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5 reasons you need a mobile website

Guest posted this in Small Business 500 on Friday, February 3rd, 2012.

This post by guest blogger Dawn Wentzell appears in our series Small Business 500.

Over the last year, mobile has become the hottest topic in marketing. Mobile payments, mobile ads, location-based marketing, QR codes, mobile websites … And you don’t have a mobile site yet? Here are 5 reasons you should:

1. Your users are mobile

With about 82 million smartphone users in the US, and another 8 million in Canada – chances are at least one of your customers has tried to access your website from a mobile device. You can check your website analytics to see how many mobile visitors you’re currently getting, but expect that number to increase as smartphone adoption increases.

2. No flash support

Flash is widely used on websites for animations, videos and effects. However, mobile devices have limited support for the technology. Apple has refused to support Flash on iOS devices, and the browsers on BlackBerrys and Windows Phones don’t support it either. In fact, Adobe, the creator of Flash, has decided to stop development of mobile Flash. If you use Flash for anything important on your company’s website, mobile users won’t be able to see that information. By creating a mobile-optimized website without flash, you’ll open the door to a whole new marketplace.

3. Mobile users have different expectations

Mobile users are frequently looking to get information quickly. They’re late for an appointment with you and need to find your phone number. They’re heading to the airport and need to check the status of their flight. Mobile websites should focus on the information that mobile users need to access immediately, and reduce or remove extraneous information.

4. Mobile users are unfaithful

Mobile users expect a comparable experience to viewing desktop websites. That’s not to say they want the same website, but they do expect sites to load quickly and give them the information they’re looking for. If your site doesn’t provide that, one third of users will go to your competitor instead. Serving your desktop website to mobile users won’t cut it.

5. Integrate with your offline marketing

Mobile is a great bridge between online and offline marketing. Seventy-one percent of smartphone users search for a product after seeing an ad for it, and usually immediately after seeing the ad. You no longer have to hope that person who saw your ad on the bus remembers it until they get access to a computer. Information retrieval is instant, so be sure you’re keeping up.

Fortunately, getting a mobile website doesn’t have to be difficult. There are agencies that specialize in mobile website design, or your current website provider may be able to help you out. Sites built on popular frameworks like WordPress or Drupal can download plugins and templates that will make them accessible to mobile users.

— Dawn Wentzell is a project manager at SpeakFeel Corporation. SpeakFeel is a Toronto-based agency that specializes in mobile app development for BlackBerry, iPhone and Android, as well as mobile marketing and website design.

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Introducing Wave Payroll

Kirk Simpson posted this in Inside Wave on Wednesday, February 1st, 2012.

Allow me to introduce to you (drum roll, please…) Wave Payroll!

While the original Wave developers have been focused on making a faster, better accounting application, we brought on an additional team, lead by Sean Walberg, to work on a payroll solution for small businesses. And today, we’re all proud parents, happily announcing the newest member of the Wave family.

Wave Payroll is a ridiculously easy, feature-rich payroll application for small businesses. And if you’re already a Wave Accounting customer, you’ll definitely see the family resemblance:

we took something hard and made it easy
we took something expensive and made it affordable
we took business tools used by big companies, and re-built them for small businesses like yours

In small business accounting, your enemies are shoeboxes of receipts, spreadsheets and clunky software. That’s where your pain comes from, so that’s where Wave Accounting comes to the rescue.

When it comes to payroll, the enemies are payroll calculators, government forms, check-writing and stress-inducing, time-sucking calculations and remittances. So now that’s where Wave Payroll comes to the rescue. Focused on small businesses with 9 employees or less, we’ve built an awesome payroll tool that you can use without being a payroll expert — a tool that lets you pay your employees with confidence.

Wave Payroll is only for Canadian businesses at the moment. Expect the U.S. version to launch later this year (you can visit WavePayroll.com now and add your name to the advance list).

Huge features, tiny flat-rate pricing

Wave Payroll costs a simple $3 per employee per payroll (and even less as your company grows). Simple as that. No setup charges, no hidden costs. And what you get is a pretty awesome list of features:

direct deposit
all your calculations done easily and correctly
withholdings and remittances to the government done automatically
tax forms and ROEs issued automatically (for the 2012 tax year)
electronic employee pay stubs
easy integration with Wave Accounting

…and a lot more.

The Wave team — accounting and payroll — is committed to helping you run your business. We want to make back-office tasks easy, so you can focus on what you do best. We’ll keep on working on Wave Accounting and Wave Payroll, making them better, adding features, and making your life easier. I encourage you to check out Wave Payroll and let me know what you think!

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System Update, Feb 1, 5:15

Sara Rosenfeld posted this in Uncategorized on Wednesday, February 1st, 2012.

We have issued a fix to the bank upload connection that our data provider was experiencing.

If you continue to experience any difficulties importing transactions, our support team is available to help at support@waveaccounting.com.

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System Update, Feb 1, 12:26 p.m.

Sara Rosenfeld posted this in System Updates on Wednesday, February 1st, 2012.

Some customers may have noticed difficulties while importing transactions from their banks into Wave. This is due to an issue our data provider is currently experiencing.

We’re currently working on a temporary solution, and are hoping to have a patch shortly.

We’ll be providing you with updates as soon as they become available, through Twitter as well as here. If you have any questions, our support team is available at support@waveaccounting.com.

Thank you for your patience, and our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

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Keeping Wave free, saving you more money!

Kirk Simpson posted this in Inside Wave on Sunday, January 29th, 2012.

Here’s the way we see things: Everyone likes saving money. So we love that we can provide Wave Accounting to you for free, and we have no intention of changing that.

We’ve also made it our mission to save you even more money by acting like your very own purchasing department. We track down great deals on products or services just for small businesses, and we make them available to you. You get a chance to save money, we get paid by the supplier, and Wave stays free! High fives all around.

And we’re talking about high-quality offers, too, often from big brands like American Express, Dell, Micrsoft and Capital One (offers vary depending on where you live). You’ll never see a flashing “Lose 5 Pounds in 5 Days” ad in Wave. Ever. For starters, we like you just as you are, but more importantly, we’d never waste your time like that. We’ll make sure the deals are for things that can help your business succeed, and put more money back in your pocket. We’ll also make sure our deals never get in the way of you doing your accounting.

Starting this week, you may see some additional deals advertised in Wave. The “Your Week in Numbers” email you probably get from us each Monday will now contain a special deal each week. You can also opt in to receive the brand new Wave Deals email, which will feature extra-special and exclusive offers, no more than a couple of times per month. (Not sure if you’ve opted in already? You can control your email preferences on your Account page.) And as always, there are dozens of deals on your Business Savings page, with new ones added every week.

I’ll also add that Wave never shares any information about individual customers with our advertisers. We might tell an advertiser, “We have 4,500 customers in the Portland area,” but we make sure that nothing personally identifiable ever leaves our hands. Your identity is never revealed. Your email address is never shared. Your individual spending and earning are never divulged.

We think this all makes for a great business model: Wave makes money while our customers save money. I hope you agree!

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