Business Archives - Page 17 of 20

How do I accept payments on my website? Part 1

I have had the misfortune of having to explain to a few of my friends over the last few weeks that selling cards (or urging customers to part with their cash using plastics) are not the same as accepting payments on websites.

Nigeria is going through a financial transformation where the CBN itself is at the forefront of electronic payment. That really sucks. I mean, CBN? What about all the fancy banks who blow their hollow trumpets about being the first in this or that.

Back to my rants.

The big question is if I were to have a website today, how do I get my customers, or visitors, or maybe church members to pay for something online? Those were actually the questions my friends wanted answers for. Nobody really asked me to go into a sugar-fueled ranting about nothingness.

So, in my next post, we would walk that journey together hoping to find where it leads us.

Getting online on shoestrings

There is no better time to get your business online than now. Nigeria is rapidly embracing the internet for business and if you have read the previous article on why you need get your business online, you would have known about the multitude of inherent benefits. Despite the opportunities, it still makes sense to proceed with measured steps. Nothing sours up an internet initiative faster than spending so much and getting little in return.

There are two major reasons to launch a business website on shoes strings. One, it makes sense to experiment with a little as possible and if things go fine, it should not be a problem to devote a larger budget for a website that does a lot more. Two, if you are running a small business there might not be enough to shell out to an IT company to string out a website. Either way, your business could go online without asking for a bank loan.

Someone asked me the other day about the difference between getting online and having a business website. It could be confusing but I will explain: Going online is more than having a website. You have to register your domain name, have an email system and probably have a website. Having a website is part of going online.

Good results come after good plans and going online is no exception.
Deciding on what domain name could be a blood pressure inducing exercise especially when your business name is slightly generic. Most often than not, the solution would be to add qualifiers to get a passable name. For example if your business is Viva Consulting Limited, obviously viva.com, vivaconsult.com, vivaconsulting.com have all been taken but vivaconsultingnigeria.com and viva.com.ng are still available.

The business must decide on the budget. Even though a shoestring is a low budget affair you still need to estimate the maximum to be spent on this experiment because the budget would have limiting effect on how elaborate the online adventure could be. However we would assume the lowest possible budget of N1,600. As low as it seems, a business could go online with full complements of email and hosting on an amount that small.

Lastly a decision would be made on what content to put online and how much interactions customers are expected to have via the website. A business could go online starting with emails alone and no content or it could go online with acres of product and service information. The best option is usually somewhere in-between.

Let us assume some facts to make going ahead easy. One the user doing this is savvy enough with a browser to use the internet and two, there is an internet connection. Furthermore, the following steps cannot be done on a mobile phone but on a proper PC or laptop (or tablet).

The first task is to decide on the domain name. Naming a domain after its business name is important, for the simple reason that when people think of your website, they will think of it by your business name and if it is your business name is also your domain name, they’ll inevitably know where to go. You can use any domain registration service, such as mydomain.com, to check the availability of the desired domain name but it is most likely that the coveted domain has been taken. Using variation of the business name, a passable name could be secured. However great domain names are still available under the Nigeria’s Top Level Domain (TLD) and one could easily register one on sites such as web4africa.net.

Once a suitable domain name has been decided on, the next thing is to buy the domain name. The choice of the domain name TLD would determine how we proceed from here. If you are able to get a good domain name on the .com TLD then head over to Google Apps for Business website and select the Google Apps (free) edition.

The Google Apps for Business is a full suite of enterprise grade online applications that are designed as an integrated package for any business. It offers most Google services integrated into a coherent platform. The Google Apps (free) edition is free but with a limitation of just 10 users. This is suitable and perfect for a small business with small budget.

The Google Apps allows you to buy a domain name for just $10 a year which translates to about N1,600 when you use your Nigerian Visa or MasterCard. The advantage of using Google Apps to pay for your domain name is that all the technical settings required are automatically preconfigured.

