http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/ news and tips from BookFresh founders, clients, partners, and more en Copyright 2013 2013-05-14T18:08:18+00:00 http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/class-scheduling-software http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/class-scheduling-software#When:18:08:18Z Do you schedule any of the following? Workshops Seminars Events Sessions Classes You can now use BookFresh's new class scheduling feature, which allows you to create group appointments for 1 to a million people: Think fitness classes, weight loss workshops, professional seminars, group tutoring sessions... any group activity where you want multiple clients to sign up in advance. With classes, you can have multiple openings so more than one client can reserve a spot. Just set the maximum number of attendees and BookFresh will show clients openings in the class until it reaches the limit. When booking online, clients will even see how many slots are still available for the class! We also know that with a lot of clients comes a lot of time management on your end, which is why this feature comes with an easy management system so you can keep track of all your classes and attendees! You can easily see a list of all your classes and how full they are, print out a class schedule and attendee list, and even manually add/remove attendees. Ready to get started with classes? Just log into your BookFresh account and go to the “Classes” tab, click “Add a new class”, and you’re on your way. If this is a feature you’ve been waiting for, please do us a favor and spare a share. audrey Uncategorized, 2013-05-14T18:08:18+00:00 http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/add-services-outside-of-your-business-hours http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/add-services-outside-of-your-business-hours#When:17:24:24Z With an extra hour of daylight, and summer just around the corner, many businesses are now offering special services with extended or special business hours. For example, tax preparation companies add extended service hours for the week before tax day, or fitness studios offer special classes on the weekends only. Previously, if you wanted to extend or limit bookable hours for a certain service, you'd have to change your business hours…now, you don't have to! BookFresh has released a new feature so you can set specific times for certain services without changing your business hours. (However, if you're a creature of habit and prefer to keep all your services and business hours the same, you don’t need to change a thing!) To set your services to be available at a specific time or day, just do the following: Navigate to: Account >>Your Business>>Services and click ‘Edit’. Choose the service you'd like to make available during specific times and/or days and click ‘Edit’ next to that service. Check the box "Enable Specific Hours for this Service". This will allow you to set specific availablity for your service, even outside your (or your staff member’s) normal business. Of course, if you choose not to change anything, the default will always be based on your business hours. We hope you like this new feature and it saves you a lot of time configuring new services! If this is something that you've found useful, please help us spread the word to others! audrey Uncategorized, 2013-04-05T17:24:24+00:00 http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/bookfresh-site-redesign http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/bookfresh-site-redesign#When:18:22:22Z You may have noticed our new site design at BookFresh! We hope you enjoy. While we're constantly trying to keep our product updated to fit your needs - we decided to take some "me" time and give ourselves a makeover. Don't worry - all of the usual familiar elements are still there... just with a newer, pretty exterior. Oh, and it's smarter, too. Our Tours & Features page has been revamped to give you a better sense of what you can do with BookFresh, and our blog has been made over to keep you updated with what's happening over here. Whoever said looks and brains didn't go together? Anyways, feel free to take a look around to see what's going on. In the meantime, note your BookFresh internal dashboard is still the same... but you can expect a new, better, redesign of that soon, too. audrey Uncategorized, 2013-02-22T18:22:22+00:00 http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/the-stock-photo-debate http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/the-stock-photo-debate#When:01:59:48Z The conundrum continues for many of us business owners. We want to increase our marketing but need to make sure those efforts align with our company philosophies and goals. Unfortunately, that usually means spending more money on creative ads and photography- which leads us to the cheap fix of stock photography. In the New York Times ?You're the Boss? blog , MP Mueller suggests spending the time to get to the essence of your company, your brand and messages. Get rid of the stock photos on your website of perfect looking people shaking hands across a boardroom table. Instead, use photos that reflect your business? philosophy and culture. There are going to be instances when it is easier to buy stock photography that setting up an expensive and time-consuming photo shoot. When using stock photography, make sure you buy from a site that offers ?real? shots instead of the perfectly staged shots that have given stock photography a bad name. Check out Bigstock for millions of fast, easy-to-use photographs and illustrations from talented photographers and artists around the globe. ?When your marketing reflects your brand and persona, your company will also differentiate itself from its competitors.? ?MP Mueller Staff Writer Tips and Tricks, 2010-05-20T01:59:48+00:00 http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/happy-earth-day http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/happy-earth-day#When:06:25:40Z In honor of Earth Day, we wanted to share a few tips to make your business as ?green? as it can be. Change the Lightbulbs We?ve almost all seen those light bulbs that look like a curly straw. Did you know that they use 66% less energy that regular bulbs? A bit pricier than their regular counterparts, they will save you more money in the long-run because they last 10 times longer and use less energy. Buy Green Instead of buying harsh chemical cleaners and energy-sucking electronics, check out their eco-friendly counterparts. Look for the ?Energy Star? on electronics. This program by the Environmental Protection Agency