Singles Day Deals (Good for Today Only), Are You Frustrating Your Customers?, Lots of New Cool Tools from QuickBooks & Zoho and Other Things Entrepreneurs Need to Know

19 Things Small Business Owners Need to Know

1—Are You Struggling to Hire?

More than half of new entrepreneurs actually start to hire in their first year of operation, but many have difficulty filling job openings and finding competent workers, according to original survey data from  SCORE, the nation’s largest network of volunteer, expert business mentors. When startup entrepreneurs do hire additional help, they gravitate toward contractors who can provide specialized, need-based expertise.

This data is from part three of SCORE’s Megaphone of Main Street data report on small business startups. Check it out below.

2—Singles Day Deals

Today is the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, also known as Singles Day. Last year the special festival, created by Alibaba Group’s consumer-facing e-commerce platforms in China, generated $30.8 billion in gross merchandise volume. Compare this to the $7 million in sales generated during the first Singles Day, 11 years ago.

This year, more than 500 million people are expected to participate with over 200,000 brands taking part (compared to 27 companies that participated in the first Singles Day) and over 1 million new products offered.

This year, Alibaba.com, the B2B commerce platform of Alibaba Group, is getting in on the act, offering 10% off coupons on select items. There’s more information here.

 

3—Is Your Small Business “Frustrating” Consumers?

When it comes to holiday and online shopping experiences, about 60% of consumers are dissatisfied, according to the new Pitney Bowes’ 2019 Online Shopping Study. That’s up four points from last year and is nearly double the number of dissatisfied online holiday shoppers from just four years ago.

Consumer pain points: The cause of their frustration—delayed shipments, the cost of shipping, and inaccurate tracking. And the pain points remain post-purchase as well, including, receiving a wrong or damaged item, long refund wait times and inconvenient returns—outside of the holidays as well. How bad is it? Really bad—86% of consumers liken poor post-purchase experiences to having a root canal. The study shows as competition increases, retailers need to address consumer headaches throughout the entire shopping process to truly meet and exceed expectations.

Millennials slow their pace of shopping: The Pitney Bowes survey reveals millennials aren’t buying online as frequently this year—decreasing their shopping frequency from daily or weekly to just monthly or even annually. They’re becoming “more sophisticated shoppers,” so they might be spending as much money as they did, but they’re making fewer purchases.

Other millennial shopping trends:

• Poor retail experiences have ripple effects—especially in this age of social media: 89% of millennials would take action if they weren’t satisfied with a post-purchase experience—and 19% will take their dissatisfaction to social media.
• Consumers crave post-purchase communication:Millennials are more interested in knowing that their package arrived at the destination (on a map) than scheduling a specific date/time for delivery. Across all generations, more than half of consumers track their packages daily or multiple times a day, but millennials do so more often (67% vs. 59%).
• The bedroom is the new dressing room:66% of millennials say they purchase clothing in multiple sizes, colors and patterns to try on at home and return what they don’t want. Among online shoppers generally, 51% also admit to this trend, known as ‘bracketing’—and men are more likely to ‘bracket’ than women (27% vs. 19%).
• Subscription services are changing retail:Subscription box services may impact how consumers perceive how often they purchase products online—41% of millennials use subscription services and 66% of them are purchasing less often with non-sub box retailers as a result.

Returns: The Study is a wakeup call for retailers—consumers would rather be stuck with an unwanted product than deal with hassle of paying for returns.

• 70% “hate” paying for returns and 61% “hate” missing the returns period and getting stuck with the product.
• 72% “love” a return label that comes in the package
• 66% “love” when a carrier picks up a return from your home or mailbox

Shipping: What frustrates consumers about the shipping process?

• Free shipping still reigns supreme—24% of shoppers are disappointed with the cost of shipping. Free shipping is the #1 most important loyalty driver vs other delivery-related experiences.
• 29% of online shoppers were disappointed with delayed shipments. Worse, 40% of consumers blame the retailer when a package is delayed, damaged or lost—not the carrier.
• 59% of consumers track their packages daily or multiple times a day, making inaccurate tracking all the more disappointing. As a result, 51% have either enrolled or are interested in enrolling in a carrier tracking program (UPS MyChoice, FedEx Delivery Manager, etc.).

There’s more to know in the infographic below.

4—Digital Commerce Trends

The 2019 Global mCommerce Index was launched this morning by PayPal.

Key trends of the report:

• Mobile is Becoming a Dominant Force and Businesses are Leaving Money on the Table: Businesses need mobile-optimized experiences if they are going to attract and maintain younger consumers such as millennials and Gen Z. Across all age groups, nearly 80% of consumers surveyed have shopped via smartphone yet only 63% of businesses are optimized to accept mobile payments. That’s a 15% gap in businesses who are not taking advantage of this massive trend.