If your business name would be flying the Nigerian .com.ng TLD then the process would be a bit longer, slightly complicated and marginally more expensive. The first step would be to register with a Nigerian registrar and the process is now as easy as registering any domain name on the internet. For example, you can register domain names with any type of Nigerian TLD on web4africa.net for about N2,400 a year. The registration is done 100% online using a standard ATM debit card issued by Nigerian banks. However some TLDs such as .edu.ng, .gov.ng, .sch.ng, etc. require documentary processes.

Once your domain is bought you will need to create a Google Apps (free) account and configure your domain to work with it. The process is a bit complicated and could take up to 24 hours to get it to work properly. However, this is not a function of the shoestrings but the method of setup.

If your business wants to have more than 10 users then the free Google Apps is not for you. The paid for editions are very expensive and does not in any way look like shoe strings. For example, it cost $50/N8,000 per user for the yearly plan which is even 5 times the cost of the domain name.

The alternative is to buy a no-frill basic hosting service. There are thousands of these on the internet that offer unlimited emails, unlimited hosting space and unlimited bandwidth for as low as $30/N4,800 a year. A note of caution though – what you pay for is what you get. You can start with them for your website but when your business is matured enough for serious online endeavors you will have to migrate to something reliable but more expensive. By then your business would have had the experience and justifications for such move.

Once your domain is registered and other settings configured. The next step is to create the content for your website. Putting content together could be hard but it is a rewarding experience, especially when your website starts to get hits and referrals on the internet. Content from brochures and proposals for customers can be reused and spruced up. Google does not support upload of web pages but has great tools to create and publish web pages. It is not as flexible as having your own hosting system but then it is free and does not cost anything to try out. Running your own hosting provides greater control but is also more complex. If you are up to it, you could use loads of available tutorials or get someone to do it for you.

Your email provider (Google or no-frills option) should also provide settings for configuring your email with your Blackberry service (if you use one) which allows dealing with business issues while on the move.

If properly done, going online will provide more upsides for your business than you can imagine. Starting small is also good. It allows you to evaluate what works and what does not. And as you get more comfortable you can start adding features that would make your business stand out.

Getting your business online

It would be interesting to know how most Nigerian businesses have survived without having websites so far. But then the reasons are not farfetched. Internet penetration in Nigeria used to be very low, so low that years before now the only way you could send an email, even business correspondences with sensitive information, would be to visit the local business center or cybercafé.

But 11 years of the telecom reforms have changed all that. Things have transformed dramatically in the last few years; recent figures released by the World Bank in 2010 showed Nigeria has at about 43 million internet users although the CEO of MainOne, Funke Opeke, put the figure at a less stratospheric 16.5 million. Even using the smaller figure, we can still ask the small to medium size business why this is not the time to have a website. After all, if all Nigerian internet users should form a nation, they would have a population more than 72% of all countries.

A business owner might question if there is a compelling reason why she needs to spend the hard-to-come-by money to put up a website and update it, which is a bigger headache than going online, when she has run a successful business so far? Absolutely! More than ever before, there are so many tangible and immediate benefits, and I will discuss some of them.

In the more developed countries, the average business website generates more business leads than any other means of advertising and Nigeria would rapidly reach that point as more citizens use the internet on a daily basis. Websites are indexed by Google and other search engines and when internet users search for information, your business website would be shown on the search results. You will be amazed at how many searches people from all corners of the globe make about products and information in Nigeria.

A business website extends its brand. Small and medium size businesses need good branding and reputation as much as bigger companies. For a small company, a well-done website can project a bigger profile and a more professional image than it actually has. This should provide leverage when trying to land a new customer.

Customers and casual readers can easily know about your company and other important information without having to work the telephone. People can contact your business using website forms and emails during your non-working hours. Your business telephone contact would also be a relief to anyone trying to call for more details than you have on the website. The opportunities are almost endless. A business with information about itself and its products and services will always trump competitors that cannot be found online.

You can effortlessly keep in touch with your customers by sending newsletters and can easily allow new ones to sign up. In fact, it is so convenient for anyone to keep in touch with your company progress by following the news items which can be posted online.

Printing and sending product information to customers is expensive and modifying the information with new product updates is no less burdensome. A website allows you to publish and update your product and service information easily and as often as you want. You can even tailor your website to allow prospective customers to interact with the information, such as configuring products to get pricing, in ways not possible with paper brochures.

