When I hit the shopping mall, I sometimes feel like a lab rat dropped into a maze. Say, for instance, I go to buy a belt. First, I have to find a store that sells belts. Then I scurry around looking for where the men’s stuff is sold. After I get there, I have to figure out whether the belt rack is near the pants or accessories or shoes. It’s generally an exasperating ordeal. Web site shoppers often...

With so many women-owned businesses starting up these days, we’re always looking for ways to support that all-important branch of our Office Live Small Business family. One I’m pretty excited about is our new partnership with New York-based Ladies Who Launch. This company has created an innovative network for women entrepreneurs, although, as its Web site says, Ladies Who Launch offers resources and...

If you use Store Manager to sell products or services online, and you accept credit cards as a payment method, you should know that Store Manager is compliant with the Payment Card Industry’s Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). PCI DSS is a set of standards from credit card companies to help protect customers using credit cards and personal information in Internet transactions. For specifics on how PCI...

I read a post in our Show and Tell Community forum the other day that made me smile. A customer was looking for inspiration to make his company Web site better and did not want to hire a professional designer. He wanted to see examples of other sites built using only Office Live Small Business tools and templates. What made me smile was how quickly – really within minutes– another entrepreneur responded...

(This tip is provided to you from the e-book, “ 5 Steps for a Successful E-Commerce Web Site ,” available for download now.) Ever wonder how some online retailers are able to offer so many diverse products on their sites? They must have a warehouse the size of Lake Michigan to store their stuff, right? Well, not really. The e-commerce world has adopted the longstanding practice of what is called “drop...

If you are a developer creating solutions for Microsoft Office Live Small Business, you should check out the new Contact Manager Web Service Examples download on the Office Live Small Business Code Samples page in the MSDN Code Gallery. The download is an Office Live solution (.olp) file. Once you’ve downloaded it, you can add it to your Office Live Small Business account as a custom business application...

If you’ve got a company logo you use on letterhead or business cards, marketing gurus will tell you that displaying it prominently on your Web site is a great way to solidify your online and offline branding. I’m here to tell you that adding a logo to your Web site header is a pretty simple task, although you may want to experiment a bit with how you display it. But let’s start with the basics: 1....

So you may know a lot about small business. But how much do you know about celebrity small business? For instance, do you remember the name of the coffee shop where Joey, Rachel and the rest of the “Friends” gang hung out? Or how about the infamous motel featured in the ‘60’s thriller “Psycho?” Those are a couple of the questions you’ll find in our ”Name that Small Business” quiz currently running...