We know many Office Live Small Business customers run service businesses. So I’m guessing a lot of you have had the distinct displeasure of dealing with slow-paying customers. Unlike retail environments where you don’t hand over the goods until you’ve seen a customer’s cash or credit card, a lot of service businesses bill for their work only after it’s completed. It’s not a perfect system, but columnist...

After back-to-back Vision to Venture events in Miami and Austin this week, I got home Thursday night. I took a peek into my 11 month old daughter’s room as she was sleeping, and I thought about the amazing women entrepreneurs I was meeting at these events and what inspirational role models they are. I smiled as I thought how women are changing the world, one by one, and how my daughter would one day...

Chances are you’ve visited your share of Web sites that were so exasperating that you couldn’t leave fast enough. I know I have. It makes you realize that to be successful online, it’s important to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Columnist Jeff Wuorio makes some great points on how to do that in his article on improving customer service on e-commerce sites. Even if you’re not specifically focused...

Our pals over in the message boards are reporting a number of queries regarding domain names. So I’m going to do my best to give you the whole scoop in easily digestible chunks, so you can quickly find what you’re looking for. But if you have a question I don’t cover here, you can also check our FAQs on domain names . 1 . Domain names 101. You need to have a domain name associated with your Web site...

Chris Beiter, an Office Live Small Business program manager, blogs regularly about the products and technologies he is working on at Office Live. In a recent post, he explains some improvements that have been made within our Business Applications to allow what he calls Advanced List Publishing. Advanced List Publishing enables you to take data from a list in your password-secured Business Applications...

Permit us to state the obvious: Video has come to the Web in a big way. And not just in online ads or at dot-com news outlets or on YouTube-type sites. Businesses are using videos to show off products. Real estate companies give video home tours. Vacation operators show off their hotels and yachts. Does that mean your customers will expect you to add video content to your site? And would it cost a...

I just returned from the San Diego Microsoft Office Live Vision to Venture event. We had more than 200 women attend, and the energy level and excitement was through the roof. I was really struck by the long lines at the microphones. Women were eager to hear the advice from our experienced speakers—Susan Wilson Solovic from SBTV.com , Rich Sloan from StartupNation , and John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing...

It’s pretty easy to add pictures to your Office Live Small Business Web site. But how you select and, if necessary, correct those images, is often more important. Strong photography is generally what separates a good Web site from a so-so site. How so? When the images on a Web site show sharp details, are well composed, use good lighting, and anticipate what I want to see, it tells me the site owner...