4 Surprising Business Statistics You Can Act On

Don't go into information overload when reading the latest business statistics. Instead, use the data to improve your business.

Mark Twain famously described three kinds of lies: "lies, damned lies and statistics." A newspaperman, Twain clearly understood how the unscrupulous can twist data or use impartial sampling to make numbers say what they want rather than reflect the truth.

With that understood, statistics properly derived and accurately reported can give small-business owners the information they need to make smart strategic decisions. It's why you keep track of your important performance numbers. Other statistics, like these four surprising facts, tell us things we need to know—or may have forgotten—about business and consumers in general.

1. Word of mouth is responsible for 50 percent of all purchase decisions.

This information comes from research by McKinsey & Company, as reported in Robbin Phillips and Greg Cordell's The Passion Conversation. If you take that to mean that half of everything anybody buys from you is because somebody else recommended it, you read it right. In this age of mass emailing, SMS marketing and increasing depersonalization, you still owe half your revenue to people who are talking about you and your business.

Is your business giving 50 percent of its marketing budget to keeping existing customers ecstatic? If not, your priorities aren't in line with the facts.

2. Fifty-two percent of all small businesses are home-based.

Forbes.com recently reported this statistic, which came from the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy, in a list of less-surprising statistics. The number is from 2012, and it represents the highest percentage of home-based businesses ever, a growth that comes almost entirely from changing technology in communication and publishing. The fact is, it's simply more possible to work from home now than at any other time in history.

As a business owner, this means you have an unprecedented opportunity to cut costs and assemble the best possible team. Costs go down as you outsource tasks to a small, home-based business instead of keeping a full-time employee on your payroll. Your team selection broadens because geography is no longer a barrier to working with somebody.

3. Online banking fraud costs about one-ninth the cost of fraud that comes from in-person or mail banking.

According to a report by Javelin Strategy & Research, the average loss to fraud for online banking victims is $551, while paper and mail banking fraud results in an average loss of just over $4,500. This lower risk comes from two factors. First, online bankers check their activity more often and can thus spot fraudulent transactions faster than those who still bank only via paper and people. Second, data on a server is more secure than paper statements in your desk or trash. Despite fears of electronic identity theft, fraud is much more likely to come from a physical source. The lesson here is all about adopting new technologies. Although most people use online banking now, initial acceptance was sluggish because people didn't trust the idea of putting their financial information online. Their mistrust was misplaced. Is your company missing out on any opportunities because there's a useful technology you don't understand?

4. Twenty-seven percent of small businesses lost employees in 2012.

Despite an overall increase in employment over the past year, this statistic from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce simply points out a fact of doing business: that losing an employee is just part of your job as a small-business owner. The study didn't delve into the reasons for the loss—quitting, firing or a "no fault, no foul" situation like moving away or getting married, but it's clear that more than one-quarter of businesses go through this. As a business owner, it's easy to take it personally when an employee leaves, whether somebody exits on their own terms or makes you encourage their departure. But these numbers should simply remind you that it's part of what you signed up for when you decided to be in charge, and losing employees doesn't make you a terrible person or a bad boss. What business statistics, either in general or from your own business, surprised you the most recently? Tell us about them in the comments below.

Jason Brick has contributed more than 2,000 blog and magazine articles to local, regional and national publications and speaks regularly at writing and business conferences. You can find out more about Jason at www.brickcommajason.com.

The difference between creativity and innovation

The terms "creativity" and "innovation" are often used interchangeably, but they do not mean the same thing, writes Jeffrey Baumgartner. "Creativity" refers to the process of developing new ideas, whereas "innovation" involves the implementation of those ideas, he writes. Too many firms focus on creativity and ignore innovation, which is like coming up with a lot of cake recipes and never actually baking anything, he writes.

The One Easy Way To Never Forget A Password Again

Make your life easier, and your online presence more secure, by downloading a password keeper app.

Are you still using the same memorable passwords over and over again in 2013? If so, I want you to open a Google Doc right now and type, "I will download a password keeper and change all my passwords," one hundred times. And no copy-and-pasting.

If you're using random passwords but storing them in your browser's default password system, you're not much better—these systems are not very secure and they're certainly not as convenient.

What you need is an app to generate random, impossible to break passwords and store them for you, all while making them as quick and easy to access as possible. The good news (and the bad news) is that there are now a lot of options to choose from. I'm slightly obsessed with this problem, so I've tested a lot. These are my recommendations.

Winner: Dashlane

Dashlane, like the others tested, is available on just about every platform and integrates with just about every browser. It also stores and generates passwords as well as autofills personal information and payment info.

Dashlane offers the best user experience, in my opinion. The interface is the most attractive and simple, but it's really how elegantly and simply it integrates with your browser that makes it my top choice.

There's a dashboard that shows you all your weak passwords and alerts you when a service you use has been compromised. Even though I've been managing my passwords for security for a long time, when I first set it up, I found that I actually had 94 weak or duplicate passwords! Yikes! A tool is only as good as the user who wields it, and this feature makes sure you're using the tool most effectively.

Dashlane syncs in the cloud and offers mobile apps that also make your passwords (and personal info) accessible—though you'll have to constantly jump over to the app and copy and paste, at least on iOS. That's a result of Apple's architecture, so every password keeper is like that.

