Small Business Team Blog

Brief Community site downtime planned Sunday for server upgrade

2009-11-13T20:33:00Z

Hi everyone. I wanted to provide you with advance notice that we are planning for a brief downtime on the Office Live Small Business and Office Live Workspace Community sites on Sunday, Nov. 15.

The downtime will last only 30 minutes, and is scheduled to happen between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. Pacific time. The downtime is occurring in order to perform hardware upgrades to the servers for our Community sites.

The downtime of the Community sites will NOT impact your Office Live Small Business or Office Live Workspace accounts or services.

On behalf of the Office Live team, we appreciate your patience.

Sue Sonday

What makes this site healthy? Its attractive interior pages

2009-11-06T03:39:00Z

Editor's note: This post continues a series of blog posts spotlighting Office Live Small Business Web sites for their design quality. These posts are written by design expert Sara Richardson-McCreery, creative director and founder of Spikes Like LLC near Washington, D.C., and a frequent contributor to Office Live Small Business. Richardson-McCreery will post regularly here about Office Live sites she feels are well-designed, and will offer design tips and ideas in her posts.

Why has this site been selected?

HomeRemediesForYou.com, a free website that provides information about natural home remedies, has been chosen to be featured here because it is an excellent example of how to create attractive interior page layouts.

Did you know that the home page is not always the first page visitors will use to enter your site? Search engines, social bookmarking tools, blogs (and more!) offer online users multiple entry points into your website. This means that instead of landing on your home page over and over, visitors can enter your site through, for instance, the “About Us” page or “product description” or even a “Terms of Use” page.

Do not worry, your home page has not deflated in value. But instead, consider the idea that your interior pages are just as important as the home page.

Strong interior page design can sell your site

The interior pages of a website are often referred to as sublevel pages. HomeRemediesForYou is a terrific illustration of how to organize and treat interior page content — the operative word being “organize.” Be sure to visit this site and click around the sublevel pages.

Here’s what I like about the HomeRemediesForYou pages:

Check out this page. Note how the site's designers have used tables and color to help create visual separations between content groups. By making a strong distinction between content topics (or information), your viewers can understand your content more easily.
Packing your website pages full of content and photography can often lead to overwhelming your audience with just plain ol’ too much. See how this site’s designers have reduced the amount of items per page to a few, highly poignant entities that are formatted and organized thoughtfully.
The site’s designers have made an effective use of white space, to give the site a clean, scan-able, and “uncluttered” look.

The design words of wisdom for today? Keep it crisp and clean!

More advice and tips

1. When appropriate, use stylized bullet or number lists. The bullet (or number) accompanying the text makes a more pronounced visual separation to the eye.

2. The horizontal rule or “horizontal line” tool found inside the Office Live Small Business Web Design Tool under “Page Editor” is also a great way to help keep your content looking organized. Try using the horizontal line tool to distinguish content items on your website pages.

3. Don’t be afraid to use white space to your advantage when designing your layouts. Let a little white space into your designs and keep in mind this: Pages that look overcrowded and cramped feel overcrowded and cramped.

Have an Office Live Small Business site that you think is a design winner? Post a comment here with a link and your site might be the next to be featured.

Sara Richardson-McCreery

Here's your chance to blog from the Vancouver Olympic Games

2009-10-27T22:57:00Z

Hey Office Live fans: Do you blog? Do you use Microsoft Office? Last but not least, do you want to see the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, B.C.?

If so, then we have a contest for you.

To show what people can do with Office 2010, Microsoft has launched a new contest that will give two bloggers the chance to showcase their talents, and to demonstrate the power of Office 2010 to help you get your work done anytime and anywhere. People use Office everyday at home, work, and school. Office 2010 adds new features and functionality that will take collaboration and the ability to work from anywhere to the next level.

The Microsoft Office team, with support from the U.S. Olympic Committee, will send one female blogger and one student blogger to the Games, as winners of the Office Winter Games online contest. The two winning bloggers will report daily from the Games, alongside members of the credentialed press, using the latest Microsoft technologies, including Office 2010.

What do you have to do to win the contest? First, enter by going to the Office Winter Games site before this Sunday, Nov. 1. Then, submit a 250-word blog post telling why you should go to the Olympics, again by Nov. 1. That’s less than a week away!

The top candidates will be selected by a panel of judges that includes Bonnie Blair, the former Olympic gold medalist in speed skating, and CollegeHumor.com stars Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld. These semifinalists will be posted to the contest site, where everyone will have a chance to vote on the winning bloggers to send to the Vancouver Games.

