Every so often, we encounter financial difficulties. Financial advice is required to get back to monetary stability. It also ensures that you do not delve deeper into debt. Note that this service is necessary, regardless of your income and financial status. The following are the top 5 reasons to get financial help.

Financial Planning

There are virtually unlimited ways to plan a budget and manage the finances. Such opportunities open up more earning opportunities, prevents debt, while consolidating the present assets. The financial world and the intricacies involved in financial planning are beyond the scope of non-professionals. A financial planner comes in handy in developing working strategies, feasible investments and rewarding ventures. All this is done in line with the client’s ambitions and financial capabilities.

Planning For Major Events

There are various financial sapping events that we encounter occasionally. The common ones include marriage, divorce, adoption, illnesses and sudden relocation. Such events require severe adjustments in the daily budgets and asset management. A financial expert has the expertise to strategies adjustments to cover for the events with minimal effect on our daily lives.

Acquaintance with Personal Finance

For a non-professional, the knowledge on personal finance rarely extends past basic budgeting. A financial planner can teach you the fundamentals of personal finance. This is more effective than going through the vast online resources and books.

Future Planning

Financial assistance is usually geared towards securing the future, both for our twilight years and our children. A financial expert comes in handy in helping the client plan the existing assets and establish plans for the children’s education, health, and savings.

Retirement

Old age comes with inability to work and expensive medical conditions. The government and the private sector also have measures that ensure cessation of work after a set number of years. It is safer to be financially prepared for this period. A financial expert comes in handy. The financial help covers pension funds, establishment of long term investments and alternative income sources.

An unsecured loan is a credit given to borrowers without any collateral attached to it. This is more like a personal loan offered by financial institutions in lieu of higher fees and interest rates. Unsecured loans for bad credit are also extended by these institutions; however it is a riskier venture for any financing company. Bad credit by itself is a cue that the borrower is a defaulter in repaying their previous loans, which may include credit card bills/ personal loans/ auto loans etc. Borrowers with a bad credit are termed as sub-prime borrowers.

It is always advisable to approach reputed companies for these kinds of loans, as they are more trustworthy. However, these companies may have terms and conditions that are a little more stringent for unsecured loans for bad credit. These banks would require the borrower to be at least 18 years of age and to be employed. While there are Sub-prime lenders that are hassle-free and extremely liberal in their approach to lend money; but one should be wary of them and take note of their fine line terms and conditions. Some of them charge interest rates as high as 500 per cent, and as per the Centre for responsible Lending, the interest rates average out to 225 per cent – 300 per cent of the loan amount. It is imperative to check the state laws and the payment terms before taking a decision on applying for unsecured loans.

A bank would assess all the bills and assets of the borrower to see if they are in a position to repay; however, the secondary market lenders do not generally do these checks. One must be heedful and bear in mind that to get an unsecured loan for bad credit would call for the interest rates and bank fees to be higher than the ones with good credit. It is good to consult a credit counsellor before treading this path.

Nevertheless, one must always remember that the loan eligibility granted would not mean they can afford it.

If you don’t have multiple sources of income, but rather a single source of income and you’re a working individual then you are most likely to find yourself in situations where you are in dire need of money in order to take care of emergencies or expenses. In such situations personal loans would help. However traditional personal loans take ages for approval and they call for a lot of troublesome paperwork, which makes people detest the idea of applying for one.

The new-age solution lies in instant loans for bad credit. These loans offer one the best of both worlds: instant money and they are suitable for people who are suffering from bad credit too! Financial emergencies are all about making a fast move, therefore if you are not going to be able to have quick access to cash then there is no point in applying for such loans.

Human beings aren’t perfect, they make mistakes, hence having a bad credit score is not really a big deal because there is always the scope of getting back on track and correcting or fixing one’s credit situation. However, during the time period when one is stuck with a bad credit score, it can be very difficult for one to apply for a traditional loan because a majority of the financial institutions generally do not offer loans to people with bad credit because they are considered to be huge threats.

However, in case of instant loans for bad credit, there is no such fear because these do not rule out people with bad credit scores or records, anyone and everyone can apply for an instant loan. These loans can be used for the purpose of buying a house, a new laptop, acquiring financial assistance for taking care of important life occasions like marriages, for use in higher education of one’s children and so on. In short, instant loans for bad credit are a perfect one-stop shop for fulfilling all the financial aspirations of individuals!

