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The 9th Annual Small Business BC Successful You Awards are taking place in Vancouver on February 28th, 2012 at the Pan Pacific Hotel. 
Webnames.ca would like to congratulate Bill Tam for his new appointment as President & CEO of the BC Technology Industry Association (BCTIA) effective July 1, 2011. We would like to also wish outgoing President & CEO Pascal Spothelfer all the best as he returns to industry. 
As a board member of the Small Business Roundtable of British Columbia, I'm happy to announce the launch of the "Most Small Business Friendly Community" award. The award is geared towards local governments who are invited to compete and demonstrate how they have implemented measures to support local business and attract new small business investment to their communities. 
Do you own a .CA domain name? If so, you should know about some of the great initiatives coming out of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) lately.Once again the holidays are here, and it's hard not to think about anything but the sugar plumbs dancing in our head to the Hall and Oates rendition of the Jingle Bell Rock, or perhaps that's just me. For many families, however, this season is not lighthearted, nevermind an unlimited feast of Grandma's baking; instead the holidays become a reminder of all the things they're unable to provide to their families.
For the last 5 years Webnames.ca has been sponsoring "Christmas" or the equivalent for a low-income family through the Vancouver Salvation Army. This holiday season is no different. One of our core company values is to "always making a positive difference" and the holidays are a great time to experience the impact of simple activities that make a big difference.
Through the Adopt-a-Family program with the Salvation Army and Family Services, Webnames is sponsoring the family of a single mom and her three children. We will make a difference in their lives this holiday season by providing a Christmas hamper filled with vegetarian delights (as per the family's requests), and gifts for the children who are between the ages of 13 and 17. It's a simple process that offers a family who would normally wake up Christmas morning with little under the tree some cheer and basics many of us take for granted such as nutritious food, new clothing, small gifts and treats to carry them through the holidays into the New Year.
If your family or business would like to participate, it's not too late. We encourage you to register today and adopt your own family this holiday season. Click here for more information about what kind of items make up a hamper. Any questions about the Vancouver Salvation Army Adopt-a-Family program can be directed to Mark Touzeau: by email: adoptafamilyvfs@shawcable.com or phone: 604-872-7676.
Webnames.ca, as sponsor of the Regional BCIC New Ventures Competition, would like to congratulate the 20 businesses advancing to the final round of the competition. The Regional Competition is geared towards early-stage BC technology entrepreneurs based outside the Lower Mainland.
Similar to the province-wide competition that celebrated its 10th anniversary in September, the four-month, three-round regional competition includes a unique mix of business education, networking and mentoring. This year's regional competition attracted more than 40 applications from technology startups across BC.
The top 20 finalists include businesses in the life sciences, clean-tech, sustainability, new media and high technology sectors.
The top 20 companies will be matched with mentors and will attend a business education seminar in January. Each company will have a chance to present to a panel from February 9-11 in Victoria and Kelowna where they will convince a jury of venture capitalists, financiers and angel investors of the commercial viability of their business idea and that they have what it takes to succeed in the marketplace.
The winners of the 2010 Regional BCIC-New Ventures Competition will be announced February 24, 2011 at a reception in Kelowna. Prizes will be awarded as follows: $30,000 First Prize, $20,000 Second Prize and $10,000 Third Prize.
For disclosure purposes, I subscribe to every group coupon program that is available in Vancouver. I do this, not because I am cheap, but because I like to keep an eye on what is happening in the group couponing industry.
The business model for group buying should be: volume purchases of goods should allow the manufacturer to produce it more cheaply and then pass those savings onto the consumer.An example of this is books. The book store pays 40% less of the cover price for a book. If the book is $10, the book store pays $6 to the publisher. If a bookstore takes the book as non returnable, they get another 50% off or so.
If the book store is Amazon and they need a million copies of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", they call Penguin and say we want the book for $3 a copy for a million copies. Penguin then talks to their printer and for a million copies they can produce the book for $1 each copy so they say OK. Amazon then sells the book for $6 and everyone is happy, especially the consumer who did not have to pay the $12 cover price.
Groupon and their imitators, tend to offer group buying on services rather than goods. For the most part the coupons are for spas, laser hair removal, restaurants, fitness classes and local attractions. The deal is "on" when enough people have purchased the coupon. The coupon companies take up to 50% of the face value of the coupon.
Groupon says it is "a city guide, a social tool and the best way to experience your city without paying full price." It is unlikely that it matters to either the coupon company or the service provider if the deal sells to one person or to 250 people.
The service provider will not be able to benefit from scale of service as they have not been able to produce their service more cheaply and capitalize on volume. The benefit to the service provider is break even, coupons not being redeemed and advertising exposure to new customers. For many of the service providers it is a money loser.
Let's turn our attention now to you and me - the consumer. If you are savvy enough to have subscribed to Groupon, you have probably signed up for LivingSocial and Grooster and maybe a few others.
At this point however, coupon fatigue is setting in. Another mani/pedi deal? Another Laser Hair removal deal - how hairy do they think we are? More yoga deals in some difficult to get to location? As cheese shop and movie tickets deals get further and further apart, it is likely that we will see people unsubscribing and the sales begin to flatline and then fall off.
Where "service provider" couponing may be this year's big thing and next year's "no thing", group buying is a fantastic opportunity for companies that produce a consumer good.
