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Cool Tool Review: Wazala

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Wazala
A Review by Todd Hoskins

A few years ago, small companies were constantly complaining about the eCommerce divide – the cost and headache of setting up an online store, collecting product images, managing transactions, and the dreaded shopping cart was separating the haves from the have-nots.

Wazala, formerly Vendr, allows anyone to be in the “have” category. It’s a huge breakthrough for small companies that have hard goods or digital goods to sell, but don’t have the resources for NetSuite. The technology has been there (Volusion comes to mind), with plenty of “turnkey” solutions.

The difference with Wazala is that it is a pop-up store, a store within your site. You don’t need a new domain or designer, or additional software. With copied and pasted code, I had a store on my WordPress blog in less than 10 minutes.

vendr

Costs range from free (up to 5 products) to $30/month for up to 250 products. Inventory tracking, product categorization, search, coupons, and discount codes are available for larger stores, along with integration for bookkeeping and fulfillment. Payments can be processed through PayPal or Google Checkout for all stores.

The one missing element is integration with affiliate programs, which is reportedly being developed. For now, if you run a successful blog or are a small to medium sized company, Wazala is a super, simple service if you have your own products to sell.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 2/5 – Sell direct and have just a few products? Then, yes.

Entrepreneur Value: 4/5 – 15 day trial gets you into eCommerce

Personal Value: 2/5 – Try selling your knitted cardigans on your blog. Why not?

Let me know what you think!

Todd Hoskins helps small and medium sized businesses plan for the future, and execute in the present. With a background in sales, marketing, and technology, he works with executives to help create thriving organizations through developing and clarifying values, strategies, and tactics. You can learn more at VisualCV, or contact him on Twitter.

Cool Tool Review: Zamzar

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Zamzar
A Review by Todd Hoskins

kafka

“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous insect.”

This is the opening line of The Metamorphosis, a short novel by the German author Franz Kafka. It is a mind-bending book. The web service, Zamzar, which was named after the transformed character in The Metamorphosis, is equally mind-bending.

Zamzar converts files, hundreds of different file types, without an installation. It’s fast, easy, and free.

So, let’s say you want to take a portion of a PDF and include it in a presentation (a Prezi, I hope). Or you want to take a YouTube video with you to illustrate a point in a meeting, but you’re not sure you will have an internet connection. In either case, you need to be able to convert the file to make it usable in a new format.

Through Zamzar, you either upload a file, or direct the service to a URL. Zamzar will convert the file to your desired format, then send you access to the new file. Conversions typically take minutes, depending on the size (up to 100MB). You can convert up to five files simultaneously. There are some annoying ads, but I will gladly deal with the annoyance for a service this spectacular.

If you want faster service, file storage, and higher size limits, you can pay. For businesses, this is a good idea. For the individual user, the free service will likely suffice.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 5/5 – Design, Marketing, IT, and even Finance will benefit

Entrepreneur Value: 5/5 – Don’t spend time looking for image conversion and document conversion utilities – Zamzar takes care of it

Personal Value: 5/5 – Pictures and Video. You will use it, trust me.

Let me know what you think!

Image courtesy of mrc1028 at Glogster

Todd Hoskins helps small and medium sized businesses plan for the future, and execute in the present. With a background in sales, marketing, and technology, he works with executives to help create thriving organizations through developing and clarifying values, strategies, and tactics. You can learn more at VisualCV, or contact him on Twitter.

Cool Tool Review: LegalZoom

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Business

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: LegalZoom
A Review by Todd Hoskins

If you are in business management, there will come a time that you either have to interact with or hire an attorney. The time I’ve spent discussing contractual minutiae with lawyers now could be measured in weeks rather than hours.

Fortunately, of the four guys I grew up with, one is an attorney. The other three are an investment banker, a doctor, and a plastics engineer. Quite lucky, especially considering the engineer is also a car enthusiast who tells me what’s wrong with my aging automobiles. Money, body, car, and the law – I’m covered.

But I’m limited in how often I can get free advice from my buddies. Good thing that not all legal issues require the services of an attorney, and that’s why I love LegalZoom. For entrepreneurs, LegalZoom not only gives you a library of standard forms, it files them for you with the appropriate entities.

For example, if you are looking to incorporate, LegalZoom will ask you all the necessary questions to complete the paperwork (think TurboTax). LegalZoom will not only file the paperwork with your state, it will also give you the option of applying for a business license and allow you to submit the required annual report. Bylaws, resolutions, and agreements – if it’s standard legal fare, LegalZoom likely will allow you to get it done more quickly and more cheaply.

Think you may have some intellectual property or an invention worth protecting? LegalZoom will allow you file a provisional application for a patent, or do a patent search and apply for a utility patent.

I have used LegalZoom twice in the past four years, and found it both affordable and easy.

legalzoom

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 1/5 – If you can afford to employ a corporate attorney, you probably don’t need LegalZoom

Entrepreneur Value: 4/5 – Doesn’t do everything, but for a startup saves time and money

Personal Value: 4/5 – Wills, divorces, power of attorney, real estate leases, even bankruptcies

Cool Tool Review: Toggl

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Business

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Toggl
A Review by Todd Hoskins

I have a confession: I am an obsessive tracker and quantifier. As much as I love art and language, I find some comfort and satisfaction when numbers tell a story. Perhaps this explains my love of baseball and its box scores, or why I love web analytics. For over a year, I experimented with assigning prioritized value to daily tasks, tracking my success or lack thereof. I stopped when I realized my creativity was being hampered by my desire to improve my average weekly scores. I was looking down too much, not looking up enough.

