SiteBeat: November 2013
We would like to wish a happy and healthy Thanksgiving to all of you in the HEROWeb family of customers. With many of you traveling over the next several weeks, we would like to remind you about web-based access to our email system, which could come in handy. We also have some timely tips to share with you that were inspired by customer support requests over the past month. May the holiday shopping season BEGIN!
Checking Your Email While Traveling
It's the holiday season and people everywhere are packing their bags and traveling far and wide to be with family and friends. However, as an online business owner you probably have work to do over the next several weeks. Odds are most of us will still be checking and sending emails right up to (maybe even on) the big day.
As you're traveling, you may experience some problems sending out emails. Many places that offer wifi to travelers, such as hotels, have built in security measures that stops email applications, such as Outlook, from sending emails. It's important to remember than whenever you are having trouble for any reason with your email application, you can always manage your email from our web-based email system.
Here are some basic instructions for getting started with webmail.
Tech Tip: Put Your Google Calendar On Your Website
Adding a Google Calendar to your website is an easy (and free) way to include a visually appealing date-sensitive information on your website. All you need is a free Google account and you can have a fully customizable calendar on your website to show upcoming classes, sales, tradeshows and more. Check out our instructions on the MightyMerchant support site on how to embed a Google Calendar on your website.
Beware the Washington State Sales Tax
If you are an online merchant you likely do business across the US, making it important that you remain aware of any relevant business laws in specific states. While we are not legal experts and are not qualified to give out legal advice, we have heard from customers that Washington State has considerably notched up their aggressiveness in collecting sales tax from businesses located outside of their state and they are redefining what it means to be doing business in the state of Washington. This article from a law blog helps explain some of Washington's sales tax practices (we link to this only for educational purposes, not as a referral for his services).
Whether you do business in Washington or not, we recommend to remain vigilant about the changing taxation landscape as many states are evaluating how they can increase their collection of taxes from online purchases.
Tips on Requesting Tech Support
If you find there is a problem with your website, it is important that you be as specific as possible when reporting the issue in order for us to handle the situation in the quickest and most efficient way possible. When placing support requests, please keep the following guidelines in mind to help us help you!- Send your support requests to webhelp@heroweb.com. The requests will go into our support system and allow us to route the request to the best person on the staff to serve you.
- Share with us what steps you have already taken to troubleshoot the problem. We’ll be able to fast forward to dig in deeper, bringing a swifter resolution to your issue.
- Include your website’s URL, as well as links to the page(s) in question. This will guarantee that we’re all on the same (web) page.
- Capture a screenshot of the problem so that we can see what you see. Once you have saved a screenshot, you should be able to attach it to your webhelp email.
- Report what browser (and version) you’re using. For example, “Chrome 25” or “Firefox 19.” To find this information, simply go to the About menu of the web browser application.
- If you work with an outside contractor and want them to contact us on your behalf, please let us know. In general, we will not talk with an outside contractor or a new employee, unless we have received authorization from the site owner.
- Email us at webhelp@heroweb.com
- Submit a support ticket online
- Call us toll-free at 888-257-2567 or locally at 541-746-6418
Office Closure
In observation of the Holidays, the HEROweb offices will be closed from Monday December 23 through Friday December 27. We will open again on Monday January 2, 2014. As always, if you experience an emergency during our closure simply include the word URGENT in your support request to webhelp@heroweb.com and someone will respond as soon as possible. We hope you have a wonderful and safe holiday season!
Welcoming HEROweb's New Sites
http://www.flooringdistributorswholesale.com is a Northern California-based distributor of flooring products, including carpet, laminate, tiling and more. This site contains some of the latest MightyMerchant features, including our responsive design framework.
One of our specialties at HEROweb is developing dual retail/wholesale websites with a bevy of features geared toward Business-to-Business ecommerce. Because wholesale sites typically have password protection, it's hard for us to show off some of our coolest work.
Flooring Distributors has a nifty Wholesale Quote Generator. With this feature, wholesale customers can add whatever products they need for a job to their cart, then create a custom quote by increasing pricing, adding tax, etc. that can then be printed off the website and given directly to the retail customer.