• The Rise and Evolution of Social Commerce: Social media is continuing to become a major commerce channel. This is evident as Facebook expands with Facebook Marketplace and Instagram Commerce, but  already 1 in 3 merchants and 1 in 3 consumers say they utilize social commerce to shop. This type of selling provides new data and information allowing businesses to better target their shoppers. Data and technology are the great equalizer for businesses in a world where one company owns about half of the e-commerce industry.

• Women Leading the Way in Mobile Commerce Adoption: 48% of women prefer to make online purchases via a mobile device vs. 39% of men. But more men (26%) shop use their mobile devices to shop from work than women (19%).
• Customer Choice is Key: The main reason consumers abandon their mobile purchases is because merchants don’t offer customers’ preferred payment method—21% of consumer respondents globally have abandoned a purchase because their preferred payment method was not available. Among respondents, the largest percentage of mobile shoppers use PayPal for purchases via mobile (53%) followed by credit cards (44%).

• In-Store Experiences Go Mobile: 87% of merchant respondents that sell in-person have accepted sales via a contactless payment—with 50% of these instances taking place with a smartphone.

 

5—Holiday Shopper Cybersecurity Report

How trusting will shoppers be this holiday season? Most are “concerned,” to say the least. According to the holiday shopper cybersecurity survey from SiteLock, e-tailers need to protect their data this year, or you’re likely to lose customers.

Survey highlights:

• 66% of respondents are concerned about their personal data being stolen as a result of shopping online
• 32% of respondents who had their data stolen did not continue to shop with the e-tailer their info was taken from
• 42% of consumers are unlikely to shop at a smaller, lesser-known online e-tailer if their information was compromised by that business
• 56% of respondents would wait longer than one month to shop online again from a business their information was compromised from
• 48% of respondents do not believe smaller, lesser-known online retailers properly store their personal information online

For more information check out this blog post.

 

6—How to Thrive—Even When Mercury is in Retrograde

Astrology buffs know you have to be extra-cautious when Mercury is in Retrograde—which happens about 3-4 times a year. Mercury is currently in Retrograde, and we won’t be out until November 20^th.

Mercury is the planet that rules communication—including formal contracts and agreements as well as all types of code, transportation, shipping, and travel. When Mercury is in Retrograde, there are often communications mishaps, issues with tech, and travel delays. Here are five simple ways to make sure your business life doesn’t fall apart while Mercury is in Retrograde.

1—Carefully review all legal documents and contracts: If you have to sign any kind of formal document while Mercury is in Retrograde, be sure to give it a more thorough read than usual, Mercury might mess with the details. Even if it’s a simple agreement, make sure you have all of your bases covered. Grab a second or third set of eyes to make you feel confident enough to sign on the dotted line.

2—Choose your words carefully: Think before you speak during this tricky astrological time, especially if it’s a complicated conversation with a client. When it comes to social media, pay even more attention to what you say publicly. Certain apps, like Retrograde by Zapier, are designed to help you navigate communication, and can even automatically tweet a reminder to your followers when Mercury is in Retrograde.

3—Confirm all travel plans: Keep a close eye on your calendar and make sure you confirm all your plans well in advance. Your calendar invite may not have updated when the meeting location moved, or your gate may have changed at the airport with no warning. Take special care to confirm meetings with clients and keep an eye on Google maps, train times and flight

4—Be mindful of your emails: During this time spelling errors and embarrassing typos are bound to happen. Install a tool like Grammarly, to check for complex grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. With its new feature, Grammarly can even detect tone, so you can be sure Mercury isn’t derailing any of your professional relationships.

5—Backup your data: There is perhaps no worse excuse than, “I don’t know what happened; it just didn’t save.” Avoid losing hours of valuable work by diligently backing up your data. And once you’ve backed it up, you might want to back it up again for good measure.

 

7—Credit Card Surcharges

Credit card surcharging is when your business passes credit card processing fees to the cardholder instead of paying them directly, This type of processing promises to lessen the impact of credit card processing fees on your bottom line, but there are some caveats.

Get more details in the infographic below from CardFellow.com.

8—Leadership, Digital Marketing, Branding Event to be Held This Week

The Internet Marketing Association (IMA) is hosting ImpactSHOW, a new business leadership, digital marketing and branding program at various Microsoft Store locations, this Thursday, November 14.  This exclusive event will offer small businesses and entrepreneurs an opportunity to experience essential highlights of IMAs successful annual IMPACT conference while networking with local peers.

The ImpactSHOW will feature video presentations by some of the world’s most driven entrepreneurs and brand leaders during a 90-minute in-person event.

