Stripe Updates Checkout for Payments on Your Website, Mobile App

Stripe Updates Checkout for Payments on Your Website, Mobile App
Using Gamification to Drive Brand Awareness
Dropbox To Go Public, Cloud Storage Seems To Be The Hot Space
That Email From the IRS? It May Be Worse Than You Think
Fewer Students Plan to Become Business Owners
The Power of Thinking Big, But Starting Small

Posted: 10 Mar 2014 02:30 PM PDT

Stripe Payments

Stripe has just introduced an update to its Checkout services. The company says it streamlines accepting credit card payments on your website or mobile app.

Stripe allows credit card payments without storing customer information on your servers. Instead that information is sent directly to Stripe for processing. That processing includes encryption of credit card and other information. The service charges businesses 2.9 percent of a customer’s total plus another 30 cents per transaction.

Stripe updates Checkout to tackle several concerns and cater to consumer trends, writes Michaël Villar, a Stripe developer, in a post on the official Stripe Blog.

In one major change, Stripe promises better address support. This includes supporting separate billing and shipping addresses. But the new changes are also designed to make the payment process easier. For example, your customers will only need to enter their street address and zip code at Checkout. The rest — country, city and state — will be filled in automatically by Stripe.

Stripe has also added a “Remember Me” feature that it claims will encourage customers to come back to your store. It allows your customers to store their credit card and shipping information. When a customer returns to your online store, they’ll receive a text message to confirm their credit card information. The same will happen when customers visit other websites or mobile apps accepting Stripe. Villar writes:

“This in turn enables a rapid checkout experience in the future on any site using Checkout. Our hypothesis was that it would increase conversion rates—and we're delighted that it has been confirmed.”

Stripe says that the changes it has introduced also address the growing use of mobile devices. The explosion in the popularity of mobile payments makes this a very important enhancement for small businesses, too. Villar says that Stripe redesigned Checkout for all devices: Android, iOS, Windows Phone, OS X, Windows, tablet, desktop and mobile.

Stripe says the new Checkout process has already been tested on thousands of sites and through millions of transactions already. If your business is already using Stripe for a checkout system, the new interface will update on its own. If you want to add some of the new features introduced with the update, the Documentation page on Stripe’s site has instructions.

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Using Gamification to Drive Brand Awareness

Posted: 10 Mar 2014 12:30 PM PDT

using gamification

With more brands embracing the power of content to build brand awareness, power social media, SEO initiatives and generate leads, it's not surprising that there's an abundance of content on the Web.

If you're an information-seeker, it's a fantastic scenario. But for brands, that means more innovation and creativity are required to stand out from the crowd.

Using Gamification Turns the Ordinary into Extraordinary

Savvy brands are turning to gamification to differentiate themselves from the competition, creating more engaging, interactive experiences that captivate users' attention and create lasting impressions. Audiences have always been interested in engaging activities that offer valuable feedback. Quizzes like this customer service evaluation and this one have been around online for years – and in print magazines for much longer.

Gamification ups the ante with a higher level of interactivity, competition, rewards, and rich media. Happiest Minds (PDF) describes the process of gamification as:

". . .introducing certain game-like constructs such as points and badges to non-game applications like websites and social applications to increase engagement and loyalty."

Designing and Implementing Gamification is a Complex Process

But there's a lot that goes into the gamification process, from conceptualizing an innovative idea and finding a unique and intuitive way to gamify the concept, followed by implementing those ideas in a user-friendly design. Getting into gamification for the sake of being in on the latest trend isn't a good strategy. It's actually pretty easy to miss the mark with gamification, and most brands wouldn't want to throw that kind of budget at a project of that magnitude if it's not going to produce results.

When done right, gamification can result in 100 to 150 percent increases in engagement metrics like page views, time spent on site, and other community activities. But Gartner estimates that as many as 80 percent of gamification initiatives won't meet business objectives, mostly due to poor design.

How Does Using Gamification Drive Brand Awareness?