The winners will have access to the hospitality center for the USOC, where the athletes and their families are, and to the official Olympic Media Centers. In addition to spending a week at the Olympics, the two winners also will earn a trip to the International Consumer Electronics Show in January.

Want to see the Vancouver Games? Don't delay. Submit your entry today!

Monte Enbysk

Free "Hands-On Small Business" sessions coming to a city near you

2009-10-23T01:16:00Z

If you run a small business, you know that social media marketing and online services are all the rage, but do you really know how to get started? Well, we're here to help!

This month, we've launched a series of informal events in 20 cities across the United States and Canada called "Hands-On Small Business." These are gatherings of small-business owners who really want to get down to the nitty gritty about using social-media marketing tools such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as Microsoft Office Live's online services. We've teamed up with Kirtsy, a female-focused website with user-contributed content, to hold these sessions, which are free and open to the public.

The sessions will be held in these 20 cities: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Austin, Charlotte, Boston, Denver, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Columbus, Seattle, Portland, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Miami, and Toronto. Get information here on specific dates and times for each city.

Earlier this year, Kirtsy and Office Live teamed up to host 10 hands-on social media sessions. Those sessions were a big hit with attendees and so we've beefed up the schedule to bring you even more.

"This year, we've seen increasing discussion from women starting their own businesses about how to best find online resources to match and meet specific needs," says Gabrielle Blair, one of the Kirtsy founders. "Women often get together to compare notes. And there are a lot of us who want to talk right now about how social media and online applications can enhance our small-business pursuits."

With these sessions, we hope to help entrepreneurs like you gain some valuable insights you can take back and immediately use to grow your business. So what do you think? Are you interested in attending a "Hands-On Small Business" session? Leave a comment here and let us know your thoughts.

Monte Enbysk

New Office Live articles seek to help you with DIY support

2009-10-20T22:26:00Z

Members of the Support team at Microsoft Office Live Small Business spend lots of time talking to you, the customer, to get a sense of the most common technical issues facing Office Live customers.

These most common issues — and the solutions to resolve them — are now being captured in article form and published on the Office Live Small Business Community site. Their goal here is to share their knowledge so that you have an opportunity to find a solution should you encounter a common technical issue with your Office Live site.

Some 26 Knowledge Base articles were recently added to the How-To Articles section of the Community site. More will be published in coming weeks.

The articles cover everything from "How to update your Microsoft billing account information" to "What to do if you cannot attach files to e-mail messages" to "Frequently asked questions about search engines." These articles are identifiable by the "OLSKB" and six-digit ID number in the title — the Support team would like you to refer to that ID number if you ever need to e-mail team members about a related issue you are having.

"For our customers, this is an opportunity to have access to some of the same support documents that our Support staff uses on a regular basis," says James Dykstra, the product technical lead for Office Live Small Business. "The material ranges from basic to expert-level, but is always written with the customer in mind."

Again, the KB articles are easy to identify from among the other articles in the How-to Articles section, by virtue of the "OLSKB" and the six-digit ID number in the title.

From time to time, I will be writing posts about selected topical areas covered via the KB articles, such as addressing issues with your e-mail account or with accessing various website pages.

If you don't currently have Office Live Small Business or Office Live Workspace, please read this KB article, "How to sign up for Office Live."

Monte Enbysk

Bright imagery, simple colors make this Office Live site a winner

2009-10-09T18:55:00Z

Editor's note: Today we are launching a series of blog posts spotlighting Office Live Small Business Web sites for their design quality. These posts are written by design expert Sara Richardson-McCreery, creative director and founder of Spikes Like LLC near Washington, D.C., and a frequent contributor to Office Live Small Business. Richardson-McCreery will post regularly here about Office Live sites she feels are well-designed, and will offer design tips and ideas in her posts.

Why has this site been selected?

I've chosen to feature Tours Around Tuscany, an Italian-based company that offers guided tours of the Tuscan region, in this post because it is a great example of combining bright and interesting imagery with simple, yet cohesive colors. The result is a heightened level of visual interest, which means the design immediately sparks curiosity and encourages visitors to explore the site further.

When studying designs, both online and offline, one of the tricks I do is to squint my eyes. Yes, squint. Try it with the Tours Around Tuscany site and then try it with your own. When you squint at the Tours Around Tuscany site, what do you see? Do you notice the color structure more easily? The design is based entirely around the primary color palette. Red, yellow, and blue. It can really be that simple.

Finding color inspiration

I often find color palette inspiration at Colourlovers.com. Spend some time under the "palettes" section of the site. There are thousands of palettes to sift through, but you may find something that is a perfect match for your site design. You can also easily build your palettes or single color swatches.