By the time your business is matured enough to transition to ecommerce, sales can happen 24 hours each day to customers that could not have been reached in the ordinary course of business. If possible, you might even be able to run a business 100% online without much of a physical presence.

Nevertheless, going online can be a daunting move for the average business. Questions like what we should do; how much it will cost; who it for us will do; how we maintain this; constantly come up with no easy answer. While there are no clear-cut answers, having a business website is a whole lot easier than it used to be.

For a business that has never been online before, the first question is why should we have a website? Some of the reasons I have talked about, and countless others, would provide justifications.

So what type of website should we have? It could be so tempting to be carried away with the euphoria of having a website. Running before walking can only lead to broken bones. Without the resources and experience, it is almost impossible to have a successful big feature-rich website. So, it is better to start small and expand incrementally with sure, measured steps.

The business must also decide on a domain name – choosing an appropriate domain name could be a frustrating experience. A domain name must reflect the business name as it would be part of the brand. It must also be short and memorable because it is more difficult for customers to remember long or cryptic domain names. Decision must also be made on the Top-Level Domain to register the domain on. A Top-Level Domain, TLD, is the ending part of a website name such as .com, .com.ng, .org, etc. A business domain name, as a matter of professionalism, must be registered under the appropriate TLD.

Registering a commercial business under .org (for non-profit organizations) is a professional faux pas. If the desired domain name is not available in the .com TLD, the same domain name under a .com.ng would be appropriate as long as it does not infringe on any trademark.

Cost has been a big deterrent to going online for businesses trying to break even. But this has been due to ignorance. You can get your business online for as little as N1,600 a year and you could also spend millions. The electronic payments reforms in Nigeria now allows the use of the humble ATM cards (Visa, VPay and GTB MasterCard) to be used to buy domain names and hosting online without the hassles of getting an international debit/credit card.

Furthermore, there are countless IT companies that would build websites with reasonable budget without breaking the bank. You can even build and host a business website for free with Google or Yola.

A website is like a living organism; it needs constant care and attention. Leaving a business website without updates on news and products information portrays a business as badly run or clueless – the last of the impressions a business wants customers to have.

Lagos Cashless Initiative; Strapped to a Whimpering Rocket

The Cashless Initiative should rocket the economy of Nigeria to greater heights.

That was the plan.

Picture the Nigerian economy precariously strapped to the back of a badass rocket standing ramrod straight in the sweltering sun. Yes, the sun in Lagos is something else.

Then the CBN Governor steps forward gallantly to light the rocket with a lighted match (or is it cigarette lighter – now isn’t that dangerous?) expecting a loud boom, a shudder then after the smoke clears the rocket has taken us to nirvana. Ok. That didn’t happen. The rocket whimpered, rose a bit and crashed back with a thud, a thousand pieces of pewter Naira coins scattered in all directions; a lorry load of disappointment plastered on its metal face. Now Sanusi would know how ladies tied to one minute men feel. Utter dejection in the face of needed performance of a life-time.

Allegory aside, everyone knows that cashless initiative is going to be driven largely by POS (not what you think it is – it is Point of sales terminal). POS needs connectivity. Connectivity is only possible with mobile data. That is standard in Nigeria. Anyone who talks of wired broadband for something like POS should be strapped to a gurney at Aro.

That brings us to state of mobile data in Nigeria. This is a market that is practically begging to be exploited and yet the Telcos are not better than POS (the other one). Heard that NIBSS got into bed with MTN and Glo for POS connectivity but all I have gotten are screams of anger by frustrated card holders because POS don’t work well with POS (other one one) connectivity.

Truth is either the Telcos are greedy, myopic or both. A greedy Telco is smart, at least driven by greed to make profit. A myopic Telco could be saved if the CEO could run down to the optician around the corner. But a greedy myopic Telco is an abomination. Heard that there are over 2.5 million Blackberry ping away in Nigeria yet each of them sends at least 10 swear words to their mobile provider each day. Imagine the millions of debit and prepaid cards in Nigeria swiping away and yet the POS wouldn’t work.