The only feature it doesn't have, at least the way I'd like it, is sharing. Dashlane lets you "share" a password, but all it's really doing is sending an email with a secure link to your info, which someone can either read and enter manually or add to their Dashlane app at the click of a button. This is an okay solution, but I would rather be able to passively sync entries with other Dashlane users. I have certain entries that I'd like to share with my wife or assistant and I don't want to have to resend them every time I change them—nor do I want to have to remember which entries I've already shared.

Some users have reported instability, but so far I have not experienced any issues myself.

Runner Up: 1Password

1Password is also an excellent solution—and the one I used until I switched to Dashlane. It has many of the same benefits, and the design and user experience are second only to Dashlane. The design is a little overdone (big lock graphics, logins depicted as items on shelves, etc.) and the integrations are good, but not quite as tight, generally, as Dashlane's. It also syncs over Dropbox, rather than its own sync service, which is somewhat less secure. 1Password has the same sharing mechanism as Dashlane.

The biggest reason 1Password didn't beat out Dashlane is because of Dashlane's security dashboard, which shows you your weak passwords and reports when a service you use is compromised, and that makes all the difference in your actual security in practice.

Second Runner Up: Passpack

Passpack makes the list because it's very secure and it has the ideal (if somewhat cumbersome) sharing mechanism—it lets you sync individual entries with other users. It's not the only service with this feature, but it offers the best user experience for doing so. Unfortunately, while its own interface is fine, its integration is not nearly as deep and it offers no apps, only a buggy mobile site. As a result, you end up manually copying and pasting a lot, and you simply cannot get to your logins on mobile much of the time. Still, if syncing is your top priority, then Passpack is probably your best bet.

So Many Options, So Few Good Ones

As I said, I tested numerous, countless password applications. The only two other password applications that I found which offer the sync feature are Keeper and LastPass. That said, they have a pretty dated user experience, LastPass is like, Windows 95-ugly, and doesn't look like it's being very actively maintained, and Keeper's website doesn't offer a lot of information, so on principle I refuse to download or use it. Two others worth mentioning, only because they're so bad, are Roboform and KeePass—the user experience is poor and they don't have any syncing features.

Now you have no excuses. My recommendation: Download Dashlane and reset your most critical accounts now. I bet you can do that in half an hour or less. Then, replace two to three weak passwords every day until your online identity is locked up tight.

5 Rookie Home Page Mistakes You're Probably Making

Your website is one of your biggest marketing opportunities. Don't let it fall victim to these 5 home page missteps.

It's all too common for small-business owners who build their own websites to make a handful of rookie mistakes. Unfortunately, it's not unheard of for hired professionals to make errors when designing websites, too.

Your website is one of your most important marketing tools, so whether you're taking on the creation and design of it yourself or you're hiring someone else to do it for you, make sure you avoid these all-too-common home page mistakes:

1. Too Many Choices

People won't actually read your home page. They'll scan it, looking for the information that's most immediately relevant to them. If they can't find it quickly and with minimal effort, they'll visit a site where they can.

Your site should be designed to guide new eyes exactly where you want them to go, even if they don't know for sure what they're looking for ... especially if they're not sure what they're looking for. Simple navigation with clean lines is the way to go. If your business requires that you offer robust, complex choices, do that on a deeper page. Your home page should be simple and easy to navigate.

2. Wall Of Text

A few years ago, a multimillion-dollar ad campaign from five major magazine publishers who were touting the power of print stated "We surf the Internet. We swim in magazines." To do that surfing, people will interact with, share and return to websites that have pages with: 

• Short paragraphs
• Bullet and numbered lists
• Lots of white space
• Images and other graphics
• Sections with subheadings

Anything that breaks up the information you're presenting means people will read more about your company, your products and services, and why they want to do business with you.

3. No Blog

Blogging for your business doesn't mean you have to post something every day, but it does give your website dynamic, rather than static, content. Dynamic content means something on your site changes often enough that people will come back to see what's new. More important, it engages Google in a way that unchanging pages don't.

Even one post per week, or two each month, will be enough to get the attention of Google and other search engines. To attract the attention of human readers, be sure to announce the newest blog updates on your social media platforms and encourage subscribers to sign up for your blog.

4. No Optimization

Yes, there's a lot of voodoo feel to search engine optimization (SEO). Yes, there's a larger-than-is-reasonable group of charlatans pretending to provide good SEO advice without actually helping your business. No, this doesn't mean you shouldn't build your site without sound SEO practices in place.

A full discussion of SEO could fill several books, which would then need new editions fairly quickly because of how rapidly Google changes its algorithms. A short list of essentials includes:

• Identifying three to five keyword phrases for your site to aggressively pursue
• Including keywords in metadata, URLs and similar "behind the curtain" aspects of your home page
• Avoiding "black hat" SEO methods like keyword stuffing and courting unrelated links
• Using smart, natural instances of your keywords in your blog and on the static pages of your site

5. Neglecting The Obvious

Google gives bonus points for including a handful of simple page components on your website, which will help your site perform better in searches. Including "Privacy Policy" and "Contact" pages with specific data about your company, information about how to reach you and what you'll do with customer information takes no more than 30 minutes per page, but it's been shown to give sites preferential ranking over similar sites that lack those pages.