If you have been rejected for a loan by one of the mainstream lenders and you are desperately looking for the financial aid that you need, then go to poor credit loans. Chances are that after filling out the simple form you will be contacted by one of our loan advisors who will give you the good news that you have been accepted for a loan.

In recent years millions of customers in the UK were mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) policies on their mortgages, credit cards and personal loans. The PPI policies were designed to ensure loan premiums would be met even if the borrower fell on hard times and was temporarily unable to make payments. However some banks engaged in dodgy practices like adding the policies to the bill without telling the customer or demanding it be paid in cases where the PPI policy was neither required nor needed. Other policies were sold with fine print that made it difficult or impossible to collect benefits.

The PPI policies involved are believed to be worth £17bn with over 12 million customers deserving of refunds. That translates to a lot of money, with the refunds averaging up to 3K, although only the use of a PPI Calculator can accurately estimate specific refund amounts. The process of reclaiming the improper payments can be complicated, which is why the use of a professional PPI Calculator is probably the fastest and easiest route to claiming your refund.

Calculate Your PPI Refund Here

The probability of a customer collecting a refund is quite high. Whatever amount the PPI Calculator estimates the refund to be is likely to be close to what the customer actually receives, as nine out of ten requests for refunds are predicted to be upheld. Most who are eligible have not yet had a PPI Calculator estimate the refund due them, and the total number remaining of those who still need their refunds determined by a PPI Calculator is likely to be much larger than the compensations already paid so far.

So far banks in England have refunded more than £2bn to customers who were victims of PPI scams, but that may represent as little as a third of the refunds still to be paid. If you suspect that you have been the victim of PPI policy abuse then you should contact a reputable PPI Calculator today who can determine the size of your refund plus interest and get it to you as quickly as possible.

Did you know that, in Australia, 60% of small businesses fail in the first twelve months? For those of us who would like to start a small business — maybe even work from home — thats a very discouraging statistic.

Does that mean that your business idea is doomed to failure? Far from it! There are steps you can take that greatly increase your chances of success. With a little time and some serious research you can hit the ground running. Lets start from the beginning

The bright idea

First, of course, you need to come up with an idea. Typically, business opportunities can be divided into four groups:

1. Offering an existing productservice in an existing market.
2. Introducing an existing productservice to a new market.
3. Offering a new productservice in an existing market
4. Introducing a new productservice to a new market.

At this stage of the game the only limit is your imagination. Inspiration can come from anywhere — maybe you have a hobby that youd like to turn into a full-time job; you may be on the receiving end of bad service one day and decide to try doing it better yourself; or you may have a talent that youd like to capitalise on.

Once youve come across something that youd like to do, its time to take a look at the market and see whats on offer.

Passing the test

So youve had a great idea and youre keen to roll with it; now its time to put it through its paces. For the purpose of the exercise, lets say that you have a passion for healthy living, and that you want to distribute a range of lifestyle accessories that promote healthy living with a do-it-yourself approach.

Ask around: Is there a market for products that promote healthy living? What sorts of products are available? Who would you be competing with and what do your competitors offer? Do you have the necessary skills to run such a business and — more to the point — what would those skills be? Where would your business be located?

Once youve answered those questions you should have a fairly clear picture of what your business will look like.

You source some products and decide to do some further research into the range of lifestyle products offered by a company called Vitality 4 Life. Your own life experience plus some work youve done as a dietician has given you the necessary skill sets, and you think that youll be able to work from home, giving you more time for family. There is an existing market, but theres room for expansion. Now its time to take a closer look.

To be or not to be?

Its time to get down to the nuts and bolts. You dont want to jump into something feet first and find out the hard way that the budget just doesnt work.

To get started, sit down and work out if you need to hire staff, which means paying wages.

If you lease a premises youll need to be able to pay the rent, and your location will have to be suitable for your business and target market (which also means that youll have to think carefully about just what that target market is). Youll also need to work out the likely demand for your productservice.

Ok youve worked out that there is enough demand for good quality juicers, sprouters, water filters and other high end accessories to take a shot at a distributorship as a home-based business opportunity. Now you need to make some marketing decisions.

Look at me! Look at me!

