eCommerce
Business Name Change Helpful Hints
What’s in a name? err, well, what’s in changing a name?
If you’ve been living in a cave you may not be aware that we recently launched OutdoorPros.com. Ok, given the budget for our PR blitz you may get a pass on being up to speed with our new site. There’s lots to discuss related to the strategy behind this new venture and the execution of our plan, but I’d like to boil this post down to one of the more practical aspects of this step in our growth.
When our plans to launch into a new industry began to take shape my mind quickly began running through some of the ancillary components of the effort. Sure, we needed to build the site, establish supply, prepare marketing campaigns, and so forth, but we also needed to decide how to organize our business entity, finances, accounting, and banking around two, at that time distinct, businesses.
Long story short, we ultimately decided to create a parent company to house our various website businesses. This decision combined with other factors has thrust us into the throws of upgrading our accounting system, changing banks, and establishing financial and operational reporting and metrics at the parent and child organizational levels.
Wow, that’s a long intro to present a few tips I hope are helpful if you find yourself in a position to change your business name. You see, in the midst of all these dominoes, one task was to change our name and form the parent/child entities.
Our business machine has been chugging along for a while now and when I dove into our files titled “business formation”, “operating agreement”, “meeting minutes”, “business license”, etc. I quickly found myself in a pile of paperwork. After having plowed my way through, with much help from fellow blogger Ellen, we nursed our paper cuts and got the process completed. So, without further ado, here are the steps/tidbits presented in the order we attacked the change:
- Make sure you can secure the necessary domain names and do so. This is obvious to the online community by now. If you can’t get the domain names, and I’m not talking about some slightly off version of them, pick a different name.
- Depending on the type of business entity you have, ours is an LLC, it may be wise to document the meeting minutes when members voted to accept the motion to change the company name. Along these lines, this would be a good time to challenge your business type given that the new name may represent significant changes. It may be time to grow out of that sole proprietor status and into a single member LLC, or an S-Corp. Consult your attorney and accountant; we certainly did before deciding to stick with the LLC.
- Consider updating any Operating Agreement or Partnership Agreement you may have. We were able to add a simple addendum to make the name change. It’s a simple process and can keep the flow of changes well documented and straight forward.
- And the fun part… here is an overview of some agencies we dealt with to make the change, as a California LLC:
- We filed with the Secretary of State to change the name of the LLC to the new parent company name.
- We were able to keep our existing Federal Employer Identification Number (EIN) but needed to change the name.
- We were able to keep our existing State Employer Identification Number (SEIN) with the Employment Development Department (EDD) but needed to change the name.
- We filed for Fictitious Business Names, or DBA’s, in the name of the parent company and the two sites we currently operate with the new parent company as the registrant.
- We filed for a business license in each Fictitious Business Name.
- We updated our seller’s permit with the Board of Equalization.
- Finally, plan a fun afternoon of errands. The county building, the city building, the post office, some shady underground newspaper company that writes your credit card number on a post-it with a crayon, and you are done!
Well, done with that task. Now its merchant accounts, credit lines, POS integration, and QuickBooks vs. Peachtree. Hope this sparks some ideas and reminders. And of course, let me know if I missed anything! (I’ll blame it on Ellen, as the company fall girl she’s used to that.)
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Google Hacks: Pacman graph with Google Charts
This link was cool, but it generates a graph like this:
With a little modification, I made this graph:
I like my picture a little better. It was quite simple to make this diagram, and Google provides a free graph-drawing tool that you can use on your…
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Google Shaking Up URLs in Search Ads?
While in London this week, Jason Billingsley spotted something different in Google search results.
If you look closely, you’ll notice the display URL in Adwords ads are above the ad copy, not below. Ad copy also appears on the same line as the displ…
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Internship Adventures: The Value Proposition
One of the more interesting adventures I have had at work recently has been setting up and managing our six (yes count them six) new interns. While we have had internship programs at our company in the past, it has never been at this scale. Previous programs were simply for benefit of the students who wanted to learn and gain experience, and to support local universities. This is by far the most interns we have had at one time. I am a big fan of internships, having completed two of them myself when I was in college. I think they can provide a great deal of real world experience and they look good on a resume, not to mention they provide inexpensive labor to the company.
The first issue that will arise in putting together an internship program is actually getting interns. Sometimes posters around a college campus or a spot at the local job board is simply not enough. Lucky for us we have Tim, one of our managing partners, who happens to teach part time for a local University. This provides our company with a great avenue to spread the word and wrangle interns for our company.
