ApprovedIndex Blog

In the age of online marketing a business website is a make or break feature. Done well it can capture your intended audience's attention and draw them into a relationship with your brand. Done badly it can turn off a potential customer in record time. And with platforms like Drupal and Wordpress making web design and development accessible to the masses there really isn't any excuse for doing it badly.

This month we've scoured the Approved Index directory to find the very best examples of B2B websites. All of our 400+ active suppliers were in contention and over the next few weeks we'll be presenting the very finest examples of online customer interaction from the following sectors:

• Office Equipment
• Business Services
• Automotive
• Training
• Construction Equipment

and finally, the incredibly competitive categories of

• Marketing
• Internet Services

Approved Index suppliers are, in general, a pretty web savvy bunch so the standards have been high and most categories have presented a very hard decision.

The translation: you shouldn't be downhearted if you're an Approved Index supplier and didn't get an award. To double the amount of website love we can dish out though we'll also highlight an honourable mention in each category.

The Judging Criteria

We'll give full reasons for each of our decisions in the award announcement post but in the interests of transparency here's what we were looking for in our search for the best supplier websites of 2012.

At Approved Index we're all too familiar with the nexus that exists between buyer and seller and what can go wrong in that oh so delicate zone both at initial contact and in subsequent steps of the buying process. The website should present as few hurdles to the potential customer as possible while providing all the support and information they need to get them through the conversion process.

Design - A good customer facing website should make the presentation of information a priority. The layout should be clear and provide your users with everything they need while still being easy on the eye.

Navigation - Users should be able to work out easily how to get to the information they need and be able ot navigate there quickly.

Contact Options - The more ways you give your customers to connect with you the better - some people are more comfortable ringing in while others like to email. An online form can be the perfect solution in many an instance but leave users feeling cut off in others.

Content - Whether in the form of text, audio, video or pictures, content is king. No matter what your business does the visitors to your website can be described as looking for one thing and one thing only - information. A great business website provides as much information to its users as possible and always makes sure that the content is engaging, relevant and satisfies visitors' neds.

Pizazz - The least important factor to us but one which can make the difference between a really good website and a great one. If you can not only provide your visitors with a great looking, content paked, easy to use website with tons of options for following up but also do it with style and personality then you are truly a master of the B2B web.

The Announcements

Will begin tomorrow, so keep an eye out.

First up... Office Equipment.

This is exciting!

With the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (or JOBS) Act having just passed in Washington, the drumbeat for cutting regulations for SMEs in the UK is reaching a deafening volume.

This recent article in the Birmingham Post has university professor Francis Green opining that "the total burden of business regulations on small business is excessive". He cites the fact that a small business spends, on average, £15,000 on employment tribunals (interestingly there's no time-frame for that average - is it over one year? Ten? Who knows - he doesn't give a source).

Many other proponents of regulatory roll-backs are joining in the chant - not least the UK government themselves who, not content with mere deficit cutting, can't wait to hear your red tape slashing suggestions.

So what's the real story? Are the UK's small businesses really drowning in a sea of red tape? Do they face too many regulations? Are those regulations the cause of stifled growth or is there perhaps another, larger millstone hanging around the neck of the UK economy?

58 Separate Regulations

That's how many rules a company with seventeen workers would have to comply with according to the Better Regulation Executive. I couldn't find the source for that statistic, also cited by Francis Green in the article above so I'can't provide a list, but let's assume that the figure is correct.

I'm sure you'll agree that it's reasonable to say that most of those 58 regulations are concerned with registering your company, conducting health and safety assessments and putting in place any H&S requirements as well as paying corporation tax, payroll tax and national insurance contributions.

No one but the most die-hard libertarian would argue that all these regulations have to be in place - a business has to be registered, has to pay taxes on its earnings and employee wages and has to not endanger the safety of its workers. The last one will invite contention for sure, but even if health and safety regulations were relaxed would you really want to bear the full liability for any accidents or injuries that took place on your premises? The laws aren't just there to protect employees after all.

So what's left? What I would argue are the real targets of the whole red-tape cutting brigade - employment laws. In fact most proponents make no bones about this and indeed increasing the period of time after which an employee can claim unfair dismissal from one to two years ha salready made it into law. It is claimed that such legislation will promote growth by allowing employers longer to decide whether a member of staff is worth keeping on.

But do employers really need that long? Or is this legislation merely aimed at making it easier to sack staff when the economy hits the rocks again? Is the reason that small to medium sized businesses can't achieve growth down to heavy legislation or is there a deeper cause to this problem?

4 Year Credit Crunch

The following chart shows how bank lending to SMEs, and small businesses in particular collapsed after the credit crunch and hasn't recovered since (in fact, for small businesses it continues to decline).

(Credit to Ripped Off Britons for the image)


This is despite project Merlin under which banks were forced to promise to lend £190bn to businesses during 2011 (including £76bn to small firms) - a promise on which they promptly reneged, forcing the government to promptly pretend they'd never made them promise in the first place.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, if you run an SME you'll know that you can make as many expansionary plans as you like, plot as much growth as you fancy and it will all come to nothing without the credit to finance it. Without finance businesses can't invest in new staff, new technologies or greater amounts of raw materials, no matter how many regulations are cut.

The Penny Drops

What the UK government is entering into is a race to the bottom. By refusing to take the banks in hand and instead attacking their own laws for protecting not only employees but their own tax revenues they're setting themselves up in opposition to other sovereign governments also trying to attract regulation (and tax) avoiding larger firms. And who among those larger firms are the ones constantly threatening to up sticks and leave for less regulatory heavy jursidictions? Oh yes, the banks themeselves.

Don't be fooled - red tape isn't being cut to help you grow your business. It's being done to make life easier for multi-national financial corporations. These are the very same businesses who are responsible for the current obstacles to economic growth - through the reckless lending and speculative activity that led to the credit crunch and record levels of private and public debt.

