Tag - small business - Moonfruit Lounge

Wed, 25 Jan 2012

leila

Wed, 25 Jan 2012, 18:42

Wendy Tan White helps you find the 'Business in You'

At Moonfruit, one of our biggest aims is to help small businesses get online easily. So who better than our very own CEO, Wendy Tan White, to be one of the faces of the new Government Campaign 'Business in You'.

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Business in You is a major new campaign from the Government, in conjunction with the private sector, to encourage UK businesses to start up successfully and grow. Their aim is to ensure that small businesses have the resources and support to help them grow and expand over the next few years. The initiative will offer workshops, web-based seminars, video tutorials and some free services from partners.

Wendy was with the Prime Minister, David Cameron, at the launch of the campaign in Yorkshire on Monday. The day of the launch was Chinese New Year and Wendy presented the PM with a Chinese Calendar and mentioned that the year of the Dragon brings the opportunity for great success or great failure. Both agreed that they are gunning for the former!

Wendy will be one of the featured entrepreneurs on their nationwide poster campaign, alongside Richard Moross (our friends Moo.com) and Paul Lindley (Founder of organic baby food, Ella's Kitchen). You can see what Wendy has to say about how she set up Moonfruit and her top tips for anyone starting out - Wendy's Interview.

So, if you're in the UK, look out for the campaign!

Tue, 23 Aug 2011

Clare

Tue, 23 Aug 2011, 15:27

The legal curse of running a small business in London

Joe White is co-founder and COO of website builder Moonfruit. He's grown the business across a decade to an international company with Silicon-Valley-based backing. But White has had his fair share of headaches along the way. Here are his tips for small businesses looking to avoid legal hot water.

Running a small business in London can be a battle at the best of times, particularly in terms of managing your own time as it is one of the most valuable resources in the company. You need things done correctly, you can't do them all yourself, and you don't want to be distracted by things you shouldn't have to worry about. I should know, as COO/CFO of the number one hosted website builder in the UK, Moonfruit.com. We're a DIY website builder for consumers and small businesses to share their passions online, based in central London. Legislation affecting your business can seem like one of those extra things you just shouldn't have to worry about, but it is real and does matter. Some of it is a real pain, some of it is good discipline with real benefits. The main kinds of legislation that affect the running of your business are:

Employment law: essentially, this concerns the relationship between you and your employees. From payment rights to varying types of discrimination.

Consumer protection: this looks to ensure that consumers are treated fairly by businesses and to ensure product quality is satisfactory.

Tax and regulations: anything from payroll taxes, VAT and corporation tax, to filing accounts and statutory documents.

It's your responsibility as a business owner to make sure you take notice of all these things. But this doesn't mean you have to do it all yourself. My first piece of advice would be to make sure you have an accountant who is looking out for the day to day stuff, particularly payroll and taxes. The revenue aren't particularly sympathetic to people who pay incorrect tax and a competent accountant will make sure you do. It is an additonal outgoing but - trust me - accountants are worth their weight in gold.

On the legal and employment side of things, treat people fairly, with respect, and you'll be okay in most cases. If you find yourself in a tricky situation, then take advice. There are several business services that will offer standard contracts and process documents (e.g. dismissal), so you can use these to save money. Smarta offers a business software bundle that includes legal and accounting software, so that can be helpful here. Most importantly, don't be afraid to do something for fear of regulation or concern that it's all too complicated. Seek to do things the right way and take advice if you're unsure, but don't get paralysed. Most government agencies want you to succeed and will work with you to help you comply, even if it's tidying up after the event! Some laws can even lead to a benefit for your business. Understanding that EU law requires us to give customers a 60 day right of refund for digital purchases has allowed us to promote this effective 60 day money back guarantee to our customers - to their delight! So it's not all bad :-)

Further reading: FREE Business Briefing: How to interview; The Comply or Die ebook

This article first appeared in SMARTA See it here

Thu, 7 Jul 2011

Clare

Thu, 7 Jul 2011, 11:25

Build a Website for Your Small Business: 5 DIY Services

By Sarah Jacobsson Purewal, PCWorld

Your company's online presence begins and ends with your website. But hiring a designer to dress it up can be expensive--and that's not even including the cost of a custom domain name and website hosting. Fortunately, you have do-it-yourself options.

If you need a basic website to house and promote your business, these five services let you design, publish, and host your site for free - or for a small monthly fee - all from the comfort of your browser.

These services all feature "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) website editors. In other words, you don't have to know a single line of code in order to build your own, professional-looking business website. Next, to make your brand's look and feel match your print materials, here's how to create print materials such as business cards and brochures.

Moonfruit is a free website host and editor with a plethora of fresh designs and detailed editing options. The service is moving away from its early focus on building Flash-based sites, which can't be viewed on iOS devices and are typically hard for search engines to find. Now, a site you build in Moonfruit is designed to render in Flash, HTML, or mobile HTML5, depending on how the user is accessing it. And soon there will be tools for building Facebook Pages.

Getting Started Getting started on Moonfruit is quick and easy--although mastering its site editor takes quite a bit of practice. First, simply choose a theme, which you can change later, if you desire. The modern-looking, business-oriented themes include IT Services, Accounting, Spa, Bakery, and Law. All are fully customizable, but if you don't see one that appeals to you, you can choose a dark- or light-skinned blank theme and build your site from the ground up.

Building and Editing Your Site Moonfruit has a ton of design options for building a site from scratch. Next, you can dive into the webpage editor. The Flash-based editor is full-featured but can be a little intimidating. Luckily, Moonfruit has a 40-page Beginner's Guide.

You can edit the Page Master, which houses the elements that will appear on every single page of your website (such as navigation links and your logo), or you can edit pages individually. The Webpage editor's toolbar includes options such as Save, Edit, Design, and Admin. Clicking these either opens a menu of additional options or brings you to other pages where you can set up various services.

While you're logged in to the editor, clicking any element on your website will open the element's "Editor" palette subwindow with tabs for options for editing text and styles, and more. Uploading files from your PC is a snap. Just click on the Files button in the toolbar to upload multiple images, video clips, or audio clips at once. If you'd rather use clip art or stock photos, Moonfruit has a library of images and multimedia elements.

Once you've finished editing your website, click Save and your site will go live.

Pricing Moonfruit's basic services are free for one website with up to 15 pages, 20MB of online storage, and 1GB of monthly bandwidth. To use Moonfruit's free features, you also have to update your site once every six months.

For those who need more, Moonfruit has packages from $6 to $50 per month ($54 to $450 per year if you pay annually). Its Business package is $25/month or $225/year, offering 15 websites with unlimited pages, 2500MB of storage, and unlimited bandwidth. That package also features an $80 Google AdWords voucher, email support, two domain names (with email addresses), multiple site administrator accounts, and PayPal integration.

Moonfruit Pros: Extremely customizable designs; plenty of attractive themes; small and unassuming ad on free pages; multiple packages; publishes in Flash, HTML, and mobile-optimized HTML5.

Moonfruit Cons: The WYSIWYG editor has a steep learning curve.

To see the complete article, click here

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