small business research

[h2worldwide]

I'm doing some research on data management by small businesses and businesses like chambers of commerce that manage large amounts of data and members. I have a few questions for you small business owners and employees out there:

1. What are some of the problems that you run into as a small business?
2. What are some things that you wish you could do better as a small business that could be aided by technology?
3. Do you collect a lot of data via online forms on your website?
4. Do you have a way to collect that data simply and manage it easily?
5. Is it a simple setup, or does it involve doing a lot of editing on the backend of the site?

Thanks.

[vangogh]

I'm not sure how well I can really answer, but I'll try.

1. Mostly time management issues. I always want to do more than I can reasonably do with the hours in a day, week, month, year…

2. There are lots of things I wish I could do better, but I don't know that technology is the answer for any of them. It's mostly me wanting to learn how to do my job better and market my business better. Technology can certainly help with both, though there's plenty of technology currently available for both too.

3. At the moment, not a lot. Mostly it's just through a contact form or an email subscription to my blog. Neither is their for the purpose of collecting information though. In the future I see myself building an email list so I would be collecting that data and I can see where I'd add a questionnaire for people to fill out describing their web project.

4. Not currently applicable, but I know several ways to collect and manage the information I will eventually collect. I do collect website statistics if that counts and I currently use Google Analytics, though I'm exploring other options.

5. Hard for me to judge the simplicity since setting things like this up is part of what I do for a living. The services I would use to collect and manage data don't require backend editing, though depending on how I want to use them they could involve integration with other applications. Not something I would consider difficult, but possible difficult for others with less experience doing that sort of thing.