Let's say you are a bike company like Norco, Brodie, Kona, Rocky Mountain or the always adorable, CCM from Canadian Tire.
You could offer your own group buying product - a 26 inch mountain bike with cromoly this and titanium that - for only $200 if 300 people plunk down their credit cards.
You can source that volume of parts for a much cheaper rate than you would normally get them for this bike that is specifically being made for this group. 4 weeks later you ship out the bikes to the new owners. The new owners got an awesome deal, you sold bikes that only cost you $50 to make for $200, and you did not have to give $100 to a coupon company.
Now that's the way group buying should work! It would be nice to see this alternative approach develop in 2011 and offer real value to both consumers and manufacturer-retailers alike.
Make sure to check out Lisa's last blog post, Retailers and Group Coupons - Should you participate? One Gal's Opinion, for more information on the Group Coupon Phenomenon.
(Above image from: http://www.letsdeal.se/)
There is big buzz on the internet these days about Geolocation. Wikipedia says:
"Geolocation is the identification of the real-world geographic location of an object, such as a cell phone or an Internet-connected computer terminal. Geolocation may refer to the practice of assessing the location, or to the actual assessed location."
From an internet marketing and mobile marketing aspect, geolocation is about identifying where you are and then filtering data so you get information that relevant to you.
Mobile apps such as FourSquare and Yelp utilize the GPS information from your cell phone to make recommendations about businesses around you.
Services such as Groupon (the group coupon phenom) have you choose the city that you want to receive deals from.
In the old days (last year or the year before), the country code domain extensions were one way to experience geolocation. When you go to bell.ca or sainsburys.co.uk you know which country that company is providing services for. .ca also had the ability to break the name down into provinces - sk.ca, bc.ca, on.ca and so on.
Now here's what I was thinking - let's take geolocation in domain names a step further. Let's say I have a small business in Portland or Vancouver. I have my .com or my .ca but I want to dominate my market. It would be nice to refine my location even further by using city names. But typing joesflowers.vancouver or decksrus.portland would drive most users bonkers.
I suggest that we take all those delightful airport codes that we know and love, and turn them into high performing domain extensions. Vancouver is YVR and Portland is PDX and that would give us Joesflowers.yvr and decksrus.pdx. Neat!
If you want to be the king of coffee for St. Anthony's Newfoundland then coffeeking.yay is the answer. Farnborough UK is your estate agencies patch? Priemierestates.fab is just the ticket.
So SFOites, YYZ peeps and JFKsters, stand up and say "I ♥ my airport code" and maybe ICANN will listen.
Webnames.ca listens to customer feedback and is always striving to be better at what we do and help you manage your online presence effectively. Below are answers to some frequently asked questions that keep coming up in conversations with you.
Too Many Passwords in General? Try Password Safe
Password Safe is free online, which we've mentioned in previous posts, I am mentioning it again because customers keep telling me about the difficulties they're having managing multiple passwords It allows you to store all your passwords securely. All you really need to remember is the password for the tool itself. Once logged into Password Safe, you can access all the details you stored by name. It even has a feature that will auto populate the fields so you don't need to type them.
Managing your Webnames.ca Services Passwords
Email - If you ever forget the password to your Webnames.ca Emails, there is a place in the Webmail settings where you can enter another email address. The next time you forget your email password, you can go to Pronto Webmail and click "Forgot your Password?", your password will then be sent to the alternate email account you specified.
Webhosting - If you forget the password to your Webhosting, there is now an option on your Webhosting Tab in your Webnames.ca account, that will re-send the password.
If you want help setting this up, call us! We're more than happy to guide you through it over the phone. 1--866-221-7878.
How Many Websites Do I need?
With Webnames.ca Webhosting, you can have one hosting plan, with several domains that are forwarded to it. For example, if yummybonbons.ca is hosted, and yummybonbons.com points to the .ca, the domains can all be forwarded to the home page or even to different sub-folders. Webnames.ca forwarder also allows you to grip the domain, which will keep the domain name showing in the address bar instead of the destination sub-folder (yummybonbons.ca can be forwarded to sweetsweetcandy.com/FR/, when gripping is used the address bar will show http://yummybonbons.ca so in effect, you can have a website under both names. **Note that some websites require features that are only available with specific plans.
With Webnames.ca Web Builder you can only have one website per plan. Some customers have mistakenly purchased our GOLD Web Builder for extra pages, their intent being to have half of their website in French (with Web Builder having the language built in, you can only choose French or English, not both). If you are looking to have a bilingual site, I suggest getting two separate domains and a smaller Web Builder plan, it will not only cost less, but also be clearer for both your English and French speaking customers.
When You Outgrow Web Builder
Webnames.ca Business Standard Hosting: For a lot of individuals, organizations and small businesses Web Builder is a great website solution; we realize however that sometime people want more flexibility and are eager to learn how to manage their own websites, taking advantage of the vast resources and tutorials available online.
If this is your case, we've been reccommedning Webnames.ca Business Standard Hosting with a fresh install of WordPress. If you get decide to purchase that hosting package we will install WordPress for you free of charge. After WordPress has been installed it is up to you to manage it. For ideas, how-to's and cupport, you can check out the extensive WordPress forums. http://wordpress.org/support/
For more information about the above Webnames.ca services, try our comprehensive FAQ section. If your question isn't answered there, don't hesitate to call us at 1-866-221-7878.
