The following infographic is designed with a Halloween theme, but even though Halloween has come and gone, plenty of websites out there are still dressed to scare.  Bad web design is truly horrific year round, so take a look at the information below and compare what you see there with the kind of website you have.  Directv deals can be purchased that will help you find programming via satellite to teach you what to avoid. If any of this looks like you, then you can improve your outlook for online business by taking steps now to modernize and apply some design skills before it’s too late.

The net loss that Panasonic is preparing for is 420 billion yen, or $5.5 billion, next year in 2012.  This is far lower than their earlier prediction of a profit of 30 billion yen.  Sales were reduced to 8.7 trillion yen.

Panasonic made this announcement right after it showed reporting of lower sales in the second quarter and profits that had surely weakened.  The blame was placed on the fact that Japan’s economy was “severely affected” but the “global economic recession.”  The recession was of course triggered by the European debt crisis, and due to the yen strengthening while stocks declined.

Group sales were down and operating profits were halved.  Aside from those facts, Panasonic has stated that there were some signs of recovery, especially due to the fact that exports and production in Japan had some improvements after the earthquake that took place earlier in 2011.

While its television units and other operations were down, the company is changing and restructuring in order to improve the pace and up operations.

In the past Panasonic made a point of mentioning that it would be cutting jobs by March 2013, but today there was a plan introduced that would cut the workforce sooner than originally expected.

The earthquake in Japan, global recession, and other companies declining, it isn’t any wonder that Panasonic took a hit too.  Now it is time to rebuild and follow through with plans.  There is no time to sit around relaxing and enjoying a book, or stopping to smell the potpourri.  Businesses have got to make changes.  Hopefully with some restructuring and other tactics, Panasonic can improve and grow in the next years after its loss.

Although many of these indicators have indeed experienced a downward trend since 2008, the numbers are still high given the current climate. The one category of debt that has risen consistently for the last four years is the number and amount of college loans. Fortunately, credit card debt has undergone some reduction as families continue to tighten their belts and purse strings. Several California residents have turned to Dish Network San Diego promotions to cut back on entertainment costs. Paying off debt seems to be finally growing in popularity, replacing the carefree spending that has marked America’s financial landscape for many years.  Car and home loans, however, have become harder to qualify for.  Foreclosures after the housing bubble have contributed to the reduction in mortgage debt.  Click the graphic to view it in its full size.

Last week I was watching a news story on dish network, featuring couples who have fled the corporate chaos and started up their own businesses at home, with varying degrees of success.  Their stories motivated me to do a little research online, and I found this great infographic I thought I’d share with you.  It covers how much the average home business costs to start up, and the number of estimated home businesses as well as other useful numbers.  Click to expand:

All Marketing Aside.  When you focus on the marketing aspect of your business in terms of your website, then you can often tend to leave out the focus on user interface that is definitely a must have for any business website.

Goals First.  You surely need to consider what your goals are as a business and for your customers when it comes to the website that you will design.  What is it that you would like for your customers to get out of your business’ site?  That is one of the main questions for you to ask yourself.

Feedback, Feedback.  Take some time to literally watch customers or people navigate your site. See how easy or difficult it is so that you are able to make necessary or desired changes to the site overall.  Let these people who are your testers give you feedback that will allow you to have a good starting off point of what it is that you will need to do and what you should change or not.

Update Often.  First, you get an audience to your website due to the fact that your user interface is simple to use which makes it great, and after that, you should certainly be very sure that you are providing new and updated content often to keep people’s and customer’s interest.

More and more individuals are looking to be supporters of their local economy.  That tends to drive more revenues for businesses that are owned and operated locally.  Super centers and large chains are not dominating like they used to because people want to see their money and efforts in action.  Many small and local businesses promote other local places and this is a perk to local residents.

I found this infographic regarding small business, and I thought I would share it with you all.   It is interesting to see where these small businesses are really thriving, and then others not so much.  Take a look for yourself to see where in the United States local business is growing.

In most businesses, owners and operators have the feeling that all the employees must be constantly managed, governed, and observed in order for things to operate appropriately and be very effective.  However, that very ideal has started changing in many different types of businesses and workplaces.  In fact, a lot of places are turning over a new leaf, and creating a working atmosphere that revolves more around the employees and their needs and motivations.  This is turning out to efficaciously make employee turnover decrease in numbers, which means less money is needed for proper training.  It also gives way to even greater satisfaction from customers and therefore more revenues.  So, how is it that you and your business can take on this new attitude and environment in your business?  There are a few things that you may have to change to do this, but overall you will notice how encouraged and needed your employees will feel.

