Posts

Why Treehouse rewards slackers

Image
Tip of the day -  Need company name? Try crowdsourcing https://teamtreehouse.com/ At one of his first jobs after college, Ryan Carson was a software developer who was asked to stay overnight to finish a project. "We ended up working 48 straight hours. I remember catching a few minutes' sleep on the floor," he said. That experience, all too common at startups, gave him a different idea: What if companies could prevent burnout (and reward their employees) by limiting the number of hours they worked? So in 2010, he gave it a shot. Treehouse, located in Portland, Ore., develops online courses in website-building, code writing and mobile apps. The firm, which Carson cofounded, has a second office in Orlando, Fla., and about half of its 75 employees work remotely. While purposefully avoiding San Francisco, Treehouse offers plenty of Silicon-Valley-style perks. The biggest: Every weekend starts on Thursday night. And that doesn't mean Monday through Thursday are 10-hour day...

10 Ways To Boost Your EShop Sales

Image
Tip of the day -  Need company name? Try crowdsourcing   "At Squarespace, we noticed that the things that make a big difference can seem very small," Atkinson said. "For instance, changing the color of a button on our site increased sales. We also found that you can double conversions just by moving some key phrases from the left side to the right." Based on data SumAll collected, here are 10 tips for turning traffic into sales: 1. "My" works better than "your." "'Start my free trial now' will get more clicks than 'Start your free trial now'," Atkinson says. "The word 'my' suggests to people that it's already theirs, so why not claim it?" 2. If your service is free, emphasize that. Adding "100% free" or "Get started for free" will always help boost conversion. When SumAll added "100% free" to its site's headline, sales jumped by 18%. 3. Reassure potential custome...

Why Enterprise Social Networking Fails

1. Too social The first generation of enterprise social collaboration tools, as epitomized by Yammer or Jive, were essentially Facebook or Twitter clones built for companies with the idea collaboration revolves around communications. However, it is now exceedingly clear that in many organizations, especially smaller ones, collaboration revolves around specific business tools, typically project management, document management or CRM – not social networking. The second generation of ESNs effectively solves the problem by seamlessly integrating  sales, planning, communication and HR tools  into your company intranet or private social network, giving your employees a reason to use it on a daily basis for their work routine. 2. Top down implementation Vendors and consultants frequently stress how important it is to get support fr om top management and start implementation with them. But contrary to this “common wisdom” this strategy frequently doesn’t work. In order for social coll...

Best Trello Alternative

Image
  When it comes to   Trello , the problem isn’t that Trello is simple it’s that Trello is too simple. At first I really loved using Trello, but after a couple of weeks I started to get annoyed – why can’t you do that? Why aren’t there time reports or integration with CRM? And the Gantt chart fiasco? Forget about it. The good news is that there are a ton of alternative project management solutions out there, most of which are free. Here are my three favorite tools to replace Trello Bitrix24 vs Trello – if you do a lot of collaboration, work with documents a lot and want a complete solution.   Bitrix24   is 100% free for small teams (12 users) and comes with   a full range of PM tools   – tasks, check lists, Gantt charts, workgroups (projects), task reports, calendars, work reports, time management and even absence chart. The most powerful thing about Bitrix24 is that it is a   collaboration suite , so it makes it really easy for teams to do everything (...

From Bottle To A Shot Glass - Crazy Business Ideas

Image
Tip of the day -  Need company name? Try crowdsourcing http://bottlesandwood.com/ Tucked in a warehouse a mile from the Las Vegas Strip, a handful of employees cut, grind, sand and polish glass — turning tourists' trash into treasure. It's the business of bottles, and there's certainly no shortage in Las Vegas. The Strip's 24-hour party cycle sends scores of empty liquor, wine and beer bottles to the trash, much of it destined for burial at a landfill. The demise of this perfectly good glass troubled Steve Cherry, founder of Bottles & Wood, a new Las Vegas-based company that repurposes discarded alcohol bottles. "The last thing we should be doing with these bottles is crushing it and filling a landfill," he said. "That does nothing for anyone." His business idea didn't start in Las Vegas, though. A Southern California native, Cherry began repurposing glass water bottles to make candleholders for a friend's restaurant. Customers approved o...

BigCommerce Coupons And Giveaway

Image
Site of the day - PickyDomains.com, world's first risk free naming agency http://www.bigcommerce.com/ All venture capitalists have got startup business plans piling on their desks every single day. But how many of them are the breakthrough ideas worth investing in? Australian BigCommerce has proven right to the Massachusetts based venture capital firm General Catalyst. “We quickly signed up our first 1000 customers within three months,” says Eddie Machaalani, the co-funder and co-CEO of BigCommerce, “and now we’re about to hit 20,000 customers after just 17 months. Mitchell Harper, the other co-founder and co-CEO, explains “you can set up your own online store in a few clicks. We’re growing so quickly because we’ve made it really easy to sell online.” If you’ve got a product and you need an easy way to sell it and advertise it, BigCommerce might be exactly what you’re looking for. All ...

ZankYou, ZankYou Very Much

Image
Tip of the day -  Need company name? Try crowdsourcing http://www.zankyou.com/ The explosion of the Internet, including increasing mobility not only in socialization mediums and work options, has heralded vast communication and networking possibilities. This opening likewise heralded better opportunities for maintaining long-distance affairs. Through various social media like Facebook, WeChat, Instagram, Viber, Skype, Twitter, and others, meeting people from abroad and developing relationships even with individuals from separate areas of the globe and actually making such a relationship succeed holds more promise than ever. However, marriage between, say, an American, while the partner, the partner’s family and friends are all the way in Chile, can be a wedding planning pain. What with the multiple cultural barriers to top off the basic language and monetary ones, organizing such an event and making it convenient for everyone from different nationalities involved can be ...