allows companies whose products are eco-friendly to market themselves with the special ?Energy Star?. Reduce Paper Use! This one seems like a no-brainer but the average employee still goes through a half-pound of paper waste every single day. Slash that number by doing more on the computer such as editing online, sending memos via email, and avoiding cover sheets as much as possible. Turn old printouts over and use it as scratch paper! Staff Writer Tips and Tricks, 2010-04-23T06:25:40+00:00 http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/is-the-web-killing-survey-research http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/is-the-web-killing-survey-research#When:01:23:59Z You are in for a treat today! Today, one of our good friends at Survey Monkey, Phillip Garland, Ph.D., VP of Methodology is guest blogging at BookFresh on the hot topic of survey research on the web. Survey Monkey is a revolutionary questionnaire tool to create and publish custom surveys in minutes, and then view results graphically and in real time. Is the Web Killing Survey Research? By Philip Garland, Ph.D., VP, Methodology, SurveyMonkey A growing number of researchers are becoming enamored with opinion hubs afforded by the Internet?facebook, twitter, blogs, and proprietary user communities, to name a few. These researchers may be distracted by flashes in a pan.Questions about ?Web 2.0 methods? are seemingly more often of the ?how?? variety, rather than ?why?? let alone the ?are you sure?? type. In short, it seems that ?old timer? researchers are excited to play with a new toy without first determining whether it is safe to do so. Web 2.0 Methods of Gathering Information Managers now seek to listen to their respective customers. Put bluntly in the words of Kantar Group's Kim Dedeker: ?survey research is dead? (ARF Conference, October 2008). Instead, firms have been seeking new, ?Web 2.0,? methods of gathering information from people. The new methods are largely focused on online communities, social networking, blogging, and content creation. The purported benefits of these new methods are the opportunity to collect feedback; 1) in ?real time? that is 2) rich and robust. Firms increasingly want to know what people are thinking about their products as they experience them or, at least, while it is on their mind at a given moment. The idea is that feedback about a product is most reliable and valid when it is offered to the firm right away. In addition, companies apparently want to be able to get feedback in whatever way people are willing to give it, rather than simply ?confining? opinions within a survey question. Some believe that people ought to be able to make up their own topics for discussion as the firm passively observes. Even better, they argue, is when many customers are online discussing the product with one another. The results of such cultivations of opinion in Web 2.0 domains seem to be collected and digested by a single researcher at the firm. This person then generates reports about business strategy based on little more than extrapolations from individual opinion. Furthermore, these are often opinions of a loud minority. This has real (and even immediate) consequences for classic survey businesses. If firms are emboldened enough by web methods to abandon classic survey research, what do we make of the practice? Survey researchers do have an abundance of talent surrounding how to analyze data in ways that tells stories about people. Is It Enough? A fundamental shortcoming of relying too heavily on Web 2.0 methodology is that the measures are ultimately taken from people who are of a certain type. That is, measuring opinion from customers in Web 2.0 space inevitably means that those people are 1) existing customers and 2) high-use early adopters (both of technology and the firm's product). By definition, the mode by which firms desire to collect information does not include low use/occasional customers and people outside of a firm's market share and thus collecting opinion from these people. These firms will sorely miss the opinions of the vast majority of people who are not early technology adopters and fiercely loyal consumers of their products. Their ?loyal customer? databases are simply inadequate for solving a good deal of their marketing questions. Essentially, by relying on Web 2.0 users, the ?coverage? of the populations is incomplete and people that are covered in Web 2.0 space now might, over time, change into a different Internet demographic. For example, what happens when early adopter teenage view of MTV product ?A? develops into a 30-year-old internet ?old hand? interested in CBS product ?B?? Both networks are owned by Viacom, but will Viacom be able to find them as they age and change their media habits (including their perceived utility of the Internet) and stick with them across opinion modes? More importantly, what does Viacom know about them when they were 14 that makes a difference when they are 30? This presents an unprecedented opportunity to conceptualize sample as a living, breathing, phenomenon rather than a dip of a thermometer. If it is the mode of communication that advertisers and marketers are all excited about, fine?but we need to remind them that the medium is not the message. In our co-authored book chapter in Society Online on the uses of new media, David Silver and I show that people use the Internet for increased efficiency in accomplishing old tasks?not for doing entirely new things. The history of new media from the printing press, through radio, and television, and now the Internet corroborates these findings. So let's not jump on the bandwagon, instead let's drive it. Thanks for the great info, Philip. Be sure to check out Survey Monkey for some great questionnaire tools. Staff Writer Tips and Tricks, 2010-03-25T01:23:59+00:00 http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/how-will-the-health-care-bill-affect-your-business http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/how-will-the-health-care-bill-affect-your-business#When:00:38:47Z Many small business owners have been asking exactly how the health care bill will affect them. We don't have a crystal ball but we will do our best to try to answer some of your most important questions. What is the Timetable for Employers? In 2011, the law will require individual and small group market plans to spend 80 percent of premium dollars on medical services. Large group plans have to spend at least 85%. By 2014, employers who have more than 50 employees must offer health insurance benefits or pay penalties. Companies with 25 or fewer employees who meet certain