised Landing Pages.

http://speckyboy.com/2010/08/15/40-highly-effective-facebook-business-pages/

Blog Kindly provided by SME Connect:

www.smeconnect.ie

Microsoft BizSpark: Helping startups succeed with all the right resources.

Microsoft® BizSpark™ is a global program that helps software startups succeed by giving them access to Microsoft software development tools, connecting them with key industry players, including investors, and providing marketing visibility to help entrepreneurs starting a business.

Microsoft® BizSpark™ benefits to startups include:

Software

Get immediate access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products (including Windows Azure Platform) for use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions.

Windows Azure Platform Benefits for BizSpark Members:

Develop and deploy applications to the Windows Azure platform, an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers.

Support

Receive business development and technical training at highly subsidized costs or in many cases, no costs.
Receive two technical support incidents per startup. Each incident is managed by Microsoft until they are resolved, no matter how many calls it takes.

Receive access to MSDN Ultimate managed newsgroups, online library, and so on.
Get connected to BizSpark Network Partners around the world—incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies, and hosters—that are equally involved and vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship, and who will provide a wide range of support resources, including expert mentoring.

Visibility

Get marketing visibility in front of an audience of potential investors, customers, partners and journalists and tap into a rich, vibrant ecosystem of peers, partners, and support resources around the globe.
Microsoft BizSpark is available in over 100 countries around the world.

For further information on Microsoft BizSpark contact: www.bizspark.com

I was lucky enough to get invited to Google HQ in Dublin for a day of training last week. The amount of information Google gave was fantastic. Each session was broke into 30 minute blocks with experts from that area in Google. I will add some short posts on what was covered as it may help people understand exactly what Big Brother Google thinks and how they would like us to build our sites.

We were introduced to teams from organic search, adwords, adsense, webmaster and a number of other experts. They also provide a lot of great free tools to help people get more out of their site. I will link to them in posts too.

Internet Usage in Ireland

52% internet usage (2005)
77% coverage in 2010 (thats 3.5 million people)
15th highest in world for broadband
In 1-2 years we will have higher internet penetration than UK
Time spent online in Ireland
European average is 12.1 hours a week
Irish average is 19.4 hours a week spent online
Next year there will be more people online than watching TV
What do people do online?
(stats from last 3 month in 2009)

Email
Research (86%)
Buying / Shopping (53%)
Social Networking (52%)
Online Banking (51%)
Travel Bookings (50%)
YouTube (48%)

Ireland are the 4th highest in Europe for Online Buying.
We are number 1 for Online Travel Bookings (might have something to do with Ryanair)
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world.
It is very clear from these stats provided by Google that more and more people are spending time and money online. The fact that people spend so much time online is now common place. Not many people go to the Golden Pages to find a business. They GOOGLE IT. Ireland is usually slow to adopt new technology (mobiles, digital tv, etc), but once we take something onboard we are very loyal and become very big users of products.

Research for a product or service is often forgotten about with businesses. If your customer meets a sales rep or views a product in a shop and don’t buy it who will do the follow up sales with them? With a good website you can answer commonly asked pre & after sales questions. Show your product working and list all it’s benefits. People often think if someone visits their site and does not buy a product that the sale is lost. This is not the case. A lot of people show around online as they do in the real world. The difference is online they can shop around much faster and more efficiently. They may decide to return to your site in a few days and purchase. They may contact your directly to buy instead. This is where a good strategy and analytical tracking of the site comes in play.
For more info on analytics I wrote an earlier post here.

Buying Online is growing every single day. People now have trust in Ireland vendors and are happy to purchase products online. A lot more companies are offering ways for people to pay for services online.

Social Networking has exploded in the last few years with the likes of Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, Blogging, etc. As humans we all want to connect and we are all nosy too. We want to feel part of a group. Facebook has more than 500 MILLION members now. Twitter is so popular that companies such as ASOS ( As Seen on Screen) now offer customer support solely through twitter. ASOS has 50 staff members who handle their twitter customer services channel.

YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine. This is fantastic for companies who may use YouTube to showcase their product demos. You can also embed YouTube videos directly on your site too so you get the best of both worlds. For a very nice example of how to use YouTube to sell your business visit OwenFitzpatrick.com

10 Tips For Better Web Sites

What are the secrets of the super sites? Why do some sites suceed while the majority of others fail? More and more Internet business owners are asking themselves these questions. The answers are frequently more obvious than you may think. Below are 10 tips for better, more successful web sites.

1. Build It For Speed

It’s a fact of modern life – people are in a hurry. Nowhere is that more true than on the Internet. It seems that no matter how much the technology improves, nothing is ever fast enough. In fact, several studies indicate that the fast technology advances, the faster people expect things to be.