Attendance at the IMA ImpactShow in-store event is free, and participants are eligible for a chance to win a new Microsoft Surface Go! (one per store location.) All registered attendees also will receive an offer for discount tuition from Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business, a one-year membership to the Internet Marketing Association with exclusive on-line training and coaching programs, as well as the ImpactSHOW 2019 report.

Register today!

 

9—Mobile First Shopping

Mobile-first shopping is up 24% over the past year and 58%  of consumers say social media directly influences their purchasing decisions. In response, retailers must equip their social media response teams for the influx of messages they can expect this holiday (40% more in social messages, to be exact), as shown in a new proprietary data report released by Sprout Social.

Sprout Social analyzed more than 144 million messages across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to uncover how retailers fared in previous holiday shopping seasons and what brands can expect for 2019.

The study found:

• In 2018, retailers saw a 26% jump in the average social messages received per day January-October and the holiday months of November and December. It is projected retailers will see a 40% jump for the 2019 holiday months.
• Small businesses are projected to see a 40% increase in average social messages during the 2019 holiday season.
• This season, retailers should anticipate an average of 45% more Facebook messages per day, a 12% increase in Instagram messages and 11% increase in Twitter messages in November and December 2019 compared to the rest of 2019.

See the full analysis of these findings delivered by Sprout Social’s data science team, here.

 

10—Best Cities for Freelancers

Are you a freelancer on the move? Wondering what cities are best for you to live and work in and which you might want to avoid? According to Neighborhoods.com, the 5 best cities for freelancers are Spokane, WA, Vancouver, WA, Fort Lauderdale, FL, Tempe, AZ and Scottsdale, AZ.

Factors that figured in the final determination included cost of living, ease of getting around town, internet speed and the number of Starbucks.

Get detailed information on 30 of the best and worst cities for freelancers.

 

11—Easier Access to Capital

GoDaddy Inc. and Kabbage, Inc. are teaming up, offering Kabbage’s online lending platform to GoDaddy’s U.S. customers so they can easily access a business line of credit in minutes to manage and grow their businesses.

By completing a simple application process from Kabbage, customers can quickly access flexible lines of credit of up to $250,000 in minutes if approved. With increased financial capacity, GoDaddy customers can access the extra cash flow when they need it.

Melissa Schneider, GoDaddy’s vice president of global marketing operations, says, “We know a lack of capital for marketing and other core activities remains a major roadblock to accelerate growth. Our partnership with Kabbage is key in our ongoing mission to empower our customers and provide them with the resources they need to fuel their business needs.”

GoDaddy and Kabbage surveyed entrepreneurs to gain a deeper understanding of how small business owners overcome obstacles in growing their businesses. Most impressively, 60% of respondents experienced an increase in revenues after investing in online advertising. Other notable findings:

• Having a website for their business is the most helpful digital tool for growing and expanding (43%), followed by social media marketing (35%).
• As a result of investing in online advertising, 44% reported an uplift in sales as high as 25%.
• When asked about roadblocks to growing their company’s digital presence or online advertising, close to 50% chose a lack of money as the most significant impediment.

No fees are required to apply for Kabbage Funding through GoDaddy. Qualified small business owners are not obligated to make withdrawals, meaning their line of credit will be there when they need it and they won’t pay anything until they access funds. As a special courtesy to existing GoDaddy customers, small business owners can take advantage of $100 off their first month’s fees. This hassle-free approach to lending allows small businesses the flexibility to seamlessly manage their cash flow along with their other services from GoDaddy.

Kabbage CRO Laura Goldberg says, “Our customers tell us flexible funding is critical to grow and run their businesses; new opportunities make it important to be able to access capital quickly whether for online marketing, inventory or purchasing new equipment. They simply can’t afford to wait weeks or months for a loan approval. With GoDaddy, we pair the best of both worlds so more small businesses have a competitive advantage to quickly deploy and fund marketing initiatives so they may capitalize on opportunities.”

 

12—Should You Do Business with Amazon?

Is it worth it to get do business with Amazon’s FBA (fulfilled by Amazon)?

Get the answers in the infographic below from Smart-Minded.com.

13—Business Texting Grows

EZ Texting, a leader in SMS marketing software for business, recently released its inaugural report, 2019 Mobile Usage Report: How Consumers Are Really Texting, which reveals just how often certain segments of the population interact with their mobile devices in comparison to other channels. The research conducted by EZ Texting reveals that texts maintain an incredibly high overall open rate of 100%, and 90% of consumers open and read a text within 30 minutes of receipt.

The company says, “To prepare for the continuing shift toward mobile and the availability of a fast, wireless mobile connection with 5G’s arrival, businesses and organizations should include text marketing to connect and engage with their audiences where they actually are — on their cellphones.”

The 2019 Mobile Usage Report: How Consumers Are Really Texting looks into the mobile habits of consumers, engagement rate with SMS messaging, preferences of platforms to communicate and the texting behaviors based on demographics.

