Ever have the problem of coordinating sales leads, searching through emails, and then having to input that information into your contact list. Or do you have the problem of using multiple programs and software to keep track of your sales leads?

Well, problem solved… 37 signals brings a simple CRM, contact manager, address book, and task sheet with a clean interface that helps you track communication and conversations with leads, employees, clients, colleagues, vendors, or anyone else that matters to your business. With Highrise you know who you’ve talked to, what you talked about, and what you need to do next.

Click on images to enlarge

How? You ask?

Plays well with emails

Well, simple, Highrise, plays well with email, a user can forward, cc, or bcc emails to Highrise and Highrise will attach them to the matching person or create a new person on the fly.

Also, you can assign tasks or to do’s to people through email. Or you can assign a email as a to do.

Have attachments or files

Highrise will put files and attachments that you upload or send and put them under the coordinating company or person.

Finally Add tasks and get things done!

With Highrise, a user can add tasks that are related to companies. Also, you can coordinate tasks by call, email, or your very own category. As mentioned you can also email tasks to yourself or other users in your company to their Highrise taskbox.

Finally, you can add follow up tasks to companies to keep track of conversations that you’ve had with a lead and coordinate what to do next.

The Overview

The overview allows users to see a companies or person’s conversation history, to track what you’ve said, when you’ve said, and what to do next!

1. “Penny Wise, Pound Foolish”

Now more than ever its easy to make a cheap web site. The high school kid that can build your web site and the desperate designer looking for lunch money don’t have the business skills or monetary incentive to show you how to enhance your business.

2. “I have a web site; the Internet doesn’t work for my business”

 89% of the business world is online now but only 5% net returns from their web efforts. Drop your preconceived notions and find out how the 5% gain success online.

3. “My brother, the computer expert will build my site for cheap”

Approximately 5% of the company?s online report that their sites are successful, creating upwards of 8-15% of their revenues via the web. Experience counts more than ever in business, if your brother has built 50+ business sites and will do the work cheap hire him. If he is smart and plans to figure it out as he goes, he will cost you missed opportunities and you are risking your relationship with your brother.

4. “My web address is www.MyName-anothercompany.com”

Image is very critical especially online. Your own personal domain name says a lot about how you conduct business. Disposable emails are great for personal use and co-branded web sites can be nice supplements to your online business, but companies that go beyond these channels have far greater success online and have a much better vehicle to interact with a richer online demographic.

5. “I can get my web site hosted for $10 per month”

Its true, you can get a web site hosted for very little money. However, there is a big difference between hosting or storing your web files versus managing your web site for success. Not all hosting is the same and not all web sites are the same.

6. “I have a professional computer, print, or advertising background and will build our company web site.”

On the surface it would seem logical to let a computer expert, print expert or marketing guru handle your online needs. As a rule of thumb, if you go this route, at least choose a company that has developed a minimum of 50 plus web sites. Any honest expert from another industry that has made this many sites will be able to demonstrate how some golden rules from one craft do not work completely opposite in the web world.

7. “People have to touch and feel my product; the web won’t help me”

Ask yourself a simple ? If your product or service is so unique and consumers can find out more about it on their own terms before going through your sales cycle, do they benefit? This is one of the primary drivers of the Internet, if you adapt, not abandon, but adapt your old world way of doing business to the new economy, you will take your business to new heights!

8. “I’ve been in business long enough to know making a site costs nothing”

You don’t want a web site, you want a team of people who will help your business using technology. If you understand that a lot of people know how to play golf and a lot of those who play think they are great but only a few play well enough to make a living, its even more true online. Don’t trust your business to pretenders. Begin your research by adding up the primary ongoing costs for your business, utilities, payroll, sales and advertising, insurance, bookkeeping etc. Ask yourself what it would cost to open another one of your locations? Consider the same investment devotion you would to opening another physical location. With that perspective in mind, your investment for a fair web presence and marketing plan will still be a fraction of the cost of opening another location. A good rule for web investment should at a minimum be similar to the cost for a � page ad in the yellow pages in a major city. Reputable design companies will command professional fees usually because they have a more complete set of skills to help your business.

9. “I predicted the dot com fallout, now its gone and I’m still here”

Most people only read the headlines and feel they can sort out what is valuable online and what is not. Congratulations if your business is thriving but if you are looking at how the web can help enhance your business, you should understand the web is vastly different than it was a few years or even one year ago. The architecture of the Internet is just now showing its real promise with more concrete tools and proven ways to help your business grow and run more efficiently. Success stories abound online if you know where to look.

10. “I don’t trust young kids out of college who think technology has all the answers.”

This is very true, technology and textbooks alone coupled with inexperience won?t help your business and is why if you find a company that has young, talented, professionally trained technologists who are teamed with experienced business owners you may have found the winning team. Many companies get fooled by hiring designers who figured out how to make a web site and have some design skill; again lots of people play at a sport, but few play it well enough to do it full time as a profession.

If these tips seem sensible to you as a business owner its because our team blends formal educations with new and old world business experience and we know how to help companies tap into the web to augment sales and reduce costs.

If you want a web solution, people will brag about, talk to the Durrani Creative team.

I have a great looking website, I have a product to sell, I have a shopping cart, I have a merchant account that accepts Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover, I have an account with UPS? BUT, I HAVE NO SALES!.

Sound familiar?

Our staff of experts at Durrani, have been building successful e-commerce sites for over 4 years. We not only understand that you have to make it easy for customers to find the product they want but you also have to give every customer a piece of mind when they go to checkout. The Creative staff knows exactly what customers want from their sites when they decide they are going to submit there private credit card information and mailing address to some website that they have visited only once.