So what does this mean for your website design? It means that you have between 10 and 30 seconds to capture your potential customer’s attention. If they can not at least begin to read about your product in that much time, they will be headed elsewhere. To minimize your load time, keep graphics small. Compress them where possible. Use flashy technology (Javascript, Flash, Streaming Audio/Video, animation) sparingly and only if it is important to your presentation.

2. Target Your Market

Know who your market is and make certain that your site caters to their needs. It is critical that your site reflect the values of your potential customers. Is your market mostly business professionals? If so, the site must be clean and professional. Is your product aimed mostly a teenagers and young adults? Then your site could be more informal and relaxed. The key here is to know your market and build the site to their preferences.

3. Focus The Site

Make certain your web site is focused on the goal, selling your product or service. A site offering many unrelated products is not necessarily unfocused, but this is often the case. If your business does offer many products, dedicate a unique page for each instead of trying to sell them all from one page. Upselling or cross selling is vital but don’t dedicate so much to it that the customer feels caught in a bait and switch. Make mention of other products but do so subtly.

4. Credibility Is Crucial

The most professionally designed site won’t sell if your customers don’t believe in you. The impersonal nature of the Internet breeds a certain level of mistrust. For your web site to be successful you must overcome this tendency.

A clear privacy statement is one way to build your credibility. Every commercial web site should have a privacy statement posted on line. Provide a prominent link to your privacy statement from every page on the site as well as from any location that you are asking your visitors for personal information. Provide legitimate contact information on line. Your contact information should include an email address, mailing address, phone number and a fax number, if applicable. If you are unwilling to provide this information to your customers, how can they trust (or buy from) you?

5. Offer A Guarantee

Offer an ironclad, no exceptions money back guarantee. This item is really a credibility issue but it is important enough to warrant its own mention. What better way to establish your customer’s trust than to eliminate any risk for them? If the customer sees that your are willing to assume all of the risk, they will immediately be more inclined to trust you.

6. Make Payment Easy

Offer a variety of payment methods for your customer. If you don’t currently take credit cards, start immediately. You can either set up a merchant account or use one of the many credit card clearing houses. Provide an address for those who prefer to pay by cash, check or money order. Make sure the payment process is clear, easy to access and intuitive to use. Eliminate as many steps as possible. Do not ask for any more information than is necessary to complete the transaction. Nothing frightens a customer off faster than feeling that their privacy is being invaded.

7. Simple Navigation

Make site navigation easy and intuitive. While it may be artistic to make your index page all black and hide the link to continue, will that generate business? If your customer can not navigate your site to find what they want, they will go elsewhere. Limit the choices and direct your customers through a sales process.

8. Consistency

Make sure the site is consistent in look, feel and design. Nothing is more jarring and disturbing to a customer than feeling as if they have just gone to another site. Keep colors and themes constant throughout the site.

9. Design for indexing

85% of all web users find what they are looking for via the top search engines. Make sure that your page is designed to maximize your placement. Focus on your keywords and keyword density but don’t sacrifice your message. Utilize the meta tags keywords, description and title. Use your keywords when naming your pages.

10. Content is (still) king

Good content sells product. Ask yourself the following questions. Does your copy convey the message you wish to get across to your visitors? Is it compelling? Does it lead your visitor through the sales process? Have others review, critique and edit your copy to insure it is delivering the intended message. Always double check your spelling and grammar.

Implementing the ten steps above probably will not make your site as successful as Yahoo or Amazon overnight. If they are implemented correctly and integrated into an overall web site design and marketing campaign, you should see a marked improvement in the site’s traffic and sales.

In the second of a series of blogs for startups.ie, Dave from hiddendepth.ie talks about website content basics……

In this series of posts I will try to go through the basic content for a standard business website. From homepage content to keywords, title tags and images I will take a brief look at each element. The main job of a web designer is to make your site look nice. Your job is to back this up with good content.

Whether your starting a new business or a seasoned company you should really consider your websites content carefully. The recession changed how people spend their money and who they do business with. A lot of customers still have the same money they had before all the doom and gloom arrived, but now they want to better understand exactly what their money is being spent on. They want value for their money. They want to do business with companies who put the Customer first.

The days of companies selling themselves by telling people how great they are, how many offices they have, which big clients they deal with etc. are well and truly over. We are back to basics. This is a great thing for everyone concerned if we learn to adapt and provide what people want not what we want to say. Customers may not always be right but they pay the bills so their opinion is a lot more important than the sellers opinion.