Advertising can be costly so youll want to be sure that your advertising budget is spent wisely. That means more market research, this time one-on-one. Profile your customer groups so you can aim your marketing at the right groups of people.

Draw up a questionnaire (a short questionnaire — people run out patience if you ramble for too long) and hang around outside a few of the local gyms (for our particular example). Come up with a mixture of open questions (What do you think of..?) and closed questions (Do you have a gym membership? YesNo.); sliding scales can be useful too.

For our health accessories business, a good question might be How did you hear about this gym? Radio, tv, newspaper, word of mouth etc Such a question would then give you an indication of the types of media that your target group responds best to.

Choose a business name, print up some business cards, buy some stock and get ready to trade!

Measure it, manage it!

A teacher of mine made the point that, in business, if you cant measure it you cant manage it.

You need to be able to plan ahead, and to do that you need to know — or to be able to accurately predict — your total sales. The equation is simple: number of customers x average sale x frequency of visits per customer per year = total sales. Remember it, revise it often, measure your business and youll be able to manage it!

Keep an eye on your bottom line and, most importantly, always be aware of your cash flow — the cold, hard cash that you have in the bank. Allow for invoice periods (14 days, 30 days etc) when youre planning your budget.

The market place has a life of its own, and no one can prepare for every contingency. Put some thought into your idea; make sure that theres a market for what youre offering; research, research, research; promote your business effectively; always know whats going on in your bank account and dont forget about cash flow!

Its not perfect but, if you follow these few simple steps, youll be miles ahead of many new small business ventures. If youve heard of a great home-based business opportunity, or have a product or service of your own to market, youre off to a great start!

Owning and maintaining a very successful small business can have its challenges but if you know what you are doing, everything can really work out great for you. There are many helpful tips that you should learn, if you are the owner of a small business and then by learning about these tips you should have the ability to have a very secure and profitable future. Knowing how to operate a small business properly will give you and your employees much relief in knowing that their positions are stable and secured. Your employees will be much happier, as will you, if you do all of the right things and play your cards right. In this article I am hoping to teach you a little bit more about managing a small business so that you will be a success. Having a small business definitely has its own advantages and some of those will be included throughout this article.

It is very important for you to learn more about what it takes to run a small business successfully so that if you or someone you know becomes interested in opening your own small business, you will be much more knowledgeable about all aspects of it. Another great thing about owning your own small business is that usually this means you will for sure have many more awesome customers that will tell others about it and continue coming back themselves. You will have a reputation for owning and managing a very reputable, friendly and affordable, yet small business. A small business would typically go over very well because there will be enough customers to continue keeping you with plenty of customers and when people are on vacation in your area, they too have probably already heard about your small business and many of them will choose to come into your small business and will be quite pleased by the friendly employees and the great prices. Check out the other small businesses in your area to see what it is they are doing to draw in more new customers, do not copy them but definitely kind of take a few little suggestions and ideas from watching others with more experience.

Advertising is something that most businesses do, which you as a small business owner will as well at some point in time, however, even without the professional advertising, your small business will still be successful due to all of your loyal customers that absolutely adore coming into your wonderful store. All it takes to have a very successful small business is friendliness, determination, customers that count on you and a good knowledge about business management will always make for a better chance at success. A small business could typically go over very successfully, as long as you first do some homework over managing your own business, as well as talking with other small business owners because the more experienced people could really provide you with a great deal of helpful information and some tips that can almost guarantee your small businesses success and longevity.

A web site is a crucial ingredient of your marketing strategy because it can widen your target market to include anyone who has access to a computer and the internet. Almost 60% of Canadians had access to the internet at home in 2003, and around 8 million had regular access to the internet from somewhere, either at home, at work or at school.

And thats just in Canada. Ecommerce sales from Canada were 7.2 billion, and we only captured 4% of the global ecommerce market! So, how can you reach some of those internet surfers, and how can you capture some of that 7.2 billion spent in ecommerce?

First, you build it
The first step is designing your website. If your company already has business cards and letterhead, its best to design your website around them. A matching corporate identity and website helps with branding.

I like uncomplicated websites, with a simple layout and easy navigation. A nice, simple layout, with good graphics, balanced look and good color combinations is my #1 goal when designing a small business web site. Remember to use graphics sparingly and to optimize them for your website because internet surfers are impatient. If your page loads too slowly, theyll leave.

