HopStop Offers Small Businesses A Free Advertising Opportunity

Small businesses around the U.S. will soon have an opportunity to test-drive an advertising opportunity that's targeted directly to commuters in their respective cities. HopStop, the online service that provides door-to-door subway and bus directions for major cities in the U.S. and abroad, has kicked off "HopStop AdLocal," a new program that offers businesses up to 12,500 free advertising impressions over a 30-day period, a value of $250, the company says.

Here's how it works: Business owners can sign up for HopStop AdLocal online and build their own ad -- including business name, address and advertising message. After choosing a start-date for the 30-day trial period, their geo-targeted ad will appear within the directions results provided to HopStop's online users, tailored to the specific neighborhoods they are traveling to. HopStop plans to expand the program to users of its mobile apps by mid-2012.

The idea, according to HopStop CEO Joe Meyer, is that consumers will be likely to make purchases on their travels between destinations, specifically when walking to and from transit station stops. "If a HopStop user is headed to the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, for example, and there's a cupcake store there, we'll give that store owner the opportunity to advertise directly to our user who's headed to that neighborhood," he says. "As a result of our core service of providing point-to-point directions, we have knowledge of people's whereabouts -- their current location and the location of their destination. … It seemed like a no-brainer to start working with local merchants."

Meyer says HopStop AdLocal was created after several months of fielding requests from small businesses about how they can advertise on the site. Until now, HopStop's stable of advertisers has included larger-market companies including Starbucks, Bank of America and CVS.

After the 30-day period expires, business owners will have the choice of dropping out of the program or signing up for one of the program's three paid options: one day for $250, one week for $500 and one month for $1,000. "We didn't want to treat local merchants as though they are big-budget advertisers," Meyer says. "We realize that every dollar is very meaningful for them."

There is no purchase required to qualify for the free trial, HopStop says. However, the company does require that participating businesses post a free HopStop direction link on either their main Website or mobile Website. "It's really another free service," Meyer says. "Say you go to a site's 'contact us' page or directions page, where it shows their address and gives directions, if that business is part of our program HopStop will power that directions link for free."

HopStop isn't alone. Last month, Facebook said it was offering free ads to small businesses.

So far, HopStop AdLocal is only available to business owners in New York City. HopStop plans to roll the program into other northeast cities in the coming months and nationwide after that. HopStop says it gets about 55 million users annually.

This post originally appeared on Entrepreneur.

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7 Ways Google Analytics Will Improve Your Small Business Website

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Analytics software is essential for any online business: it helps you understand ways to reach your audience and drive traffic to your site.

Google Analytics is one of the easiest ways to do this, and is especially helpful for the eternally busy small business owner or the on-the-go blogger.

It allows you to access both general statistics and minutiae in detailed, comprehensive reports. And of course, it includes all the basic specs, like how many visitors you're getting, and lets you refine your information based on date range.

Here are 7 things Google Analytics will tell you about your website:

1. The Browsers and Operating Systems Your Visitors Use

Whether they're coming from Internet Explorer or Chrome, Analytics will tell you. Your website's report will show a breakdown of which browsers are used and how frequently, This feature is useful because sometimes web features are incompatible with certain browsers and operating systems. If a significant chunk of your visitors are using a system that doesn't suit your website, it might be time for you to troubleshoot. Second, browser choice says a lot about your visitor base. If most of them are using a boilerplate program, like Internet Explorer or Safari, your site should be extra user-friendly and easy to navigate. Newer browsers with more bells and whistles, like Chrome, signal net-savviness.

2. What, Specifically, Isn't Keeping People Interested

It's good to know where your visitors are flocking, but it's perhaps more important to know which page of your website they're viewing when they click away to another site. Funneling resources to features that aren't captivating users is clearly not a smart business move, and Google Analytics can help you avoid making that mistake. By showing you the Top Exit Pages of your website, the program shows you the frequency at which web visitors jump ship navigate elsewhere, all broken down by the individual pages of your site. Based on that report, you can decide whether those ill-trafficked parts of your website should be scrapped or just retooled.

3. What Exactly Draws People To Your Site

Very likely, your Google Analytics Keywords report will list a collection of words and phrases familiar to your organization as the main drivers to your site. But the rate for each of those terms, especially when cross-referenced with the feature that shows how many new visitors are logging on versus returning ones, can be substantially useful in developing a marketing strategy. If you know what's pointing people to your site, you can work backward -- explore advertising opportunities with sites that focus on related topics or, if it makes sense, gear your homepage toward the subject matter that's drawing people in. If the point is to captivate visitors and keep them clicking around your site, this tool is a most valuable one.

4. How Many People Just Aren't Interested At All

Your site can have all the hits in the world, but if people aren't finding their way to your site and staying there to explore, it's tough to foster growth online. To help you better understand how many people are coming to your site to stay, Google Analytics offers you a Bounce Rate breakdown. So what's Bounce Rate? It's the proportion of your website's visitors that navigate away without clicking through to a second (or third, or fourth) page. True, you can tally that person's visit as a hit to your site. But there's no lasting power there, and a high Bounce Rate indicates your site isn't making a very strong impression. Check out the ultra-useful Bounce Rate among first-time visitors, perhaps the purest form of the metric because it deals with visitors who are ostensibly entirely unfamiliar with your website.