So the next time someone asks you to participate in a Red Tape cutting public consultation ask yourself, in the words of Roman consul and Censor Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla "cui bono?"

It's probably not you.

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If you're investigating non-bank forms of funding for your SME then be sure to check out invoice factoring - where you post your unpaid invoices as collateral against credit. It's more expensive than bank loans but can be a quick way to inject vital capital into your business expansion plans.

As you will no doubt already know the Royal Mail last week anounced a big hike in the price of stamps and, therefore, in the cost of sending unfranked mail.

(If you didn't know you can read all about it here.)

On the face of it the increases of 30% and 39% respectively in the cost of 1st and 2nd class stamps would seem like a real boost for franking machine companies. As the cost of franked mail is increasing by only a few pence on single letters, surely SMEs all over the place will be rushing to lock in the savings that franking machines provide?

So far, so obvious - and the sheer volume of franking machine activity on the web over the past few days would seem to bear this hypothesis out. But longer term, what will be the impact on physical mail? Are franking machine suppliers really going to benefit from escalating mail prices or will it sound the death knell of their industry?

Could we in fact see a backlash against the use of post, with many companies who before would never have considered going digital being forced into it by the heavy hand of the Royal Mail and OfCom?

The first clues to such a backlash crop up in articles like this in Post & Parcel:

Dismay at "toothless dog" Ofcom over Royal Mail Price Hike

In which several parties, notably the Direct Marketing Association and the Forum of Private Business criticise the price rises and suggest that they "will drive more and more businesses away from mail to cheaper alternatives, which is concerning as mail volumes are already declining year on year." (DMA)

There are also concerns that users will abandon 1st class mail altogether leading to further hikes in the price of 1st class to keep it profitable:

"The quickest way for the Royal Mail to decline further is by pricing businesses out of their service. The costs of business are already high. There needs to be some respite not further crude hikes." (FPB)

And does this puff-piece in Link2Portal contain a note of despair from Pitney Bowes - old enough and large enough to detect a black eye for their own industry?

Rocketing postal rate will require SME rethink, warns Pitney Bowes

The quote in question: "Although digital communications undoubtedly have their place, traditional print campaigns are still critical for most businesses and are likely to remain so for many years to come."

Only time will tell...

 

Should the Oscars have a category for 'Best Performance by a Piece of Office Equipment in a Motion Picture'? No. Of course not. That would be ridiculous. Nevertheless, some of our favourite Hollywood movies contain pivotal roles from normally innocuous office products.

How many of the following five photocopier/fax cameos do you remember? 

(Warning: Here be spoilers. If you haven't seen a film in the last ten years then go and read something else.)

1. Best Death: Office Space

Some would argue the quintessential photocopier scene. Mike Judge's 1999 satire about three disgruntled office workers who decide to rip off their company via complex accounting fraud features what is probably the goriest movie death for a piece of electronic equipment since the T-101 decided to take a nap underneath an hydraulic press. The three colleagues take long sought after revenge against the MFP for ruining their long days by taking it out into the middle of nowhere and taking turns to pummel it into the dirt - all set against a Geto Boys soundtrack.

Tagline: Work sucks (but a lousy copier sucks more)

      2. Best Character Introduction: Fight Club

The sinister photocopier again emerges as a symbol of white collar frustration and pent up corporate drone angst in David Fincher's seminal 1999 study of the modern male psyche. The narrator works for an insurance company and sees his life stretching out before him devoid of possibility - in order to liven things up he subconsciously creates an alter ego - the exotically amoral Tyler Durden. Before meeting Tyler for the first time we see, through the narrators eyes, subliminal glimpses of his soon to be unleashed dark side - single frames containing out of focus Tylers in the background. The first of these occurs while the narrator watches his colleague operate a photocopier.

Tagline: On long enough timeline the survival rate for every HPLJ9050 drops to zero.

      3. Best Interrogation: The Wire

Okay, it's not a movie but it is HBO, so close enough, yeah? The urban myth of the police faking lie detector tests on ignorant suspects is an old one but in series five, episode one of what is probably the greatest cop drama of all time it's given a new twist. Dapper dressing Bunk Moreland tapes his frightened witnesses hand to a photocopier's glass plate in order to verify his answers. "The machine never lies, son" says Moreland to his terrified mark, who promptly confesses.

Tagline: Read between the lines. (Or maybe just clean your print head) 

      4. Best Causality Paradox: Back to the Future Part II

You'd have thought that where they were going, they wouldn't need faxes. Apparently you'd be wrong. When Marty McFly finds himself in his own living room 20 years in the future in Robert Zemeckis' 1989 sci-fi comedy sequel he sees his future self getting fired by his then  boss for being goaded into a dodgy business deal by his friend Needles ("nobody calls me chicken!"). The message comes through on several faxes placed in Marty's, now I come to think of it, suspiciously 80's looking living room. But all is not lost - at the end of Part III, back in 1985, (the two films were shot together and intended as a single cohesive story) McFly overcomes his tendency towards proving his courage which ensures that he'll keep his mundane future job (?) and the message disappears.

Tagline: He was never in time for his classes... He was never in time for his dinner... Then one day he bought an Amstrad PF600.

      5. Best Getaway Assist: The Usual Suspects

Oh agent Kujan, you came so close to catching the elusive Keyser Söze in Bryan Singer's 1995 neo-noir masterpiece. If only that fax machine had been a little quicker in transmitting the police artist's sketch of Keyser's face (put together from the description of the only other survivor). If only mobiles with cameras had been around in '95 then you wouldn't have needed a fax machine at all.

Tagline: Five criminals. One line up. No connection. Please hang up and try again.

Can you think of any more?

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