POSWizard

By Robert Hadley

Robert Hadley is a business reporter. Robert blogs via Contently.com.

In today’s app-centric world, it’s not enough for your browser to simply serve as an on-ramp to the Internet.

And why should it? Just as it’s good practice to ask your vendors to help you use their products and services to make your business more efficient, it’s also a good idea to demand more functionality from your browser.

Fortunately, Google Chrome is up to the challenge, offering an army of apps and extensions that can make the day-to-day operations of your retail business more efficient. 

I’ve listed five must-have apps for the small business retailer below.

1. Terapeak Sales Reports for PayPal

If you have an online storefront that processes transactions using PayPal, this app is a must. It’s free and can generate a number of helpful reports, including sales and product trends, fee history, profitability comparisons, and track and filter eBay or Etsy data.

It also lets you graph the success of marketing campaigns from within the app, rather than having to import to a spreadsheet. This free app received a four-star rating (out of five) on Chrome’s app store based on the ratings of nearly 350 users.

2. Wave Accounting 

Promising to let users “send invoices and track expenses like a pro,” Wave Accounting’s free app lets you manage your bank and credit card accounts by enabling automatic downloads of transaction data.

The app allows multiple users, such as an owner, accountant and bookkeeper simultaneous access to data, and facilitates tracking for multiple businesses and personal accounts. Based on user ratings, this app received 4.5/5.0 stars.

3. Web-based Time Clock

Most companies that employ hourly workers should have some form of online timesheet that lets them maintain payroll records.

Web-based Time Clock from Punchedin.com offers the flexibility of tracking employees’ time in an environment that is both secure and accessible.

Being cloud-based, the payroll records are stored online, and workers can log in from any PC with this app installed in the Chrome browser.

Base pricing is $129 per month, and there is a surcharge based on how many employees you have. For 50 or more employees, the surcharge is $0.40; for zero to nine workers, it’s $0.65, with tiers in between.

4. Barcode Generator

There’s no better way to track inventory and sales than barcodes, and even though their newer siblings, QR codes, are all the rage right now, conventional barcodes are still useful if you have the equipment to scan them.

This app makes it easy to generate one barcode at a time, or run a sequence of codes with beginning and ending values you specify.

Not only can you create barcodes in different formats, such as Code 128, Code 39 and others. You can also create QR codes with this program.

5. Google Calendar

We all need a calendar, right? Google’s web-based calendar lets employees log in and see upcoming sales, holidays, training events, etc.

Click the Agenda tab and you’re instantly viewing a list of major holidays — convenient for planning upcoming sales and promotional tie-ins.

The app isn’t really standalone (you have to be logged in to your Google account to use the full feature set), but it works seamlessly and lets members of your group share information.

These five Chrome apps offer a handy toolset to speed up some of the common tasks retailers need done — right from within your browser.

This suite of software is sure to automate payroll, accounts receivable and time management tasks, freeing you for the more important tasks at hand.

By Dan Rafter

Dan Rafter is a freelance writer and editor with 15 years of journalism experience. Dan blogs via Contently.com.

You believe in the power of social media. And you know that by using Facebook you can boost the number of clients for your independent beauty salon, convince more people to sign up for your lawn service and encourage more customers to stop in your bakery to buy your famous chocolate-chip cookies. One way to do all of this is to experiment with Facebook Ads.

You might notice when you log onto your Facebook page or visit someone else’s that there are small ads running alongside the messages or newsfeeds. These are what Facebook Ads look like. If you own a small business, you can use Facebook Ads to create ads for your own venture that run on the Facebook pages of your friends, family members, customers and, most importantly, potential future customers. You want people to come to you and purchase your services or products because they’ve clicked on your ad.

Here’s how it works: First, log onto the home page of Facebook Ads. Here you’ll find a pretty comprehensive look at how this marketing tool works.

The key, as Facebook explains, is to first determine your advertising goals. Do you want to promote a particular event, such as a half-price sale at your independent clothing boutique? Or do you want to advertise the arrival of a new brand of pants at the same boutique? Maybe you simply want to direct people to your website. 

Once you know what you want your ads to do, it’s time to aim for the right audience. Facebook allows you to target potential customers by age, gender, location, language, birthday. and likes and interests. For instance, if you run a small camping goods store, you can tell Facebook to send your ads to residents of the United States who are 20 to 60 years old and who have listed “camping” and “hiking” among their likes. The more specific you can be, the better your ads will perform.

The next step is to design an ad. Facebook recommends that you keep your ads simple and straightforward, and that you provide people with clear instructions about what to do once they see your ad. For instance, if you want potential customers to order ebooks from your marketing company, your ad should say something like “Click here to see a full list of our ebooks.” When customers click, they should be taken immediately to your inventory of electronic books.