Your websites content needs to show potential customers that you value them enough to take the time to write the content specifically for them rather than doing a copy and paste from a few of your competitors websites. If you just say exactly what your competitors says then what sets you apart or shows them why they should do business with you ?

Only promise what you can deliver

Taking the time to put good content into your website creates a synergy for the customer. Content wrote by you reflects your attitude and gives a feel for the kind of person you are and the kind of company people will be dealing with. If your site is full of quotes like “we go the extra mile” or “tailor made services” etc, then someone calls you looking for a custom job and you say “we don’t do that” then the content is out of sync and doesn’t reflect who you are as a business. There is no point promising people everything and only delivering half of that. If you promise something and don’t deliver then people are disappointed and will tell everyone they know about their disappointment. If you promise small things which you know you can provide 100% of the time and then deliver that extra mile when people aren’t expecting it they will be nicely surprised.

wrote by Dave: HiddenDepth.ie

Thinking of setting up an online business?? Dave Meier from Hidden Depth gives his advice on what to expect when getting started…

How much for a Website??

This is usually the first question people ask when they contact me about a web design project. This is also usually the most important question people want answered before they decide to go further with a web designer.

In this article my aim is to help people (looking for a website or updating an existing site) to understand what to expect before getting a website designed.

Every website is different.

Some people will require the smallest of websites to be used purely for personal or community use. Whilst others may need a very large website with lots of shiny bells and whistles (such as custom graphic, videos, user interaction) and which can deal with online transactions such as credit card payments and more. The difference in site pricing can range from €500 to €10,000 depending on what is required.

What kind of site do you need ?

The more information you have the more exact a designer can be with a quote for you. A few general things to consider for your site:

■How many pages will the site have roughly
■Tracking how many visitors you get on the site
■Email accounts
■Contact form, map of your location
■Hosting (online storage, your site needs somewhere to store its files)
■A Blog

You don’t have to be exact on what you need in a site. Once you have a general idea a good designer will advise you on what elements will suit your business or site and can also tell you what other similar business normally do. A designer may have huge ideas on a great site with lots of flashy and fancy stuff for you. This may not be something you would even consider. So the more exact you are on what you want the quicker the designer can understand what you need.

A good idea is to give some examples of sites similar to what you would like. You might ask a designer “how much to design a site like www.ThisSite.com.”

What is your Budget ?

A lot of people are reluctant to give an exact figure for their budget when shopping round for a web designer. I am sure a lot of people believe that if you tell a designer their budget he/she will accept the budget price while designing a site of much less value. This is not the case with any professional designer who cares about their reputation or would like repeat work or recommendations from anyone.

For Example :

■A) You contact a web designer for a quote. You say you would like a custom designed website with 10 pages, a blog, analytical tracking of visitors, email accounts, hosting. You have a budget of €1000 but you decide not to tell the designer your budget. He comes back to you with a quote of €1800. You think that is way to high and so you decide to not to use the designer.

■B) You contact the designer stating everything you need and tell him you have a budget of €1000. The designer tells you that this will cost you well over your €1000 budget. He suggests a number of ways to lower the costs. He says you can have a custom designed site and email accounts set up for €1000 and when you have the extra budget in a few months he can easily add in a blog and tracking. He also offers to provide you with free site hosting for the first 6 months to help you get on your feet.

This is the major reason that you should tell a designer your budget. He may have a design idea in his head that may take a lot of time and cost a lot more than you can spend. If the designer knows what you can spend he also knows what he can do to make the most of your money.

What should I expect ?

A few things that will help before you agree to a project:

■The full cost and how payments are made
■Deposit required
■Your project completion date
■Will you receive proofs before completion. How many proofs. Are there extra costs for extra proofs.
■What details are required from you. Email account names, content to be put into website, etc.
■What about updates to the site when completed. Do they offer any sort of maintenance package ?

The more things you agree on at the start the less complicated your design project will be and the smoother everything will go.

To request a quote or arrange a face to face meeting to discuss your design project simply call 01 254 4000 or email info@hiddendepth.ie

The Landline
Forget about phone land lines such as Eircom, you need what is known as a “VOIP” phone system. Get a fast internet connection, any VOIP phone handset and sign up for a www.blueface.ie account. This will give you 1) your all important land line number with the ability to take 5 calls at the same time, 2) Fax line and 3) it’s VOIP so you can move that landline number anywhere with an internet connection or even route calls to your mobile at your leisure. Don’t forget that’s only scratching the surface of a VOIP phone system’s capabilities.