In order to address the winning tactics in creating successful gamification initiatives, it's important to understand precisely how gamification can enhance brand awareness. This happens in a few different ways:

The employee motivation domino effect: Gamification is used as a team motivation strategy internally, by creating friendly competition among sales teams, implementing badge programs and leaderboards, and so on. Motivated employees have higher levels of job satisfaction, and happier employees are more likely to deliver great service. Great service fosters brand loyalty and awareness.
Happy customers will spread the word about brands they love in the form of word-of-mouth marketing, social media mentions, and online reviews. Any of these scenarios results in stronger brand awareness.
Built-in social sharing features encourage social recognition. A best practice, implementing social sharing functions within the gamification interface encourages users to share their achievements, scores, badges, and the like with their networks. The result? Enhanced brand awareness.
Built-in bragging rights: When used internally as an employee motivator, brands are inherently building benefits that can be used in key brand messages. For instance, a company can highlight the fact that 95 percent of its customer service representatives have achieved A+ rating levels based on the company's internal agent rating system.
And of course, the obvious scenario is one in which a company totally nails gamification, implementing a program that's infectious and goes viral. Ultimately, these programs can become almost synonymous with the brand. Think along the lines of McDonald's Monopoly.

The fact that gamification can influence brand awareness from multiple angles makes it an especially appealing option for enterprises. But to realize these benefits, effective execution is key.

Value and Motivation: Essential Gamification Components

Cognizant points out (PDF):

“Gamification can inspire a sudden spike in user interest and drive immediate results with even the most rudimentary game elements, such as points, badges, and leaderboards. However, if the audience does not realize value in the long term, the engagement begins to break down.”

Yu-kai Chou, a pioneer and keynote speaker in gamification, names eight core drivers of gamification. Meaning, programs hinged on one or more of these drivers are most likely to succeed. These eight drivers contain concepts that, to marketers, should feel familiar, encompassing ideas such as Development and Accomplishment, Ownership and Possession, and Social Possession and Envy.

In other words, gamification should create a meaningful experience and offer value to the user, by eliciting an emotional response or tapping into some external or internal motivator. After all, it is 75 percent psychology and 25 percent technology, according to Gabe Zichermann, author of two books on the subject, editor of the Gamification Blog and organizer of the Gamification Summit.

Cognizant also touches on four key elements of gamification, but from a more practical standpoint rather than a conceptual one:

Objective

What behavior are you trying to modify among the user base, and why? What does success look like? Tripit, for instance, uses a travel leaderboard to showcase travel statistics for users. The objective: Get people to use Tripit as their first choice for travel arrangements. If choosing one service over another was going to earn you some social status points, which would you choose?

Target Audience

A critical factor in the design process, the minute details of the interface and other elements must be carefully crafted to suit the preferences of the target audience. The Starbucks Rewards program is a great example of this, giving users the very thing most head to Starbucks for in the first place: Coffee.

Innovation

Make it fun. Will your target audience respond to badges? What achievements and rewards will your audience find worthwhile? Check out this Service Provider Challenge tool as an example. This example turns some of the most frustrating aspects of service management into a lighthearted experience, providing actionable insights users can put into practice immediately.

Justification

The compelling reason or reasons that drive your audience to engage and continue to do so. Why will the target user participate? Take a look at Domino's Pizza Chefs program, for instance. Users have an obvious need to continue using this application – every time they want to order pizza.

One of the greatest things about gamification is its limitless potential. Brands can literally take gamification anywhere they can conceive, and in most cases, the more innovative, the better.

With the opportunity to make boring and mundane tasks more exciting while building brand awareness at the same time, it's no wonder gamification is taking enterprises by storm.

Gamification Photo via Shutterstock

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Dropbox To Go Public, Cloud Storage Seems To Be The Hot Space

Posted: 10 Mar 2014 10:00 AM PDT

cloud storage

The cloud storage provider Dropbox has reportedly raised $350 million in private funding and may be contemplating going public, in order to raise even more. Dropbox was the first company to make cloud storage an acceptable and perhaps a “fashionable” way of storing files. Every cloud storage company since has merely been trying to emulate them.

In case you are not familiar, Dropbox starts everyone off on 5GB free. Then you can earn several gigabytes more for free by activating Camera Upload, and having all your phone photos automatically backed up to the service. Referrals to other people bring in a few hundred megabytes each and the company is always running contests to give away even more storage.

If you are a storage junkie though, you will need to pay for more. Dropbox has been criticized for being one of the most expensive cloud storage services and 100GB will set you back $10 a month.

You may wonder how Dropbox fares against its rivals, in terms of service, features and price. Below are the top ten.

Top 10 Cloud Storage Services

Google Drive

cloud storage

It used to be called Google Documents, but now it is Google Drive. Free storage amounts to 15GB, as Gmail and Google+ photos are considered part of the same service. You can store anything you want in Google Drive, and there is a desktop app for dragging and dropping files on your computer. These files are then synchronized to Google’s servers for safekeeping.