Still, tracking, whether it be your blood pressure, web traffic, or time management can be valuable information. Toggl, a time tracking tool, makes it easy to capture this information. If you bill by the hour, you should definitely be using some type of time tracking tool. Even if you don’t, it’s a useful exercise to check in for a week or a month and see how you spend your time. (The book Lifelong Activist makes a strong point that time tracking is an important measurement in personal development, and offers great tips on interpreting the results and implementing change).

Toggl can be installed or run on about any platform. It’s simple – a running clock that allows you to assign projects and clients to time spent. Start the clock. End the clock. But you do have to remember to do this with every project transition. Of course, there are pretty charts and graphs, especially useful if you have the whole team collaborating on various projects.

toggl

Word of warning: If you impose time tracking on employees who are not billing by the hour, make sure you jointly establish some reasonable expectations. It’s not good for the soul to feel like every minute is being monitored. Nor is it good for the soul to play the workplace role of hall monitor. For example, in an eight hour workday, you may expect web developers to spend 6 hours on specified projects.

There is a free version. The paid version, starting at $5 per month, has more features. For a team, it may run up to $100 per month. A good value for the information you receive.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 3/5 – Good programming tool, but doesn’t replace the elegance of Pivotal Tracker

Entrepreneur Value: 3/5 – Freelancers gain credibility when they can show their client when hours were worked

Personal Value: 3/5 – Commit a week. See what you learn. With the iPhone and Android app, you don’t have to limit your tracking to work. How much TV do you watch? Time spent wiith kids?

Cool Tool Review: Creative Commons

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Business

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Creative Commons
A Review by Todd Hoskins

Open Field by kathrynstar at DeviantArt http://kathrynstar.deviantart.com/art/Open-Field-20924389
Open Field by kathrynstar at DeviantArt http://kathrynstar.deviantart.com/art/Open-Field-20924389

Creative Commons is not a tool, but it’s important for every blogger, editor, and author to understand the licenses made possible by the non-profit founded nearly ten years ago. It makes the world a better place for both businesses and artists by enabling the free and easy use of creative materials.

If you are a business looking to include photography, artwork, or even music in your printed materials, ads, or website, you may want to contact a stock photography house. But if you’re a small business or individual working on a tight budget, it makes sense to find works available in the commons.

You can do a metasearch directly on the Creative Commons website. For example, if you want some imagery of an open field to illustrate an aspect of your business, choose your keywords, and search. Once you find an image, you can download it and use it with the restrictions provided by the license. The most typical license allows reuse with attribution, meaning you need to acknowledge the person who created or obtained the original work.

Here’s some helpful tips for giving credit to the author and publisher:

Creative Commons Attribution

It is the spirit of the web that makes Creative Commons great – that we can share, mix, and give credit to the people who influence, assist, and improve our own business and creative pursuits. For white papers and any creative materials that you or your company create, consider putting it out in the Commons as well. It may create some visibility, but more importantly it makes you more of a participant in the exchange rather than just a buyer and seller.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 4/5 – There are many places to source creative materials (I love Veer), but it also is valuable to know and use Creative Commons and participate in the larger community.

Entrepreneur Value: 5/5 – No attorneys needed. Period.

Personal Value: 5/5 – Never before has so much material been available to mix and reuse. Have fun and share.

Photo

Cool Tool Review: Chartbeat

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Business

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Chartbeat
A Review by Todd Hoskins

If you’re not using web analytics right now, you need to be. When Google Analytics launched as a free service a couple years ago it allowed publishers and bloggers of every variety to know where web traffic is coming from and what their visitor trends are. It doesn’t matter whether you are a blogger with five subscribers or an eCommerce company. In it’s simplest form, it’s a copied and pasted line of code that requires no technical skills to set up.

Site visits and metrics such as time-on-site provide you with information. But visits don’t necessarily convert into sales, customers, or loyal readers, and time-on-site may be skewed by bathroom breaks and open browser windows. The information becomes valuable when it is actionable.

Here’s where Chartbeat has an edge. But warning: it’s addictive. Real-time statistics detailing what people are doing on a site right now has prompted me to change content on the fly and see how people react. Though it can be sheer entertainment, the real value is in being able to understand what is compelling to your readers.

Measuring traffic has long been a tantalizing trap. Counting people, whether it’s a political rally or eyeballs in advertising, is something we all immediately understand. How many visitors did we get yesterday? In our store? On our site? But there’s lots of ways to get people in the door or get them to click on a link. The key is bringing the best merchandise (content) to the front of the store, and then continue to either source more of the same, or take the time to educate the visitor on why something deserves to occupy prime real estate. Traffic is necessary, but engagement has often been ignored.

Oh, engagement. What a disputed word. With Chartbeat, they are getting more frequent “pings” from the visitor in order to understand what is happening multiple times per minute instead of the one ping like the doorbell announcing, “Someone’s here!” Engagement then can be captured, for example, with scroll depth. Is the visitor quickly viewing content and moving on, or are they taking time to scroll down the page.

On what pages is this occurring?
Where is the traffic coming from?
Where are they going?

Take a look for yourself:

For $10 a month, this is a steal. If you’re hesitant, get Google Analytics set up, and then sign up for a free trial with Chartbeat as well. Compare and let me know what you think.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 4/5 – Even Fortune 500 companies are using Chartbeat in addition to Omniture. There’s an API as well.

Entrepreneur Value: 5/5 – Want to be nimble? Web analytics are necessary.

Personal Value: 2/5 – Google Analytics is usually good enough unless your a geek like me.