The Mobile
A mobile phone is not just used for taking calls. Pick up a smart phone (such as blackberry) for instant access to email. Your phone’s calendar and contacts will also be linked into your main email system (Google Apps). Adding an entry to your calendar on the phone will sync it on all your computers automatically wirelessly over the air. Even your business partner or secretary can add in calendar reminders for you on their computers that sync to your phone automatically.

Domain Name
Register a domain name and try to get one with words related to your business in the name. If your business is called Contoso and you are wedding DJ, well www.contoso.com is of little no use, you need to try register www.weddingdj.ie and yes if your business is based only in Ireland, that needs to be a dot ie not dot com – Google.com will redirect most Irish searchers to Google.ie and Google.ie always gives higher ranking to sites ending with a dot ie. Registering a ie domains used to be expensive but www.Blacknight.com have fantastic deals.

Website
Before you run wild looking at designs creating a site, don’t forget the purpose. Sales and Marketing. You may have a pretty site but if people can’t find it well I’m sorry but let me whisper to you…..it’s useless… For a website to generate business you need to have it at the top of Google. There are three top spots in Google. 1) If you pay for Google adwords 2) Submit your business to Maps (these appear under adwords for any search that has a place in the search term e.g. wedding DJ Dublin) and finally 3) Google Organic listings.
For 1) Adwords, make sure your web development company has your site ranked at least 7/10 with Google – the higher the rank the cheaper the ads. Adwords is a bidding war but if you are not up on top it’s a waste of time and money. The worst is to be paying just that small amount under the competition and only appear on the side right panel. Increase the bids until you are at top.
Submit your business to maps for point 2) at www.google.com/local/add and please take time to fill in everything loading in as many keywords related to your business as you can.
Finally, to get to the top of Google organic listings, ask your web developers to optimise the website for search engines and install a wordpress blog. You must run a blog and make regular posts , at least once a week in the correct way -by this I mean ensure you have loaded up the title of your blog post with keywords “Wedding Music Service by Wedding DJ in Cavan” and follow this by adding keyword tags “Wedding DJ Dublin” “Wedding DJ Cavan” etc.
So as you can see, getting the website to the top is a job in itself but put in some hard work and it will become your entire sales team.

The Email
Less than 5 people? Google Apps. Google Apps. Google Apps. Nothing can beat this for a new small business. It acts like a central email server storing all your email, gives you SPAM and Virus free access over the internet, through Outlook, on your mobile phone. All email is synced too which gives full access to all email including sent items from anywhere. You can always move to a server running email software when you are a bigger company.

The Network
Again, with Less than five people do not buy a server. A real server will cost 3k to 5k – and please don’t even consider the cheap “fake” sub 1k servers that are nothing more than glorified PC’s. Use your own PC in the office to act as the server, sharing out files and keeping the files and folders in a central location with two USB external drives as backup. Swap the backups disks every Friday and bring one home for that all important off-site backup. There are other options too like www.dropbox.com and www.idrive.com if you trust having your files with a third party. Antivirus software is essential as is your office productivity software – Microsoft Office 2007 or Open Office are the typical choices.

Remote Access
A free option here is to use www.logmein.com or alternatively a firewall for your network will provide remote access with additional security features. Remote access will let you work on your office computer from anywhere as if you are sitting at your desk.

General Tips
Going that extra mile is absolutely essential to any new business starting up and IT is like the coach running along side shouting words of encouragement. Whether it’s the technology that allows you to take that vital call/answer that important email out of hours or perhaps finish that tender document remotely on the office computer from home on a Saturday morning. The extra mile turns into an extra 26 mile marathon with success at the finish line.

Great Blog John Thank You.
Contact John at www.complex.ie for great web design and IT Support

The value of the internet in reducing marketing and distribution costs during the current economic slowdown is being realised by more companies than ever, according to Google’s Ronan Harris, director of online sales and operations.

He said that an online presence can be the most economic tool for driving sales and product distribution.

Speaking today at the IIA Annual Congress in Dublin, Harris said: “Getting consumers to your website is half the difficulty, getting them to actually buy something is the key measure of success. There is an armoury of free tools available on the internet that can help businesses to maximise online sales

“It’s important to understand how customers engage with your site. With lots of free tools like analytics, conversion tracking and website optimisation, the revenue generating potential of a firm’s website can be exploited and may even help many businesses to beat the economic downturn.”

Harris also pointed out that businesses are entering a new era of cross media advertising, with the internet at the heart of it.

He said: “The internet is coming of age as a branding medium and digital media is highly measurable. The emergence of online video, rich media and gadget ads, for example, make it possible for brands to deliver much more engaging and creative messages through their online advertising than ever before. Social media offers further potential for building brand affinities on a one to one level.”