Navigation should be easy to find and to use, and it should be consistent from page to page. Ive left more than one site frustrated because I couldnt easily find their navigation.

Small business web sites arent static. They evolve. You need to start somewhere, and starting with an introductory web site is probably easiest. All you really need to start is five pages. You can always add pages later. The important thing is to just do ittake the plunge and get it out there.

Your five pages could include an index, or home page, about us, services, contact and a sitemap. The index page is your landing page. Typically its design is a little more detailed than the others, but it doesnt have to be that way.

I like to use CSS (cascading style sheets) for designing because its simply easier to build a web site and to edit its layout with CSS rather than just HTML (hypertext markup language) alone. A change on a CSS sheet changes all the pages on your site at once.

Content is king
Once your site is designed, youll want to start thinking about content. Design is very important, but it does little good to have a beautiful site without high-quality content.

Your small business home page introduces you and your companywho you are and what you do. The about us page is usually used to give more detail than the home page about who you are, and your services page gives more detail about what you do. You might wonder why youd waste a page on a sitemap since you only have 5 pages, but sitemaps help search engines find all the pages in your site.

As far as content goes, more is better, up to a point. Your pages should be content rich and informative, but they also need to be relevant to your small business. If your visitor cant figure out what your web site is about in just a few seconds, they may leave.

The internet was at first strictly informational, and thats how it remains today. Several times people have tried experiments using copywriting similar to direct mail sales letters, but theyve all failed. It seems as if people surf the internet more for information than anything else. Knowing this will help you write pages people will want to read.

Attracting visitors
You could follow your instinct and just start writing, but wait. Theres research you must do first, or your web site simply wont be high enough in searches to be found. Search engine optimization is far too big a subject to cover in this short article, but among other things, search engines find your pages based on keywords.

So, pretend for a moment that youre on the other side of the desk. If you were a customer of your own business, what words or phrases would you use to search for your product or service? Ask friends and neighbors how theyd search for your product or services.

When youve come up with a few, check them out on a keyword suggestions tool. You can also use that tool to suggest similar words and phrases. Then find out how many results there would be if you searched for that term. What you want to do next is narrow down your choices to the words or phrases that are searched for the most, but have the fewest results.

Remember that people generally dont look beyond the first three pages for any search term, so if youre not in the top three pages, your business is not likely to be found at all. If there are millions of results for your phrase, you might simply need to make it more specific.

For example, lets say you have a small business consulting company that specializes in communication for small business. Using communication as a search term is nearly pointless because there are almost 2 billion results for that word. But, there are only 974 results for small business communication.

Much better, but how often is that searched for? According to WordTracker, its searched for 10 times a day. Not bad, but I think we can do better. How about small business consulting? Thats searched for 261 times a day, and there are 373,000 results. That could be the best primary phrase for a small business communication consulting company.

What you want to do, is write your content around those words and phrases. You dont want or need very manythree or four are plenty.

Getting them to come back again and again
Getting visitors to come back to your site again and again is relatively simple. Keep your content fresh and lively, make sure its informative, and add to it often.

I hope you decide your small business needs a web site. Its the best way I know how to reach a wider target audience with a relatively small investment.

A web site is a crucial ingredient of your marketing strategy because it can widen your target market to include anyone who has access to a computer and the internet. Almost 60% of Canadians had access to the internet at home in 2003, and around 8 million had regular access to the internet from somewhere, either at home, at work or at school.

And thats just in Canada. Ecommerce sales from Canada were 7.2 billion, and we only captured 4% of the global ecommerce market! So, how can you reach some of those internet surfers, and how can you capture some of that 7.2 billion spent in ecommerce?

First, you build it
The first step is designing your website. If your company already has business cards and letterhead, its best to design your website around them. A matching corporate identity and website helps with branding.

I like uncomplicated websites, with a simple layout and easy navigation. A nice, simple layout, with good graphics, balanced look and good color combinations is my #1 goal when designing a small business web site. Remember to use graphics sparingly and to optimize them for your website because internet surfers are impatient. If your page loads too slowly, theyll leave.

Navigation should be easy to find and to use, and it should be consistent from page to page. Ive left more than one site frustrated because I couldnt easily find their navigation.