wage requirements will also be able to get credits toward health insurance purchases. By 2014, small-businesses owners, the self-employed and those who don't get work-provided coverage can get benefits through Small Business Health Options Programs (SHOPs). These state-run marketplace exchanges will work with carriers to pool insurance options, with the hope that costs will be lower for a larger, more powerful, group. How Will It Affect Employees? Unhappy employees don't have to stay in a job they hate for fear of losing health insurance for themselves or their children. The new mandates say insurers can't deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions (effective this year for kids and in 2014 for adults). Within six months of the bill becoming law, the workers can keep kids on their insurance policies until they're 26. Small Business Owner Worries? USA Today reports that there are many small-business owners who are already against the plan. Among those is Keith Ashmus, partner at a law firm in Cleveland. While his company has long-supported health care reform, he is against this one because of what he calls "insufficient attention to cost controls." He says it will increase premiums for 80 of his 110 employees who participate in the company's health care plan. There are widely different views on how health care reform will affect entrepreneurship. For more coverage from USA Today, check out their reactions from small business owners . Staff Writer In the News, 2010-03-24T00:38:47+00:00 http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/does-uncle-sam-pay-more http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/does-uncle-sam-pay-more#When:06:04:50Z According to a recent study by USA Today, federal employee average salaries are higher than their private-sector counterparts. The study includes a range of professions- some of which are nurses, graphic designer, janitors, marketing managers, IT managers, secretaries, financial analysts and lawyers. Some Interesting Findings Of the 226 job categories analyzed, 180 were paid more at the federal level. They include white-collar, blue-collar, management, professional, and technical jobs. The private sector pays higher on average for very specialized occupations such as airline pilots, lawyers, and computer research scientists. The study, based on reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that 216 occupations covering 1.1 million federal workers exist in both the federal and private sectors. An additional 124 federal occupations covering 750,000 employees ? air-traffic controllers, tax collectors and others ? did not have direct equivalents. Check out USA Today for the complete study on average salaries. Information Systems Manager Federal: $122,020 Private: $115,705 Financial Analyst: Federal: $87,400 Private: $81,232 Graphic Designer: Federal: $70,820 Private: $46,565 Lawyer: Federal: 123,660 Private: $126,763 Physician, surgeon: Federal: $176,050 Private: $177,102 PR/Media Manager: Federal: $132,410 Private: $88,241 Registered Nurse: Federal: $76,460 Private: $ 63,780 Secretary: Federal: $44,500 Private $33,829 Surveyor: Federal: $78,710 Private: $67,336 Staff Writer In the News, 2010-03-11T06:04:50+00:00 http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/prevent-your-employees-from-two-timing-you http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/prevent-your-employees-from-two-timing-you#When:09:51:55Z 2010 has already seen a few trends that stem from the 1981 recession. Tammy Erickson of the Harvard Business Review discusses some of the effects this recession will leave on the way employees do their work. Two-Timing Because so many employers have used pay decreases and furloughs to cut costs, a good portion of the American workforce have chosen to maintain two jobs; their salaried and benefits job as well as an entrepreneurial project or part-time work at another company. The result of this is a buzzword for organizational managers everywhere- disengagement. Innovative Arrangements To counter the effects of the recession, managers have to use creative tactics to compete for their employees ?discretionary energy? which include other jobs and employee's personal lives. Some of the more popular tactics are flex work options. Taking advantage of technology, more managers are becoming increasingly comfortable with virtual work and ?off hours? employment. If the job does not require face-time with clients, many employers are okay with their staff coming in a few hours late in exchange for a few more hours at the end of the day or visa versa. The bottom line is- the workplace is changing. As Harvard Business Review author Tammy Erickson puts it, ?Recessions unquestionably leave a mark on the way we work. These approaches companies use to respond to difficult business conditions don't only affect the company- they leave a lasting impression on the workers (and the workers? teen-age children).? Staff Writer In the News, 2010-03-04T09:51:55+00:00 http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/customer-service-trends http://www.bookfresh.com/blog/post/customer-service-trends#When:07:56:47Z This may be the Year of the Tiger but for smart entrepreneurs and small business owners, 2010 is the Year of Customer Service. After discounting, slashing prices, and offering everything short of the kitchen sink, the only real competitive advantage your business may have is customer service. To ensure you stay on top of your competition, check out the latest trends in customer service. Full-Transparency With social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, it is not easier than ever for a disgruntled or happy customer to share his/her thoughts with thousands of people. Use this as motivation to keep disgruntled customers few and far between while showcasing positive reviews on these forums. Insourcing Many companies who chose to outsource their customer service over the past decade will be moving in-house or at least to a domestic customer-service company. After the backlash of outsourced customer service such as Dell, companies are finally realizing that customer service is not something they can send overseas. Think Big?Act Small Over the past few years, virtually all businesses have tried to look bigger than they really were. Now, as many companies want to forge close and meaningful relationships with their customers, a trend of ?acting small? has become effective in customer service. As Chris Brogan puts it ?every company wants to be human?. For more customer service trends in 2010, check out Small Biz Trends. Staff Writer In the News, 2010-02-23T07:56:47+00:00