We're proud to announce CRLunchDeals, a new service we helped create with some friends here in Cedar Rapids. The service is a simple way to find out about all the best Cedar Rapids lunch specials each day and will also include exclusive coupons for some of the most popular lunch spots in town. We came up with the idea because we're always looking for new places in town to grab lunch and wished there was one place we could go to find out what's out there.  We also love to save money! The service is completely free for users who want to find deals and local businesses who want to list their specials.  Berry Web Labs did all the design and development for the website and the email marketing program.

Check out the website, crlunchdeals.com to sign-up and receive the specials each day.  The best part is that you can get them through email, facebook or twitter, whatever works best for you.

Gone are the days when visitors to your web site were using just a handful of browsers and all you had to do was make sure it worked in Internet Explorer and maybe a few others.  Today there are many more browser versions, each having their own nuances and quirks on how they display your site.  Visitors are also accessing your site from an ever-increasing variety of devices like phones, netbooks, tablets, iPads and other handheld devices.  So as a web site owner how can you possibly make sure all these visitors have the same experience when using your site?  The short answer is… you can’t.

The US Small Business Association and Google recently partnered to develop a series of videos focussed on helping local small businesses succeed online.  Each video describes how local businesses can use the internet to grow their business and provide great online experiences for their customers.  These videos are a great way to get yourself thinking about ways you can use the web to improve your business results.

The videos cover the following topics: 

• Establish your online presence
• Display imagery on your website
• Engage customers with a website
• Interact with you community using free marketing
• Promote using free online marketing
• Educate your customers using free marketing
• Grow with paid online advertising
• Measure results with web analytics
• Google and the Small Business Administration

You can checkout the videos here: http://www.google.com/help/places/partners/sba/index.html

A few months ago Google launched a new service called Google Voice.  I've been using it for a while now and think it has great potential for small businesses.  Here's the basics of how it works.  First, you pick a Google Voice number.  They have numbers available on area code in most places.  The service can be configured to ring any combination of phones when an incoming call is received.  For example, my Google Voice number could be setup to ring my work phone and my cell phone anytime someone calls.  You can also setup rules telling Google Voice to ring different phones based on the time of day, the individual who's calling or what contact group the caller belongs to.  The service also provides configurable voice mail so you can have different messages depending on who's calling.  One of my favorite features is voice mail transcription allowing you to check your voice mails online, have them sent to your email or text them to your mobile phone.  Those are just a few of the features provided by Google Voice.  Check out the video below for an overview of the service.

A lot of time and money can go into creating and maintaining a good web site. As a business it makes sense to question whether the value delivered by your web site exceeds the cost of maintaining it.  But how can you measure the value delivered by your web site? The first step is to start collecting information about the activity of visitors to your site. Then use that data to measure the quantity and quality of visitors and if their behavior is consistent with your goals.   For example, if the goal of your site is to generate leads using a contact form then you can measure how many visitors look at the form, how many complete it and ultimately what percentage of those become customers. This process is known as "web analytics" and  can help you make much more informed decisions when investing in your web site.

I bet you're thinking "web analytics sounds great but it must be expensive and complicated "?