The second issue is making sure potential interns understand the value proposition and what kind of internship your company offers. This starts with the company itself and the development of the program. It's important for interns to gain something besides a note on their resume. Interns can be integrated into many aspects of a businesses and provide cheap or free labor in return for real world experience, industry knowledge and sometimes college credit. All of which can be leveraged as great value propositions when trying to attract interns.
It's important to also give some thought as to what jobs or projects might be best suited for interns in your business. Some jobs might require too much experience, knowledge or training and others might be to simple or mundane. In our latest internship program, we are training our interns in several aspects of search, marketing, data, content creation and management. We then let them create content for our websites learning centers while teaching them why content creation is important. Finally, we are tracking their progress. They will also be helping with other SEO, marketing and product data related projects as the need arises and as they express interest in different areas of our business. They have already begun some of their work on both the PlumberSurplus.com Learning Center and the OutdoorPros.com Learning Center with work on our Knife Buying Guide and BlackHawk Videos. They have also started on manufacturer descriptions such as Gerber Knives and Moen and they will continue to fill out both of those content rich areas of our websites.
A couple of areas to be mindful of for an internship program is management and se tup. If possible it can be a good idea to spread out your interns throughout multiple departments making it so that one person does not bear the brunt of the management or organization. If that is not something that you want to do, getting them to come in at the same time or on the same days can also help. Getting everything setup for the interns ahead of time, such as the list of projects, any paperwork, training and computers can be key so that time is not wasted and your interns can start off on a good foot at your business.
While the interns still have several weeks to go, everything seems to be going well and they are expressing interest and getting excited about many aspects of our business. In closing, remember to never forget that an internship program can also be a great recruiting tool, not only are they great for all of the items mentioned above but they go far beyond the standard interview so that the company gets a better idea of a persons work ethic and personality for potential future hire.
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Zappos Secret SEO Sauce For Branded Pages
This isn’t a new topic here at Get Elastic, but since search engine optimization is such a key part to ecommerce success I’m going to bang the same drum once again on optimizing for brand names.
Zappos appears to have covered all the bases and then…
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Going Green: Five Things to Consider When a Vendor Offers Their Green Product Line
“Going Green” when purchasing products is one of the new crazes sweeping the United States. Energy and environment friendly is the main focus of the product offering. Especially in e-Commerce, with such a diverse consumer base, there are many aspects of the ‘green’ offering that must be considered. Even though it is likely that sales for ‘green’ products will be plentiful, there are several questions to ask your vendor before adding them to your offering. Here are a few:
- What is the specification that is met that allows this product to be considered ‘green’? How will you advertise or note which specification is met?
- Where does the demand for this product come from (i.e. How is it energy or environmentally friendly)?
- Does the product require any additional compliance or registration that you need to ensure the customer is aware of?
- Is there any additional benefit for your company in selling this product (i.e. Does your company get a write off or a return because it has a green offering)?
- Is there any local reward or reimbursement programs that your customer would be eligible for? How are you going to convey those promotions?
While it is tempting to rush into current trends, even in e-Commerce, methodical, disciplined and thoughtful steps must be taken before jumping on the band wagon. If a vendor approaches you to sell their green products, be aware of any and all possible restrictions or standards that are now going to be applied to your company. Be cautious of additional costs or regulations that your customers might be subject to that they should be aware of. Also, it is very important to understand why the product is considered ‘green’, what product it is replacing and how that information is going to be presented to the customer in an understandable manner.
Of course, there are many other questions to ask a potential vendor that are not listed, but these will get you started in your effort to Go Green!
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Why Innocent Emails Get Flagged As Spam
Bryan Eisenberg recently wrote a great post on email conversion that included some tips for avoiding spam filters from Yasifur Rahman.
I noticed that a Musician’s Friend email got trapped in my Spam box in Gmail, so I referred back to this post to …
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Email Marketing Trend: Animated Gifs
One of my favorite blogs, RetailEmail.Blogspot.com, faithfully follows hundreds of email marketing campaigns to compile useful trend data and showcase the best (and worst) of email design and subject lines.
One of the most interesting tags to surf is t…
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What Do Customers Really, Really Want?
Alan Rimm-Kaufman was kind enough to videoblog the concepts covered by his panel at the recent Shop.org conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Alan was presenting on how to be customer centric in paid search marketing.
Alan presents in his slide deck a nu…
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Call To Action Buttons - Does Size Matter
Call To Action Buttons - Does Size Matter? - Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog
(tags: toread wow e buttons ecommerce marketing)
BBC NEWS | In Pictures | In pictures: Mobile design competition
Royal College of Art students were set the challenge of designing a mobile phone to “outperform, outsmart, and outmanoeuvre everything on the market”.
(tags: mobile design wow)
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