Note the color data also comes with the Hexadecimal and RGB information, so you can type it into the Office Live Small Business custom-color-picker tool when you are designing your Web site.

More advice and tips

When you are working with color and imagery, try to think in terms of creating combinations.
Be sure to consider your logo when choosing colors and keep in mind the following question: "Do the colors reflect my company's image?"
Tempting as it may be, try to keep your palette relatively simple — too much can be overpowering and prevent your viewers from investigating your site's content.
Consider legibility when applying color to fonts. For example, lovely as Turbonium neon green is, it's very hard to read when dropped on a black background.

Have an Office Live Small Business site that you think is a design winner? Post a comment here with a link and your site might be the next to be featured.

Sara Richardson-McCreery

Is your Web site indexed with Bing?

2009-09-10T22:11:00Z

Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, provides another opportunity for your Web site to reach the right audience. Is your site listed there?

To find out, type your URL in the Bing.com search box. If your site doesn’t come up, be sure to add it. Just go to the Bing URL submission page, type the URL of your homepage in the text box, and click Submit URL.

You can also submit an XML Sitemap, which is easier than it sounds. An XML Sitemap tells search engines how to find all the pages of your site. Bing has made it easy to create and submit one; all you need to do is copy and paste the following URL into your browser:

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.YourWebAddress.com/sitemap.xml

Be sure to replace www.YourWebAddress.com with the URL of your site. For example, if your site is http://www.proseware.com, you would type:

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.proseware.com/sitemap.xml

into the address bar of your browser, and then hit Enter on your keyboard. That’s it—your sitemap is submitted to Bing.

Bing has a whole set of Webmaster Tools that enable site owners to view site statistics and more. To access the Webmaster Center Tools, click Extras in the upper-right corner of the Bing.com home page, and then click Webmaster center. If you are not already familiar with these tools, check them out. We plan to post more about them soon here on the blog.

Cheryl Lowry

Update to the service: Upgraded slideshow module and fixes to the service

2009-09-09T04:11:00Z

Today we released an update to the Office Live Small Business service. While most of this release represents fixes and backend upgrades, we are releasing a very exciting upgrade to the Site Designer slideshow module. The redesigned module makes creating slideshows on your site easier and faster and also gives you the option of putting a Silverlight-based slideshow on your site. Now you can display up to 50 images in a revolving carousel giving your customers the ability to see all of the images in your photo album in one glance and interact with the carousel. They can pause or reverse the direction of the carousel, click on and enlarge any of the images, and even view the slideshow in full screen. To use the newly redesigned slideshow module, go to the Site Designer tool, click the Page Editor tab, and then select Slideshow from the Module drop down menu.

Today's release also includes a number of fixes to the service to solve problems that small groups of customers are having. The release will fix problems around adding the PayPal module into sites, report tracking, and integrating metatags into sites.

As always, stay tuned to this blog for more announcements in the future as we continue to update the Office Live Small Business service.

Annie Akin

These entrepreneurs can help remind you why you became one yourself

2009-09-01T20:11:18Z

Ever wonder why you became an entrepreneur? Watching this video set of inspirational stories from Visa Business, now featured on the Office Live Small Business Community site, may help you renew your sense of purpose.

The Visa "Webumentaries" feature:

Dr. Jay Parkinson, who believes that half of all visits to the doctor's office could be eliminated if patients had easy online access to a doctor or nurse. That's why he co-founded HelloHealth.com, a neighborhood clinic in Brooklyn, N.Y., that practices pediatrics and preventative medicine, relying heavily on e-mail, instant messaging, and online video. "I'm using technology to bring that old school relationship [between doctor and patient] back," Parkinson says.
Laura Bartels, who feels that straw is underutilized as an effective and environmentally friendly building material. Her one-person Carbondale, Colo., business, GreenWeaver Inc., builds with straw bales and also provides consulting and education regarding sustainable building practices. "Hay is for horses, straw is for houses," she says. Her video also shows straw being used to build a Carbondale school, which she says the first public building made of straw. "It feels like a calling," she says of her business.
James Bazzelle, chef and owner of Mert's Heart and Soul restaurant in Charlotte, N.C., who brings a love of food and humanity to his eatery. Bazzelle had his doubts about accomplishing his dream of owning a restaurant, but gained strength and encouragement from his wife, and has been in business now for 11 years. Besides attracting a regular, family-oriented clientele, his restaurant gives back to the community by feeding the homeless.
Cynthia Coquillette, who has carried out her vision of running an auto repair shop for hybrid cars only, the first hybrid-dedicated auto shop in the world, she says. "We consider the environment in every decision we make," from the equipment and parts purchased, services performed, the solar panels on the roof, and the fact that Luscious Garage is paper-free. Located in downtown San Francisco, Coquillette describes her business as "green, high-tech, and cutting edge," and says she places a premium on getting to know her customers.
Kim Ima, whose rolling bakery, The Treats Truck, graces various New York City streets each day to offer freshly made cookies, brownies, and other baked goodies to hungry office workers and others. Ima owns the small business but also bakes and drives the truck from time to time. "My favorite part of the business is interacting with the customers; I just love it," she says of those who flock to her truck when it makes a scheduled stop. She calls the business "the hardest thing I've ever done," but adds, "When I think about success, I think, 'Is this the life I want to live?' It is."