More space can be bought, and the prices are extremely cheap, compared to Dropbox. 100GB can be bought for $60 a year, whereas 100GB a year with Dropbox would set you back $120 a year. Plus the big name recognition alone will probably be enough to assure you that this is a service to be trusted and won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

OneDrive

Next, we come to the service formally known as Skydrive (before BSkyB took exception to the name). It is now called OneDrive, and it was relaunched a short time back to great fanfare. 7GB of space is automatically given, with a further 3GB if you switch on the Camera Upload feature. You also get 500MB for every person you refer who signs up for the service.

If you want to buy additional space, then OneDrive surprisingly comes out on top, narrowly beating Google Drive. For 100GB a year, you would pay $50 a year, compared to $60 for Google.

Feature-wise, it is pretty much the same as Google, with one big difference for Windows PC users. In Windows, OneDrive is built into the OS already, so there is no need to download additional software.

iCloud

cloud storage

iCloud has its legions of extremely loyal followers, so it is definitely worth a mention here. However, the drawback is that it is only available for owners of iOS devices. So that makes it a rather narrow club.

When you buy an iOS device for the first time, switch on iCloud, and all of your photos and other images will be automatically backed up to the iCloud servers. You can even schedule how often and when such a backup will take place. But here is another limitation – iCloud by default only backs up images, email and app data. So what happens to all of the important documents on your iPad that you want to make backups of?

That’s where iWorks comes in. iWorks and iCloud are two totally different things. For documents, you need to have Pages, for spreadsheets Numbers, and for presentations Keynote. These three apps are not cheap (they cost about $60 for the whole package), but if you buy them and have your documents in those formats, you can then save your documents to iCloud.

All iOS owners get 5GB free, with paid plans starting at $20 for 10GB. So this is not a budget friendly option.

Amazon Cloud Drive

cloud storage

There’s another big name that has gone into the cloud storage business: Amazon. Amazon Cloud Drive and Amazon Cloud Player both make up part of Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is becoming a very popular Web hosting company. As with Google, you can be assured of your files’ safety, due to the size and stability of the company.

5GB is offered free of charge, and paid plans start at $10 a year for 20GB. If you want 100GB, that would set you back a paltry $50 a year. So here’s another one that beats Google for price. A desktop app is also provided for easy dragging and dropping, along with syncing online.

Box

Box’s biggest selling point is that the company often gives away lots of free space. By default, you only get 5GB free. But it is not uncommon for Box to hold temporary special offers. For example, you could get 50GB just for downloading the company’s smartphone or desktop app.

However, before you go completely loopy over the huge amount of free space, you should be aware. No file uploaded can be anymore than 250MB in size. So there are definite limitations to what can be stored.

SugarSync

Whenever someone writes a review of the best cloud storage services, one that keeps popping up time and time again is SugarSync. But since it is far from the cheapest service, and does not offer any free space whatsoever, it is difficult to understand what people see in it.

Once downloaded to your computer, SugarSync is accessed by a widget on your desktop. Drag a file onto the SugarSync widget and it will be uploaded to the cloud and to any other computers and devices that you specify.

Upon registering, you get 5GB free for 30 days to test the service. After 30 days, you need to switch to a paid plan. 100GB under the SugarSync plan costs $9.99 a month.

Bitcasa

cloud storage

Bitcasa is another service mentioned a lot, and with good reason. Users get 20GB free and then for $10 a month, you get one terabyte a year of storage. No, that isn’t a typo. For $99 a year (you get a discount if you pay yearly), you will get ten times the space of Dropbox. If that isn’t enough to get your attention, then nothing will.

If you opt to stick with the 20GB free plan, you can put Bitcasa on 3 devices. With all plans, you can stream high definition video, which is another plus for Bitcasa. And of course, all of your files are encrypted, so they are safe.

CrashPlan

CrashPlan is another cloud service plan touted by its fans.

After installing the software program (which comes for Windows, Mac, and Linux), you select a drive on your computer or the entire computer. Then let CrashPlan do its work. It will index the entire contents of the drive or computer. And when that’s done, it runs quietly in the background. It will continually synchronize your files to the CrashPlan servers, so you don’t have to worry about losing the only copy of your presentation.

What is interesting about CrashPlan is that you can use the software for free to backup your files to another of your computers in your office or home. You can also use it to backup to an external hard-drive. But if you want off-site backup, then you need to pay. Prices start from $6 a month for unlimited storage space. The prices go down if you buy several years worth in advance.