Next comes the most challenging part: paying for your ads. You can elect to pay for your ads on a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) basis. With CPC, you’ll pay a fee each time someone clicks on your ad. With cost per impression, you’ll pay a fee every time 1,000 people view your ad.

How much you pay depends on what you bid. For instance, you might tell Facebook that you’re willing to pay $1.50 every time someone clicks on your ad or $2 every time one of your ads nabs 1,000 views. Be careful when bidding, though. The minimum bid Facebook allows on a CPC basis is .01 cents a click. The minimum for CPM is 0.02 cents for every 1,000 views. But if you bid too low, most pages won’t display your ad. Your goal is to bid high enough — but not too high — to make sure that your ads will show up on as many pages as possible.

You’ll also set a daily budget for your Facebook ads. If your budget is $150, your ads will stop appearing once you receive enough clicks or impressions to hit that number.

Facebook Ads is an effective tool for spreading the word about your business. Best of all, it’s simple to set up. So start exploring. The sooner you get your ad going, the sooner you’ll see results.

As a small business owner, you’re always looking for new ways to connect with your customers via social networking. There’s now yet another possible avenue thanks to Path, the social journal for smartphones created by former Facebook employee Dave Morin.  This site’s app for both iPhone and Android has a small town feel with an emphasis on the quality of your network rather than the quantity. 

Each Path page is formatted like a timeline, allowing you to post comments, pictures and locations as they happen. The application also offers an Automatic feature, which updates your location as you move from place to place. 

Calling Path a social journal is no mistake. Not only are you capped at 150 friends, but it lacks the stark, business-like layout of both Facebook and Google+. The Path layout feels more personal thanks to a cover photo of your choosing which displays at the top of your page, as well as a smaller profile picture that appears in a bubble shape each time you post on your timeline. The lack of friend lists, social circles and networks gives your Path page the vibe of a personal blog, rather than a social networking site. 

Posting on Path is easy. Simply click on the plus symbol at the bottom left corner of your page to post music, photos, comments and your location. All of the above can also be posted on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare via Path. Going to sleep? Click the moon icon to show your friends you’re offline for the evening without logging out. 

While you can comment on friend’s posts and pictures just like on other social networking sites, Path also offers a variety of comment icons like a heart or a surprised face. This detail is great because it’s much more personal than the “Like” option on Facebook. Although for some, the cute quotient may be too high. 

This all makes Path a great choice for solo entrepreneurs without a store, looking to keep a small client base updated on new products, retail locations and special deals. However, when it comes to small or medium-sized businesses, it’s not the best way to get the word out. The site is fairly new, with only about 1 million users, and the friend cap keeps your audience small. 

Instead, small businesses may want to consider using Path as a way to keep employees in the loop. The timeline layout as well as the site’s online journal quality is a great way to keep staff in touch with each other and updated on daily happenings, new stock, policy changes and meetings, without all of the extra distractions that sites like Facebook and Google+ provide. 

By Simit Patel

Simit Patel is a trader, writer, and technology entrepreneur. Simit blogs via Contently.com.

A “door buster” is a loss leader. The idea is to sell a product at or below cost, as a way of getting customers into your store. The expectation is that customers will then purchase additional goods and services that are selling at a higher profit margin. From this perspective, door busters can be a winning marketing tool to help businesses grow their customer base and increase their profits. 

Sadly for merchants, though, door busters don’t always work. Some people only purchase the loss leader, and don’t return, so there are no purchases of additional goods or services to generate profits for the business. Door busters, in these cases, can actually be dangerous, as companies take losses that they may have failed to foresee.  

There are ways to get the most out of door buster strategies, through. Here are three easy and effective tactics store owners can use to both bring in and build business.

Make your door buster deals social

The concept of happy hour in bars is perhaps the quintessential example
of a social door buster, and one that has worked well enough to have
succeeded for decades across generations and cultures. 

To make your door busters social, make your promotion an event so
people will be happy to come, and bring friends or colleagues as well.

Make upselling easy

Restaurateur Cary Friedman found that a door buster he ran was his most successful advertising venture in his more than 29 years of owning a food service business. The key to the success was that his menu made it easier to upsell dessert on the discounted main courses.

Amazon is now using its new tablet computer, the Kindle Fire, as a door buster to draw customers into the Amazon system. Once purchased, it’s making it as easy as possible for buyers to use the tablet to buy additional products. 

Find recurring customers 

Door busters can also be a successful way to secure recurring customers. When planning a door buster deal, it makes sense to know who your ideal customer is, and then, what makes that customer come back when there is no deal available. Applying that information to a special sale will ensure its success.

Merchants who do the necessary market research, and  structure their offers to provide additional sales in conjunction with the door buster deal, as well as return sales from purchasers of loss leader items, will find this an effective way to do business. They’ll penetrate new markets and increase their share of the customer’s spend.