Web 2.0 and Small Business Benefits

What do you know about Web 2.0? What does it mean to your customers?  How are you using it to grow your business and networks of customers and referrals?

Are you still in a Web 1.0 mode or do you think you've achieved the Web. 2.0 level?  Much of the Duct Tape Marketing system helps businesses with 50 employees or fewer understand, in practical terms, what Web 2.0 is about and how to bake it into every aspect of your customer-creating, customer-dialog and customer-referral habits.

For most of the readers of this blog, Web 2.0 is about on-line tools that get smarter the more than customers and your staff use them.  It's about marketing that is driven by user stories and applications that interact with each other to form a broader integrated platform.  It's about cost-effective business tools delivered on-demand with limited in-house IT structures or support for you to manage.

Here's a few examples. You can manage projects and keep customers informed about "where do things stand today?" with Basecamp from 37 Signals.  You can track billable hours (everyone on the team no matter where their base of operation is) and invoice customers using FreshBooks.  You can grow your business network, find talent and get introductions to people who need to know about your services and products on LinkedIn. You can skip the whole learning curve and cost on creating and publishing newsletters when you set up a blog with Typepad or any other on-line blog service.

How do you know you've arrived at Web 2.0 levels? Here's a few indicators. Check them off to see where you are on your evolution from Web. 1.0 (one way mostly with YOU doing all the talking/writing) to Web 2.0 (your customer doing more of the talking and content creation):

• You use the web as a platform for delivering technical services.
• You consume software services, not packaged software.
• Tools and applications scale in a cost-effective way for the way you run your business.
• Your experience and your customers' experience (where you give them access and client areas for collaborating with you and other clients) is of paramount importance.
• You provide RSS feed capabilities to your customers and prospects and you use RSS feeds to get exactly the information you want, when you want it.   (Essentially, your email in box is no longer sucking the life out of you.)
• You share pictures with Flickr and you're getting better every day at visualizing your ideas and your world with pictures.
• Customer referrals increase.

Got all of that? Good. Now come back here next week and I'll give you a look at Web. 3.0. Oh yes--it's here already and it will really rock your world. You may need to pick up the pace and fast track some of your Web 2.0 experiences because the customer will be a big part of what Web. 3.0 is all about.

Comments

[GREGG]

.com is WEB 2.0 Ecommerce Software
Web 2.0 is simply software delivered over the web, via an Internet connection. But the big deal in Web 2.0 ecommerce solutions is that web-based ecommerce software now rivals in-house solutions in features and functions, and also in speed. A web-based application is great if it only does one thing like email, less great if it runs the whole of your business, right? Guess again.

Among the number of trends driving innovation in ecommerce software is the development of WEB 2.0 technologies that not only deliver low-cost ecommerce applications, but deliver speed and performance as well. Speed for the online store customer as they roam an ecommerce site, and speed for all the ecommerce utilities that drive the business end of the ecommerce software.

The ultimate goal of WEB 2.0 ecommerce software is to replace in-house and legacy systems with ecommerce web applications that offer the same features and functions, but at lower costs. Web applications can also be updated on an ongoing basis so that the Web 2.0 ecommerce application incorporates the best possible ecommerce web applications available at any time.

Google, and now Microsoft, are now offering many applications as web 2.0 applications. The FastCommerce.com ecommerce solution delivers ecommerce applications on this same model. We've developed an ecommerce software that enables small to medium sized business to have access to a single-system that can run the whole of their online store and online business are one application, delivered over the web, delivered at and no or low cost. FastCommerce.com's Web 2.0 ecommerce includes a website, online product catalog with related products, order capture and order processing, a shopping cart, contact and customer management, as well as shipping, inventory and more.

All the tools are there in a high performance and inexpensive ecommerce solution that will let small business grow their online stores while not having to worry about costly investments, or having an in-house IT department. With the FastCommerce.com Web 2.0 software, Internet retailers can focus on running an ecommerce business, on customer service, not on hardware and software support.

FastCommerce.com will being rapidly developing products and features to its main ecommerce software: the goal is not simply to be an ecommerce shopping cart provider, but a platform that gathers together all the features and functions (for example, ERP) that a small business need to run the whole of their business. FastCommerce.com is a small business ecommerce utility that is pure Internet Web 2.0 in easy of use, speed and performance, and at low or no cost for businesses large and small.

About Fastcommerce
Fastcommerce.com provides business management software to small businesses, delivered on demand as a service via the web on a free or paid monthly subscription basis. We provide small businesses with a complete fully integrated package that run their entire operations, from inventory control, sales, marketing, support, online catalog, e-commerce, backend order processing and built-in UPS and Fedex shipping tools.

The only requirement to use our software is an internet connection. Unlike a traditional software company, our small business customers do not need to buy and maintain expensive software and hardware.

[customer]

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[ليبيا]

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[Estetik]

I’d like to have separate layout for the photo set overview and the single photo page. Is there anyway to tweak the template to do that?

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[koçluk]

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