Small business web sites arent static. They evolve. You need to start somewhere, and starting with an introductory web site is probably easiest. All you really need to start is five pages. You can always add pages later. The important thing is to just do ittake the plunge and get it out there.

Your five pages could include an index, or home page, about us, services, contact and a sitemap. The index page is your landing page. Typically its design is a little more detailed than the others, but it doesnt have to be that way.

I like to use CSS (cascading style sheets) for designing because its simply easier to build a web site and to edit its layout with CSS rather than just HTML (hypertext markup language) alone. A change on a CSS sheet changes all the pages on your site at once.

Content is king
Once your site is designed, youll want to start thinking about content. Design is very important, but it does little good to have a beautiful site without high-quality content.

Your small business home page introduces you and your companywho you are and what you do. The about us page is usually used to give more detail than the home page about who you are, and your services page gives more detail about what you do. You might wonder why youd waste a page on a sitemap since you only have 5 pages, but sitemaps help search engines find all the pages in your site.

As far as content goes, more is better, up to a point. Your pages should be content rich and informative, but they also need to be relevant to your small business. If your visitor cant figure out what your web site is about in just a few seconds, they may leave.

The internet was at first strictly informational, and thats how it remains today. Several times people have tried experiments using copywriting similar to direct mail sales letters, but theyve all failed. It seems as if people surf the internet more for information than anything else. Knowing this will help you write pages people will want to read.

Attracting visitors
You could follow your instinct and just start writing, but wait. Theres research you must do first, or your web site simply wont be high enough in searches to be found. Search engine optimization is far too big a subject to cover in this short article, but among other things, search engines find your pages based on keywords.

So, pretend for a moment that youre on the other side of the desk. If you were a customer of your own business, what words or phrases would you use to search for your product or service? Ask friends and neighbors how theyd search for your product or services.

When youve come up with a few, check them out on a keyword suggestions tool. You can also use that tool to suggest similar words and phrases. Then find out how many results there would be if you searched for that term. What you want to do next is narrow down your choices to the words or phrases that are searched for the most, but have the fewest results.

Remember that people generally dont look beyond the first three pages for any search term, so if youre not in the top three pages, your business is not likely to be found at all. If there are millions of results for your phrase, you might simply need to make it more specific.

For example, lets say you have a small business consulting company that specializes in communication for small business. Using communication as a search term is nearly pointless because there are almost 2 billion results for that word. But, there are only 974 results for small business communication.

Much better, but how often is that searched for? According to WordTracker, its searched for 10 times a day. Not bad, but I think we can do better. How about small business consulting? Thats searched for 261 times a day, and there are 373,000 results. That could be the best primary phrase for a small business communication consulting company.

What you want to do, is write your content around those words and phrases. You dont want or need very manythree or four are plenty.

Getting them to come back again and again
Getting visitors to come back to your site again and again is relatively simple. Keep your content fresh and lively, make sure its informative, and add to it often.

I hope you decide your small business needs a web site. Its the best way I know how to reach a wider target audience with a relatively small investment.

You may have spent quite a bit of time designing your web site and writing the copy for it, or you may have spent quite a bit of money and had it all done by a professional designer and copywriter.

But there are about 4 billion websites on the internet. Thats a lot of competition for your site, so how do you get people to actually read your copy? There have been several interesting studies about website reading patterns and usability. Theyre referenced at the bottom of this article.

Website users generally leave a site that takes longer than 7 seconds to load, and the average visit length is just over 1 minute. So assuming your site loads in less than 7 seconds, you have on average, one minute to convince your visitor to stay. And how do you get them to stay? The answer is simple: content, content, content.

But it takes an average of 5 to 7 visits in order to get people to buy your product or service, so how do you get them to come back? By changing your content on a regular basis. Delete text, add text. Add whole pages from time to time, and consider splitting long pages into two.

According to research, content in and of itself is not enough. There are several factors to consider when building a superior web site. Several studies tell us how to improve any web site.