This is why we have outlined the top 12 things everyone needs to know before offering products for sale online:

1. Visibility – Just because you are the only one selling solar powered flashlights don’t think that customers can find you. You must strengthen your site for Search Engines using the proper SEO, or search engine optimization.

2. Navigation – Make it very easy for anyone to find their way around your store. They can get to the product they want, the contact page, the policies page and checkout with ease.

3. Security – In some states it’s the law that you offer protection to your customers against identity theft. Today, the number one thing customers look for is an icon of a lock in the lower left corner of the browser window or an “s” in the URL before offering sensitive credit card information.

4. Contact Inform
ation – A good rule of thumb is always have the customer support phone number visible on every page. If not then make sure the “Contact Us” navigational button is very easy to find.

5. Check Out / View Cart – Whenever someone is shopping and wants to verify what they have placed in their cart have it very easy to find. Typically, both “View Cart” & “Check Out” will be somewhere near the top of the sites navigational menu.

6. Products in 3 clicks or less – Make it easy to get to what they want by minimizing the amount of clicks it takes to get what they want. 9 times out of 10 customers know what they want when they walk into your store and they want to get it and get out so help them through the process by eliminating useless clicks.

7. Shipping Details – Have a menu selection on your site that is dedicated to the shipping details. Your shipping policy will let someone know if they are going to buy from you. It is important to customers to know that your using a reputable parcel carrier, can overnight it if needed, and it is insured.

8. Customer Service – Not that this isn’t the number one priority but when it come to customer service you cannot offer more support than you do when online. Use logos of companies you use to assist with customers support such as: Verisign, Geotrust, Better Business Bureau, Hacker Safe, etc.

9. Return Policy – Whether you allow for returns or not, it is important to state your policy. Customers convert to sales if they know they can return an item if it wasn’t what they wanted.

10. Have a good looking site – Don’t appear like you’re a trunk slammer. Offer a well groomed site that is styled to your business name or product you sell. You get more credibility with your customers when it appears as though you take pride with your online presence.

11. Today & Tomorrow – When building your online store be sure to build it on a platform that can grow with your customers demands. If you allow your customers to see the same home page or same products then they will not come back. They will think you have lost interest in your store thus losing interest in your customers.

12. Product Details – If you carry a product that needs some explaining, then give a product detail. Don’t get too wordy but done leave out the important things like “batteries not included”. Let your customer know the benefits of your product if you want to move it off your shelf.

If you want to be successful with your online store then don’t cut corners. Don’t think just because you have an online store and not a regular “brick & mortar” that you eliminated your expenses. You still have to market your site and pay for online utilities. So, go ahead and build your online store with Durrani that specializes in optimizing your site to increase sales!

At Durrani, we’re always looking for ways to optimize production while lowering costs.  This helps any company by lowering the overhead of production and account management costs, and therefore keeping the costs down for clients.

One of the ways we’ve attempted to lower costs is experimenting with VOIP (Voice Over IP) technologies for communcations. One company offering these services and gaining popularity is Skype. Skype offers a wide range of services for personal and business use. If you’re familiar with AIM or other instant messaging systems, then just think of Skype as Voice instant messaging. A program runs on your computer, which allows you to send and receive calls from other Skype members… for free. The enhanced pay-for-use services also allow you to send and receive phone calls to and from regular land-lines and cell phones.

The Benefits

As a small business we were most interested in saving money and offering cool tools to our staff and sales people. To help organize your Skype users within your business, Skype offers a business control panel. This shows all of your users and allows a central place for allocating funds (called Skype Credits) to each person. So accounting and managers can add funds to an employees Skype account, which greatly reduces the paperwork and reimbursement issues usually surrounding the use of phones or cell phones and travel costs.

The other benefits of Skype include, free Skype to Skype calls, conference calls, chat, voicemail, personally assigned phone numbers (called Skype-In) and very cheap per-minuate rates, currently $0.021/ a minute!

There is an optional Skype toolbar for both Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer that highlights phone numbers on webpages giving you the ability to just "click-to-call" a number quickly through your computer (with an attached headset and/or speakers and microphone).

Now, another great idea, is to place your Skype call or "Skype-Me" information on your website so visitors to your site, who are also Skype members, can simply click to call you for free. A great solution for tech support and client communication or sales. Once again, this helps reduce high phone and communication costs. Companies with a high quantity of internal or employee to employee calls can significantly reduce their bills.

Of course Skpe requires a dedicated internet connection and a computer or WiFi enabled Phone (see below) to use VOIP.

Netgear SPH101 WiFi Phone

Skype also offers a selection of equipment, ranging from headsets to stand-alone handsets that connect directly to Skype without the use of a connected computer. We were sent a Netgear WiFi Phone through a PayPal.com contest that we entered and won. The cool benefit of the Netgear phone is that it does not need to be connected to a computer and will attach itself to any open unsecured WiFi hotspot (or a secure with the appropriate access credentials). The pro’s to having this WiFi Phone is that it is as compact as a cell phone and gives you the benefits of Skype without the need of a computer. The con is that it has a short battery life and some latency issues and often does not reflect the current online status of you or your contacts.

Skype is free for Skype-to-Skype calling. Give some of the other features a test-drive:

SkypeIn

SkypeOut

Skype Voicemail

Skype for Business

Also, if you need any creative print or web development/ design, give me a call at Skype ID:patrick.woot. If you don’t have Skype then just call us at 760.302.7776 or visit our contact page on our main Durran Design site.

This is an example of Google Video and YouTube embedded on a page.

Here we are displaying a commercial of which we can have a host of options on configuring the player, making it suitable and specific to your site and needs.

First off, is Google Video, a great player with a nicer layout, as compared to YouTube.

Next is the YouTube Video Player, the pro to YouTube is that there is a large audience great for marketability