Mozy

cloud storage

Mozy is another cloud storage option with many users singing its praises. Mozy comes with all the usual bells-and-whistles you would expect from a cloud backup service. But one service that makes Mozy stand out is that, in the event of a full file restore, you can have the option to have all of your files sent to you on DVDs. Of course, you can have them all sent to you online too. But the option of receiving everything on DVD’s is an interesting one.

Another really interesting service being offered by Mozy is for customers with “hundreds of gigabytes of data” that need to be uploaded. Obviously the initial upload will take forever. So Mozy will send out what they call a “Mozy Data Shuttle.” It’s pretty much an external hard drive. Once you have uploaded your files to it, mail it back. And Mozy will feed your data onto its servers for you.

Ubuntu One

There’s one final cloud storage option on our list: Ubuntu One. And you would be forgiven for thinking that it is restricted only to Linux systems. But it isn’t. Users of all operating systems can use it – even iOS devices.

The one drawback with Ubuntu One is that you only get 5GB free. That’s not great if you stack it up against some of the other services profiled here. But what makes Ubuntu One stand out is that it includes streaming music and 20GB of storage for $3.99 a month. Ubuntu One also has an online music store. If you buy a song from their store, then you get 6 months free music streaming and 20GB free. Even the hard-working small business owner needs to relax sometimes and listen to some music.

If music streaming is not your thing, then Ubuntu One sells storage space in blocks of 20GB at $2.99 a month each. And if you buy 12 months worth, then you get 2 months free.

One thing you should remember. If you pay for these cloud storage services a year in advance, you can get discounts of between 10-15%. It’s something to bear in mind if you are counting the dollars and cents.

Have we missed your favorite cloud storage service?

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That Email From the IRS? It May Be Worse Than You Think

Posted: 10 Mar 2014 07:30 AM PDT

Tax Time Scams
How could it be worse?

It may not be from the IRS, but may instead be an attempt at identity theft, or to hack into your computer, or infect it with malware.

Cybercriminals will be targeting small businesses this tax season with a variety of tricks intended mainly to steal information.

Brian Burch, VP of Global Consumer and Small Business at Symantec, shares examples of the kinds of schemes you may see this year. He also shares tips on how to protect yourself and your business from falling prey to these methods. In a recent email on cyber threats during tax season, Burch explains:

“…at tax time, small businesses are especially lucrative targets for cybercriminals, particularly in the BYOD era where work and personal data is accessed on the same device, including bank records and sensitive emails.”

Experts at Symantec have identified a number of emails that are preying on small businesses this year. Here are three potential scams to watch out for this year as you prepare your tax returns:

Financial Trojans: These emails often leverage names of popular accounting software like TurboTax to make you believe it’s a helpful message. Instead, these emails entice you to click on links that may allow your financial credentials to be stolen.
Tax season phishing scams: These emails have an HTML file attached. If these attachments are opened, they’ll reside on your computer and capture sensitive financial information. They could not only compromise your business information but also the personal information of your employees, too.
Malicious threats like Cryptolocker: These are programs that encrypt files on your computer and hold them for ransom. Hackers often demand payments to unlock these files. And even when/if you do pay a hacker, the files may be lost forever.

Symantec urges vigilance at tax time for small businesses. Burch offers some tips for small business owners to avoid being hacked this tax season.

First of all, having internet security software is a must. But that’s not enough, Burch says. It’s also important to have a backup of your data prepared in the event of an attack or system crash. And when you’re ready to file your taxes, it’s important never to do it over a public network. Filing over a secure Internet connection is vital.

Burch also urges vigilance and to “be suspicious” of all incoming emails this time of year. This especially goes for any email from the IRS. It’s important to remember that the IRS will never email you or your business regarding taxes. And the agency won’t call you, either.

“Scammers are quite good at making emails and links look legitimate, and the most lucrative tax return schemes are based on identity theft, so ensure your email is truly sent from the advertised source before opening it.”

Some other tips that Burch offers are to password protect everything. Also, be careful when choosing passwords. This means not choosing “password” or your name as the key to access your data. Logging out of any application or site that requires personal information is another way to avoid having any information stolen. This is especially key if you’re using a shared computer or are on a public network.

Finally, if you’ve successfully avoided getting hacked through tax prep and filing, you don’t want to fall victim during the final step of the process. Symantec says getting your refund in direct deposit to your bank account is the safest practice.

Tax season scam: Shutterstock

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Fewer Students Plan to Become Business Owners

Posted: 10 Mar 2014 05:00 AM PDT

College students are more concerned with making money now than they were before the start of the Great Recession, research by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) at UCLA, reveals.