How Viewers Read Web Sites
Would it surprise you to know that most web site users wont really read your web site? Thats what Jakob Nielsen and John Morkes found in a 1997 study. What they found is that 79% will scan your web site, and only 16% read it word for word. Their recommendations are to use scannable text by using:

Highlighted words
Meaningful sub-headings
Bulleted lists
One idea per paragraph
Inverted pyramid style
Half the word count of conventional writing

Lets look at what the W3school says too. Their article Web Site Design confirms that users scan rather than read, leaving in a few seconds if they dont feel theyve found what theyre looking for. The W3school suggests using short sentences and paragraphs, and breaking up excess information into different pages.

Lets talk for a moment about the inverted pyramid style because thats probably the only term you may not have heard before. Remember the papers you used to have to write in high school or for university?

Typical they start with an introduction, then move to background information and discussion, then to findings and finally to a conclusion and recommendations. All that means you have to read a lot of information before you reach a conclusion and recommendations

What Nielsen and Morkes are suggesting is to invert the pyramid.

You could write your web site as a variation of the inverted pyramid by writing a summary first, and adding detail after the summary. Most people dont scroll, but writing your web site inverted pyramid style just might convince them to.

How Writing Style Affects Readability
Nielsen and Morkes measured the effect of different styles of writing on five versions of the same website. A site with promotional copywriting was the control version, and each of the other four sites used one of the following versions and had the following improvement in per cent according to their test readers:

Concise version with about half the word count as the control: 58%
Scannable layout with the same text as the control but easily scanned: 47%
Objective language using neutral rather than subjective, boastful or exaggerated language: 27%
Combined version using all three: 124%

Tracking Their Eye Movements
In 2003 and 2004 Eyetrack completed a study called Eyetrack III. Their study was for news-type sites, but what they found will also help us structure our small business web site. The study found their users followed our left-to-right Western Culture, first noticing the top left of the page, hover there for a bit, and then moving downward in a z-like pattern to examine the rest of the page, and finally moving back up the page to the upper right.

The study found that the eye pauses and reads the first few words of a dominant headline first, especially when that headline is in the upper left and sometimes the upper right. Readers will usually stop reading at five headlines regardless of the number used, but an unusual keyword will often get people to pause. Curiously, they also found that smaller type encourages reading while larger type encourages scanning.

Are You Credible?
Nielsen and Morkes found that web site users look for credibility in various ways, and suggest credibility is increased by high-quality graphics, good writing and using outbound links.

The internet was originally intended for information, and it remains that way to this day. Over the years, several people have tried experimenting with website copywriting. What they consistently found was that users did not want to see hard sell types of copywriting.

Nielsen and Morkes confirmed that theory in their article as well. They found that web site users want to get straight facts and that credibility suffers when users feel claims are exaggerated.
An interesting study on web site credibility is How Do People Evaluate a Web Site’s Credibility? by B.J. Fogg Ph.D, Cathy Soohoo, David Danielson for Consumer Webwatch.. They studied 10 sites in each of 10 categories, with almost 2700 participants evaluating the websites.
They showed the results of 18 comments on credibility. These are the top 10:

Design look: 46.1%
Information designstructureorganization and ease of navigation: 28.5%
Information focusbreadth and depth: 25.1%
Company motiveadmirable motive vs strictly commercial: 15.5%
Information usefulness: 14.8%
Information accuracy: 14.3%
Name recognition and reputation: 14.1%
Advertisingdislike of pop ups, positive use of advertising: 13.8%
Information biascommented on positively and negatively: 11.6%
Writing tonestraightforward friendly tone boosts credibility: 9%

What Does All This Mean for You?
Content may be king, but design has a strong influence on credibility. Your design should be professional, organized, consistent, and easy to navigate. Pages should load within seven seconds or you might lose visitors, so use a small number of quality, optimized graphics, and keep your page content down to two, or at the most three MS Word pages.

Your readers eye first stops at the top left quadrant, so thats a good spot for your logo and company name.

And, a headline in the top left quadrant is very important to keeping your reader on your page for longer than a minute, so consider a headline just under your logo. Consider that the first three words of your opening headline are the most important, and straightforward headlines are better than cute, ambiguous ones.

As to the content itself, are you really a good writer? If youre not, you might want to hire a professional to write your web pages for you. If you are, use a concise, scannable, and objective writing style to maximize your web site readability. Aim for a straightforward and friendly tone and write useful, accurate information with both breadth and depth.