5. How Much People Are Poking Around

The Depth of Visit function sounds a little Big Brother-esque, but it's important for you to know how many pages people are viewing each time they head to your site. This feature shows the proportion of visitors that view one page, two pages, three pages, and so on. If typically people aren't looking at more than one or two pages per visit, it might be time for a redesign or at least a reorganization of content.

6. Whether People are Viewing On The Go

The ubiquitousness of smartphones and tablets means you need to keep up with that technology. If a significant portion of your website's visitors are finding you on their mobile devices, as Google Analytics can show you, you need to be sure your website is mobile-friendly and accessible. In cases where this feature shows you a sizable enough crop of visitors are seeking you out on such devices, it could be worth it for you to explore building a site specifically designed for use on them.

7. When You've Hit A Million Clicks

...or any other myriad benchmarks you've decided are important. From number of clicks and visitors to increases and decreases in traffic, the Alerts feature of Google Analytics provides you instant updates (which can be sent to your phone) to let you know when you've achieved them. This function could help you mark milestones, like when you finally reach that million-visitor mark, or realize you're in the danger zone, like when the number of unique visitors drops by half. 

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INSTANT MBA: Sweat The Small Stuff

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Today's advice comes from Feather and Black founder Adam Black's interview with the Yorkshire Post:

“Insecurity is a good thing and arrogance is a cardinal sin ... I would rather know if we’re having a bad day because if we have a bad day, I’m in a bad mood. If we have two bad days I do something different."

Black founded his UK furniture company in 2004 with exceptional customer service in mind. To stay successful, he's incorporated an obsessive eye for detail and an unwillingness to let the small things slide.

He's acutely aware of the goings-on at Feather and Black, checking sales figures several times a day even when he's out of the office. By staying on top of things, Black says he's able to fix even small problems to improve business and better serve consumers.

“We’ve strengthened the brand, we’ve shortened the lead times, created new products and fast track delivery. We’ve done 100 things a little bit better and made a big difference.”

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Interview: An Update On Small Business Hiring In America

President Obama has received a lot of flak for failing to create jobs. He is expected to pitch a national job training program during his big jobs speech tomorrow. 

Meanwhile, small businesses credited with creating 58,000 of the 91,000 new private sector jobs in August are struggling to get government funding. 

Year-to-date hiring by small businesses is down 2.6%, while paycheck's have declined 0.3%, according to SurePayRoll's 2011 small business scorecard. The survey which collects data from 32,000 customers and looks at the smallest businesses across 35 cities, found that cities like St. Louis bucked the trend. We spoke with Michael Alter CEO of SurePayRoll about his findings and what he expects for small businesses in the coming year.

BI: Based on the scorecard, what are individual cities doing right or wrong?

A lot of these are very local. Our data includes small businesses and contractors. In cities where you see growth, contractors are higher and are doing more to create jobs. In St. Louis we've seem month-over-month and year-over-year growth which is a good sign but small businesses aren't sure whether they should be hiring full time employees because they are getting new orders, so you see them take on contractors but the paychecks may go down. 

There are 5 stages really first small businesses reduce work hours, then they layoff workers and both indices go negative. Then they come back and increase work hours and overtime, then they start to bring in contractors and finally start hiring permanent employees again. 

The challenge is we've been hovering from the bad stage to stage 3 and aren't moving up from there. 

BI: Do you think the burden to help small businesses should fall on the federal or state/local governments? 

The burden should really be on all of them. Small business owners are not discerning on where they get the funding, they just want access to it. We survey small business owners on economic prospects. Now, only 1 in 2 is optimistic i.e. 1 in 2 in pessimistic, and 2 in 2 has given up belief in any government help. One of the small business owners we have said "I choose to be optimistic about the future, not clueless". There is a lot uncertainty about what the government might or might not do. 

BI: Small businesses are adding more jobs than big firms but even they have been cutting down on jobs. Do you see a similar trend in the future?

I expect to see reduction in hiring. The ADP report overstates larger companies and understates smaller companies. Until optimism picks up I see this trend continuing. If a business owner is optimistic he may add a second delivery truck, if he is pessimistic he won't because he doesn't want people hunkering him down. 

BI: What do you expect from President Obama's job speech on Thursday?

Government programs that provide short-term and long-term funding and reduce paperwork and allow more Small Business Administration (SBA), quicker. Maybe a reduction in corporate tax rate. I would like to see an infrastructure bank set-up for small businesses. Coming out of past recessions, small businesses have got us out of it. Earlier SB owners could max-out their credit cards, 401K, borrow from friends and family. Now banks are cutting down on credit, gyrations in the stock market affecting 401K there isn't much to borrow and getting a second mortgage on a home is pretty tough. These ways of bootstrapping aren't there anymore and the government needs to step in.

BI: Additional thoughts?

If you look forward we continue to bounce at the bottom. The challenge is that small business productivity has been growing at a rate greater than their revenues. Thus, others are more stable because a number of existing businesses are able to increase their revenues without adding additional employees (revenue growth at lower cost). But that doesn't put us back to work.

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