Maybe that’s self-evident.

But here’s a more surprising finding: The fraction of students intending to become business owners has also declined since 2007. That's troubling because Americans have generally believed that business ownership is an important path to financial success.

Between 2007 and 2012, the fraction of incoming college freshmen who consider "being very well off financially" to be an "essential" or "very important" goal rose from 74.4 percent to 81 percent, the "American Freshman" reveals.

The surveys show that the share of students reporting "business owner" as their probable career declined 24 percent between 2007 and 2009 as the economy sank under the weight of the financial crisis and Great Recession. The fraction has risen modestly since the economic recovery began, but its 2012 level was 15 percent below the 2007 mark.

Business ownership was not the only career objective to take a hit in recent years. Between 2007 and 2012, the fraction of students planning to become architects or urban planners dropped 44 percent; the portion intending to become secondary school teachers declined 40 percent; the slice planning to be elementary school teachers slid 34 percent; the portion aiming to become foreign service workers dropped 30 percent; the slice intending to become business executives slid 22 percent; and the fraction planning to become lawyer or judges went down by 19 percent.

As students shifted their career plans in response to the weak economy, plans for other occupations increased. The share of students reporting military service as their probable career rose 50 percent; the fraction indicating nursing increased 40 percent; the share planning engineering went up 39 percent; the fraction aiming to become physical, occupational and speech therapists rose 38 percent; the portion planning to become social, welfare or recreational workers increased 30 percent; the fraction intending to be computer programmers or analysts rose 18 percent; and the fraction aiming to be scientific researchers went up 16 percent.

The drop in the share of students intending to become business owners was much larger among men than women. According to the CIRP surveys, the percentage of male incoming students intending to become business owners declined from 5 percent in 2007 to 4.1 percent in 2012. By contrast, the share of female students planning to be in business for themselves slipped from 2 percent in 2007 to 1.9 percent in 2012.

The declines were present at most, but not all, types of academic institutions. A smaller fraction of students indicated that business owner was their probable career in 2012 than in 2007 at public four-year colleges; non-sectarian private four-year colleges; non-Catholic, religiously-affiliated four-year colleges; public universities; and historically Black colleges. However, the fraction of incoming freshmen at Catholic four-year colleges intending to become business owners rose from 3.0 to 3.2 percent between 2007 and 2012, while at private universities, the share of students planning a business ownership career rose from 2.9 percent in 2007 to 4 percent in 2012.

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The Power of Thinking Big, But Starting Small

Posted: 10 Mar 2014 02:30 AM PDT

think big act small

How did Google manage to come out of nowhere? And how did it grow to reach $58 billion in annual revenues in 2013 — all in under two decades?

There are many explanations for the company’s phenomenal growth. But one technique small businesses can learn from is the ability to think big, yet take small steps. Here’s how it works.

In a post from Google’s Think Insights, Google’s former Senior Vice President of Adwords and AdSense, now Senior Vice President at YouTube, Susan Wojcicki explains. The process starts with the company’s Eight Pillars of Innovation. One of those pillars, says Wojcicki, is “think big, act small.”

This means the company may have big ambitious goals. But it starts to achieve those goals by taking small steps, one at a time.

Wojcicki writes:

“No matter how ambitious the plan, you have to roll up your sleeves and start somewhere. Google Books, which has brought the content of millions of books online, was an idea that our Founder, Larry Page, had for a long time. People thought it was too crazy even to try, but he went ahead and bought a scanner and hooked it up in his office. He began scanning pages, timed how long it took with a metronome, ran the numbers and realized it would be possible to bring the world's books online. Today, our Book Search index contains over 10 million books.”

Can you imagine a billionaire scanning book pages? It seems an unlikely picture. But, with that kind of attitude, it’s not hard to see how Google has grown so big and so fast.

Do you have big goals in your business? Do they seem unimaginably far away and hard to obtain? Well, all you need to do is start one step at a time.

Rohit Arora, CEO and Co-Founder of Biz2Credit, tells us the key to achieving any resolution is to set small goals.

Rohit explains:

“Setting a goal of 50 percent growth in a year is noble, but it can be daunting. A smarter way is to plan smaller, more manageable and less overwhelming growth rates for each month of the year. By the time next December rolls around, the overall increase for the year may indeed be closer to the target.”

Start with where you want your business to be next month. You may be surprised at the results.

Think Big Photo via Shutterstock

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