Kiva: Microloans Supporting Entrepreneurial Spirit

Kiva is a microfinance program with a praiseworthy philosophy, and you might have heard about Kiva on Oprah. By giving microloans to business owners, people around the world can make a difference in the success of a small business venture.  And until December 31, you can sign up for a Groupon to donate another $10 for Kiva!

How does Kiva work? Basically you loan a small amount of money to an entrepreneur or a group of entrepreneurs in a community, they pay you back, and then you can re-loan your money for another venture!  

How do you choose the recipient of your microloan?  You can read about the small business owners and entrepreneurial projects at Kiva online, searching by country or by type of project. You can even join a ‘Kiva group’ to support their donation goals.   

Wind-Flower Web Design has just made our first Kiva loan as part of our donation program.   

Happy holidays!  May your business endeavors all be blessed this year and in the future!

Wufoo Who? Creating Online Forms

Wufoo is a snazzy little online program that allows you to create forms on your website or even email a form as a separate link for your clients or customers to fill out.  You can create many different types of forms, such as Order forms, Survey forms, Registration forms, and Contact forms.  You can easily tailor them to your specifications  or you can also choose from the many pre-made forms.  When your customers fill out a form, the data is sent to your email address as well as to your Wufoo account. 

Wufoo is super simple to use and there is a free version for when you only need 3 forms a month.  For paid Wufoo subscribers starting at between $15 and $30 a month, you can integrate online payment with the Wufoo forms, create an unlimited number of forms, and redirect customers to a new page when the form is completed.

Email Marketing: Keeping in Touch with Customers and Connecting with Visitors

Our clients at Wind-Flower Web Design are always asking how to keep in touch with their existing customers as well as how to connect with their new visitors.  For most growing businesses, we recommend MailChimp because this email marketing program is easy to use, has vibrant templates for designing engaging email newsletters, and the free version allows any business to send 1,000 contacts many, many emails a month.  For businesses with more contacts, the MailChimp pay version starts at $30 a month.

Once you sign up for MailChimp, you can place a simple subscribe button at the top of your website, and when your new visitors sign up, they will be automatically included in your future marketing emails.  You can also integrate your MailChimp sign up form with your Facebook page, share your marketing campaigns on Twitter, track subscriber activity and more. Also MailChimp is well integrated with Wufoo, an easy-to-use form maker. Wufoo who…?  More about Wufoo next!