Forget controlling – When you are ready and willing to get started on the track to making sure your employees really do make your business, then you will need to learn to let go of all the control that you once thought was necessary.  Decisions in your business should start at the bottom.  Let employees have access to information and help to come up with ways to reduce costs all while increasing revenues.  You’ve heard it before.  Two heads are better than one, and twenty heads are far better than two.  Let your employees in on it all, and ditch some of your control.

Stop talking – If there is one thing that business owners and operators are great at, it is talking.  Typically they talk too much, in fact.  So stop talking a listen more than you ever have.  Instead of offering communication that is pretty much one-way (from you to the employee), talk to some of your hard working employees about things revolving satisfactions and such.  Keep note of these things so that in the future you can use these researched results to make well-informed and solid decisions.

Positivity empowers – There is nothing worse than having to go to a job each and every day where the business is based on ideals that mean being controlled and restricted.  Honestly, would you want to work in that environment?  If not, why would you think that your employees would want to do so?  Make sure that you are encouraging employees with positive reinforcement.

Be real.  This transitional effort will certainly not happen over night.  Just have patience and time and money on your side, and eventually you will create an atmosphere at your business that allows for greater employee satisfaction and in turn greater production.  Employee support is one of the primary things that your business requires, so get it!

The month of June will hold a very strange historic event for the country of Brazil. According to D3q.com, this is the month that the government has suffered the most attacks through technology and virtually ever in its history.  The hacking and attacks are coming from a group that desires change to happen in the country of Brazil.  This nationalist group wants their country to become better overall, and by breaking into the governments sites, they are protesting their desires.

So many of the country’s government run websites have been subject to hacking this month.  This even includes the presidential website of Brazil.  The attack on the site caused it to be shut down for a period of almost four hours.  The Brazilian Geographics and Statistics Institute was also put out of service thanks to these protest attacks.  Brazilian senate websites, the Sports Ministry and Tax Authority website were also affected by this groups hacking efforts.

So who is this group that is wreaking all the havoc?  The group that claimed the attacks is a hacking group known as LulzSecBrazil.  It is a group from the LulzSec, an international group, that is obviously based in Brazil.  The attacks that they claimed were those on websites that just so happen to be administered by senatorial staff and presidential staff.  It was even siad that the group released and posted the President Dilma Rousseff’s very personal information, like his telephone number.  This was also apparently done to the mayor of Sao Paulo.

Will Brazil make a change to cease the protests?  Who knows, but it is a serious matter.  Technology is now a tool for rebelling and protesting the government.  One must wonder how far some people will go.

Problems with data security are riskier than other applications.

It is speculated that the buzz surrounding this myth is triggered by a fear of IT job loss.  The fact is that private companies probably have security breaches often, yet they do not have to talk about it.  Places that provide cloud computing are prepared and have already been battling online security for quite sometime.  The fact is that these companies in the cloud computing business have teams dedicated to providing support and correcting security infringements.  They are built on online security measures, so to say that they will not be able to do this in the cloud is silly. The know it’s important to be safe from the start.

Applications happen to be less dependable in the event of an issue.

If an application that is located in-house crashes or has an issue, then it is addressed in house.  This myth is based on that fact.  If it is in-house, then there is a better feeling of having control.  The thing is that the expenses from operating these centers is hurting business, and so the budgets are being drastically cut.  The cloud is a business’ data center and the IT, so the costs are reduced, helping the business to have an opportunity to make a profit.

Businesses should choose the cloud primarily to save money.

Now, using the cloud may help to cut the costs of IT, but the primary reason for changing over to using the cloud is that you go from fixed expenses of computing to a variable expense that will give you the ability to pay as you use the service.

Businesses and organizations have been thinking of ways to use data and analysis to appropriately measure data to make determinations based on what will most likely be in the near to far off future.  These finance teams use different factors to measure and decide on what the future will hold for the business.  Factors include different patterns in daily numbers, business relationships, and other trends that will provide better and more perceptive results and outcomes for the business as a whole.  The use of data that is appropriate and has a huge impact and link to determinable financial outcomes and the business performance overall is key.

These factors can be a variety of things.  Some of the factors are solely related to finance, while others deal with operations.  Some of the factors deal with in-house determinants and others out-of-house.  Examples of factors may include things like home sales, sales of products, and forclosures.  Those are all facotrs that should be seen as a change over a period of time.  There are also factors that will depict changes and influences over a give time frame:  birthrate, car selling, employment opportunities.  The last group of factors are those that occur during a given point, like, the price of gasoline, the rate of tax, rates of interest, and even sales.

Using all of these factors and the analytics of your business the finance team should be able to seek out additional opportunities that the business may have for growing and improving.  There should also be areas that are recognized as needing immediate correction and/or serious adaptations.

Because the last few years have been upside down economically, it is important that proper analytics be measured so that a business can benefit from having in mind what may lie ahead.  Negative outcomes and changes may be avoided if you take a look into what the future could possibly hold for the business with predictive analytics.