When youre finished, put it aside for a day or two, and then edit what you wrote. Dot all the is and cross all those ts. Check spelling and punctuation. And then take another good look at what youve written and remove any hard sell. It has its uses, but it just doesnt seem to work on the net.

Works cited in this article:

How Users Read on the Web by Jakob Nielsen and John Morkes, 1997, http:www.useit.comalertbox9719a.html

The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes Steve Outing and Laura Ruel, 2003 and 2004 http:poynterextra.orgeyetrack2004main.htm

How Do People Evaluate a Web Site’s Credibility? by B.J. Fogg Ph.D, Cathy Soohoo, David Danielson for Consumer Webwatch. http:www.consumerwebwatch.orgdynamicweb-credibility-reports-evaluate-abstract.cfm

Web Site Design W3Schools http:www.w3schools.comsitesite_design.asp

Your Small Business May Be At Risk Unless You Have A Security and Recovery Plan

Dont think your small business is at risk? Think again. Whether you realize it or not, your business has valuable information and assets that probably are not protected right now. Your business likely has confidential client information, proprietary business knowledge or just internal knowledge that you wouldnt want to be exposed to criminals or competitors. The loss of this information could have a devastating impact to your business. While business insurance is an important part of your protection, it cannot protect clients from identity theft or your business from unscrupulous employees or competitors.

No matter how big or small, your business needs to have a security and recovery plan in place that determines what risks you have, helps protect against those risks and sets plans in place to handle the most likely types of losses you may experience. Your plan should also look at the both the physical and the virtual aspects of your business.

Start by considering the types of risks to which your business may be vulnerable. What if your business information was lost or stolen? Do you have customer files or records, tax receipts, bank statements, business plans, customer work products?

Next, consider the physical aspects of your business that may be vulnerable. Do you have unique office equipment, inventory, computers or trade specific tools?

Finally, look at how you do business. Do you rely on technology, the internet or employees with unique skills? Does your business model depend on repeatable processes that are unique to your business?

Now, consider what would happen to your business if these parts of your business were lost, destroyed or stolen. Could you continue operating if you lost your client files? Could you be sued by customers if their personal information was exposed? Could you be the target of negative publicity? Could your competitors benefit if they gained access to the information? What if you lost email access for a day? What if that key employee suddenly left for another job? What if your office space caught fire or was flooded?

Your security and recovery plan should put in place the safeguards and policies and procedures to prevent some of these risks and the potential to negatively impact your business. Physical access to buildings is relatively easy to control although most small business have little more than a lock on the front door. Should you consider locking file drawers? Is inventory controlled? Does every employee have access, even to things that are not part of his or her job? Could a disgruntled or fired employee return to the workspace after hours with an extra key copy?

Your plan should consider how to protect the virtual parts of your business also. Do you have backups of any important files? Do you have passwords, account numbers and other keys securely guarded? Do your computers have virus and firewall protection and is it up-to-date? Do you have internet and email usage policies in place to protect your employees form harassment charges?

What about remote employees or workers who take work home? In todays highly mobile environment vital business information can now be easily accessed outside of your physical controls? Do your employees know how to safeguard laptops, cell phones, flash drives or even print outs of business information once they leave your workspace? What if a laptop is stolen from a workers car or home or hotel room? Do you have a backup of the data that was on the laptop? What if your employees are accessing your information from a coffee shop Wi-Fi? How do you know if your clients and business are protected?

Lastly, your security and recovery plan should consider how you would handle the most likely losses. For instance, if the computer that holds all your sales information crashes, you should probably have a plan to immediately restore that information from a backup. Where is the backup tape or disk kept? Who has access to it and most importantly, who knows how to restore a backup? If you office is flooded, how quickly can you relocate? Can some employees work from home or other remote locations temporarily? If client information is stolen, do you have a way to contact them?

Most small business owners likely have taken first steps like purchasing insurance and putting locks on the front door. Unfortunately, few have taken the time to really understand the potential risks to their business.

Taking the time now to at least put together an informal plan will go a long way in the event of a real disaster or other loss. Even the best planning obviously wont protect against all disasters but it can certainly lessen the impact to your business once one occurs.

Aubrey Jones is President and founder of Riverbank Consulting, Inc. Since 1996 he has worked to protect internet banking clients for one of the top US financial institutions including serving as a Risk Manager.