Each of these business owners is featured in two different "Webumentaries" on Office Live Small Business. Need some inspiration to start a business yourself? Check out their stories.

Monte Enbysk

Brief site downtime planned to accommodate a server upgrade

2009-09-01T19:13:00Z

Hi everyone. I wanted to give you advance notice that on September 12 and September 19, we will be upgrading the Microsoft Office Live Small Business servers that host your website.

What does this mean to you?

On just one of these days, your public website will be unavailable for up to three hours. During this brief downtime, visitors to your site will see a message alerting them of the outage, and asking them to check back shortly. You will be able to log in to your Office Live Small Business account and access your e-mail during the upgrade, but you will not be able to use the site-management tools.

We have scheduled these updates on a Saturday, generally the lowest day for site traffic, in order to have as little impact on your website as possible.

While these upgrades will improve the performance, reliability, and stability of your website, we apologize in advance for any inconvenience this scheduled maintenance may cause.

Annie Akin

Last week for you to win a copy of Microsoft Office 2007

2009-08-25T01:28:17Z

The final week of the Dog Days of Summer giveaway is upon us. If you've been following the activity on our Facebook page, you know that we've been giving away copies of Microsoft Office 2007 software every week this month.

For the final week, we're mixing it up a bit and moving the contest over to our Twitter account. To enter this week's contest, send @Office_Live a tweet* with the answer to this question: What new feature would you like to see added to Office Live Small Business or Office Live Workspace?

Tweets must be posted by 2 p.m. PST this Friday. We'll choose a winner at random from all @ replies and announce the winner Friday at 3 p.m. PST. (Please note: This contest is open to U.S. residents only.)

*In case you haven't gotten into the whole Twitter thing yet, here's an easy-to-understand video you might enjoy.

Louise Rasho

Follow Office Live on Twitter at www.twitter.com/office_live

Identifying possible virus mails in your inbox

2009-08-24T22:55:00Z

Some Windows Live Hotmail customers may be seeing their e-mail accounts "hijacked" by spammers, who in turn are sending e-mails that may result in you downloading a worm or virus onto your computer. Windows Live Hotmail is the e-mail service that powers Office Live Small Business e-mail accounts.

These e-mails have surfaced in recent days. Once you've positively identified one of these virus e-mails, delete it. Do not open it, if at all possible, and do not click on any of the links.

A typical virus e-mail has an arcane subject line such as "Good shopping good mood," and a folksy e-mail encouraging you to visit an electronics company website and/or click on its e-mail address.

Clicking on these links downloads a copy of the worm onto the message recipients' computers. Upon download, it then gathers e-mail addresses of contacts saved on the recipient's computer and sends itself out to all of those addresses.

See this Security warning from Windows Live for more details.

Here are some tips for protecting your computer against these viruses:

Stay up-to-date on the latest computer viruses going around. You can visit your antivirus company's website or call them to get more information.
Be cautious about opening messages that contain links to websites.
Be cautious when opening embedded links. Point your mouse cursor on the link and look at the underlying URL that displays in your browser status bar at the bottom and ensure that the URL makes sense for what the link states. Never login from one of these links. If a link directs you to login to a service that you use, instead go to that service by accessing the services website directly from your browser and not use the embedded link.
Do not open attachments unless you are expecting them.
Download the latest Microsoft updates frequently. To download the latest updates for Microsoft software, please visit the following links:

http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/

http://office.microsoft.com/productupdates

Monte Enbysk

Are you a winning woman entrepreneur?

2009-08-20T22:04:27Z

Successful women business owners who want to learn from the best are invited to submit your entries into the Ernst & Young's Entrepreneurial Winning Women competition. The program, now in its second year, was created to help high-potential women-owned businesses that are less than five years old accelerate their growth.