What can be done? Maybe the Banks or the POS providers should come together to have a jaw-jaw with NCC (the folks that hand out telecom licenses) to create a company dedicated to providing mobile/wireless connectivity for financial terminals (think ATMs and POS – the real POS not the other one). The company wouldn’t run voice or be commercial and we can free ourselves from the one-minute rockets. At least that is what banks did to create NIBSS, ValuCard and InterSwitch.

Bankers can be quite resourceful when money is to be made.
2 months later, Sanusi is back again. Walks gingerly to the rocket and presses a button after counting down. The rocket let out wailing scream and it lunches Nigeria into the stratosphere of cashless society.

Infopenia – when paucity of information saps life out of a business

It is no coincidence that many have likened organizations to organisms. Both are born, grow and die, sometimes not in the prettiest fashion. Organizations sometimes are seen as complex mechanisms. Organisms are organic mechanisms. Ok, I need to stop here; it can get quickly confusing.

If complex organisms, such as animals (me, you, your cousins and their pets), fall sick then I assume that organizations could fall sick too. Illnesses are caused by diseases and they manifest with symptoms. Unfortunately while you could drag a human to hospital or haul a dog to a vet, most people don’t even know when an organization is sick and even when they know, there is no place to drag them for a fix.

There is a strange illness called infopenia. It ravages organizations by impeding their growth and then chokes them to death, It is similar to leukopenia, a dangerous illness that kills mortal organisms.

Infopenia is an organizational malaise where there is a dearth of information that subsequently prevents effective decision making and doesn’t allow just any random staff from knowing what should have been taken for granted. This is apparent when the average employee does not know all he needs to about his organization and when he doesn’t know, there is no place for him to undo his ignorance. When employees don’t have access to information, no matter how mundane, it slows down his decision making, ensures that those precious “ha ha” moments never come and trust me, they ultimately frustrate your customers. Apparently, the competitors wouldn’t mind.

A good example of the manifestation of this malady was when HP sued a company in Germany for an illegal operation concerning its doomed TouchPad. The sad part is that the “offending” company was contracted by HP itself.

Interestingly infopenia doesn’t affect small businesses the same way a bacteria couldn’t have a broken leg – you get the drift? But as an organization starts to add staff and departments, the impact of poor information management starts to crop up. In fact, there is a formula to denote the complexity of information sharing within a large group: n(n-1)/2 where n is the number of possible colleagues that could annoy you.

One of the attributes of efficient and fast-growing company is that information is open, non-redundant and mashable – information from different sources can be harnessed together to unearth new insights.

In my own country, a third-world corner of the globe, while malaria and other little diseases are singing “samba” for us, infopenia is also dealing with companies trying to grow but without success. You want to try this out: Visit a random company that has more than a few offices and ask any of the frontline staff about any of their products. Then visit another of their offices and ask about the same things and see if any answers tally.

A company is likely to be infected with infopenia when it doesn’t have a single or at worst few sources of information. The new product paper not searchable on the intranet and the budget stuck inside some Excel document is a sure way to get things wrong. Redundant information maintained by different departments will ultimately get things mixed up.

Another problem rears up when senior people think the only way to protect the organization is to create information security by locking things down. While I do not subscribe to carelessness, it’s more beneficial to have information liberated than caged. You never know what fate serendipity could hand over.
Information should also be in an easy to access format. A web intranet wins hands down. A company with money to splurge could shell out some cash on fancy intranets like Microsoft SharePoint Portal but those around my ‘hood can go the open-source way. Nothing beats free.

As much as possible, data should be maintained by those who produce them – and it should be the only source. That way, you can always be sure that the product information is as correct as the product manager has put it. And if he corrects it, you get the new version. And concerning versioning, data and information should be time-stamped such that when confronted with two copies it would be easy to determine which is the most recent and hopefully the most correct.

It takes a lot to build a successful business same way an Usain Bolt must have survived a legion of different diseases before breaking the world sprint record. Good information management doesn’t guarantee the survival of a company but having infopenia is sure going to send any promising business down south.