The deadline for the Entrepreneurial Winning Women competition is Sept. 4, which is only two weeks away. Winners will be announced the week beginning Oct. 19. Submit your application online.

The 10 winners will get personalized business counseling from Ernst & Young. They will gain access to strategic networks of advisers, investors, and successful business executives and entrepreneurs, and will be able to connect with prospective investors, coaches, and mentors.

The winning women also will receive a free trip to the Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum 2009, taking place November 11-15 in Palm Springs, Calif. At the Forum, which is a meeting of high-growth businesses, the winners will get the chance to introduce themselves and their businesses to the community of established entrepreneurs, executives, and advisers. Winners must also be available to attend a prep session in New York City in October.

How do you win in this competition? See this page for eligibility requirements and criteria for selection.

In these challenging economic times, I think it's great that we women business owners have a chance to learn and to make such valuable connections.

Rieva Lesonsky

Some advice to business owners on telecommuting

2009-07-31T20:51:41Z

In Southern California, where I live, sitting in traffic for up to two or more hours per day is part of life for millions of commuters. But it doesn't have to be that way — especially for owners of small businesses and their employees.

Telecommuting, or working from home, is a viable option for almost every business these days.

When you've got a very small company, telecommuting may make it possible for you to avoid the expense of an office altogether. Here are some points to consider:

Make sure everyone has compatible hardware and software (or use Web apps so your employees can access their applications from wherever they are).
Take advantage of instant messaging. Even more efficient than e-mail, IM lets you and your employees quickly interact as fast as if you were just saying "Hey" across the room. Most major platforms enable you to keep records of chat conversations.
Keep everyone on the same page. You may not always be in the same room, but you should be working toward the same goals. Be very clear about deadlines and priorities so your team knows what to focus on. Regular conference calls help maintain team spirit.
Need to meet live once in a while? Consider holding monthly meetings at your home, or find an executive suite company such as Regus, which lets you rent conference rooms on an as-needed basis. You'll still save money compared to the cost of an office.

Telecommuting can be a major perk for employees, enabling your small company to land more desirable and skilled workers.

Is your commute a nightmare? Would you consider offering a telecommuting option to your employees?

Rieva Lesonsky

How to know what a consumer really wants

2009-07-27T20:07:08Z

I've seen and heard lots in the news lately about restaurants offering healthier food options. KFC pretty much inspired a stampede when it offered free grilled chicken meals for Mother's Day.

But a recent survey by Mintel Menu Insights, reported in Advertising Age (log-in required), found that although some 75 percent of people surveyed said they would like to see more healthy choices on menus, just 51 percent actually order those selections.

This doesn't surprise me. Do you remember back in the late 1980s and early 90s, the heyday of the "low-fat" diet? That was the same time that super-premium ice creams such as Haagen-Dazs and Ben and Jerry's became all the rage. People were talking about eating fat-free, but then turning around and spending their budgets (both financial and caloric) on butterfat-laden frozen desserts.

What this means to you — no matter what business you're in — is that people are frequently less than honest about what they want and why they want it. When you're trying to make a sale, the prospect may say they want X or Y — but what they really want, Z, is something they're not even bringing up. Maybe they're embarrassed to want it. (How many women eating out with a group will admit they really want a greasy, bacon-laden cheeseburger?) Or maybe they don't even know they want it.

Sales are based on emotion, and a big part of our emotions are under the surface, not always clear even to us. When you're selling, it's your job to figure out what lies beneath. Maybe you're trying to sell a husband and wife new kitchen cabinets. Who's really the decision-maker? Maybe you're pitching your custom software to a company's financial department. Is the CFO really the decision-maker, or is it someone else?

Fear is a strong motivator in many Business-to-Business sales situations. The fear of looking foolish, picking the wrong product, or losing money for the company is often the biggest factor in the decision. If the company's current solution provider is working OK, the decision-maker has plenty of reason to fear making a change that might make things worse.

Politics are another factor; by observing what's going on in the room, you have a better chance of understanding who's really in charge and what his or her true motivation may be.

In any sales situation, your best tool in figuring out the prospect's real motivation is simply listening. It's often said that in a sales setting you should listen twice as much as you talk (that's why you have two ears, but only one mouth). Watch how your decision-maker interacts with the others who are present. Listen to what's said (and what goes unsaid). Bring another good listener along with you to your presentation — maybe the client thinks they're present just to hand out PowerPoints and set up the laptop, but they're really there to watch, listen — and learn.

How often do you have to dig to find out what your customers really want? I'd be curious to know.

Rieva Lesonsky