Key takeaways

• More than 50% of consumers check their phones 5+ times per hour
• 50% of those aged 18-29 check their messages at least 7+ times per hour
• 65% of consumers check their phones within 5 minutes of waking up
• Nearly 90% of consumers respond to a text message within 30 minutes
• Text messaging has 6X the engagement of email
• Consumers spend more time texting on their mobile phones than nearly any other activity including social media and online shopping

In its own study, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) found 93% of surveyed consumers believe wireless messaging is a trusted communications environment with SMS texting holding a 2.8% spam rate compared to the 53% spam rate of email. SMS marketing is an integral part of any organization’s 1:1 communication and promotions strategy, however, remaining both compliant and effective in all text marketing practices is vital.

 

Cool Tools

 

14—QuickBooks Brings AI-Driven Innovations to Small Businesses

I was at this year’s Intuit’s QuickBooks Connect conference, (with more than 5,000 attendees) and was excited to see all the “new product innovations designed to leverage the latest in artificial intelligence (AI), bringing technology typically reserved for the world’s biggest companies directly to small businesses” introduced there.

Intuit says working with QuickBooks “means being part of the growth of one of the most advanced AI-driven, expert small business financial platforms in the world, giving small businesses the advantage they need to succeed.” It was all quite impressive, to be sure.

By identifying the patterns in the billions of transactions that flow through the QuickBooks platform, QuickBooks Online is able to use AI to automate certain repetitive back-office work, reduce friction in getting paid, and improve forecasts of cash flow. This is designed to free small business owners focus on the important work.

“The reality of running a small business is hard, and often owners are left to figure out how to leverage and take advantage of AI by themselves. QuickBooks is changing this by leveling the playing field, giving small businesses access to data and insights they’ve never had before,” says Alex Chriss, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Small Business Self-Employed Group at Intuit. “By turning data into meaningful and useful insights, QuickBooks will be able to help small businesses make more data-driven decisions, spotting mistakes that would otherwise cost time and money.”

This year, QuickBooks focused on three key areas to accelerate the benefits for customers: Smart Money, Smart Decisions, and Smart Connections.

Smart Money: In 82% of small business failures, cash flow problems are a contributing factor. Look for these innovations to help you get paid faster, get access to capital and better understand your cash flow.

• Coming Soon: Cash Flow Planner: Leveraging the power of AI, this tool will enable small businesses to predict their daily cash flow over the next 90 days. The planner proactively alerts business owners when a negative situation is on the horizon and provides recommendations around how to navigate the situation. In addition, the planner can be used for scenario planning to help users answer questions such as: “Is it safe to hire another employee now, given my forecasted cash flow in the coming few months?”
• New: QuickBooks Payments: QuickBooks Payments currently enables next day payment and will soon enable instant deposit payments, giving small businesses access to funds after getting paid, whether through bank transfers or credit card, rather than waiting several business days. Businesses can create a payment-enabled invoice in less than one minute, with their hours, expenses and mileage added automatically through AI. They can also customize their invoices, take a deposit or structure installments and allow customers to pay in a variety of formats, enhancing their customer service while improving their cash flow.

QuickBooks now ensures that small businesses get paid wherever they are with the introduction of a new set of features in GoPayment, where business owners can set roles and permissions for staff that enable the ability to accept and get paid at a job site. As a result of these new capabilities, small businesses that use QuickBooks Payments get paid 3x faster than those who do not.

• Updated: QuickBooks Capital: QuickBooks provides loans to small businesses that otherwise might not qualify, looking beyond the credit score. Now loans are available to certain QuickBooks Desktop customers in addition to QuickBooks Online.

Smart Decisions: Too often, small businesses and the self-employed make decisions about their businesses without the right information or expertise. QuickBooks has seen millions of similar decisions across its ecosystem and through the power of AI, QuickBooks provides insights to help businesses be smarter.

I saw demonstrations of these new features, and they were quick, easy and a bit astonishing.

• New: Receipt Capture: The new QuickBooks Mobile app now includes Receipt Capture, which allows small businesses to upload, email or snap receipts for improved expense management. Receipt Capture extracts relevant data from the receipt so small businesses can either create a new transaction or find a match between the receipt and an existing expense transaction in QuickBooks.
• New: Mileage Tracking in QuickBooks: First introduced in QuickBooks Self-Employed, QuickBooks’ patented mileage tracking technology is now available to QuickBooks Online users so they can track and separate business mileage from personal to identify more potential tax deductions and savings. Leveraging AI, QuickBooks Mileage Tracking automatically recognizes frequent trip routes, allows users to mark locations as “favorites” and can proactively recommend rules to ensure trips are consistently marked as business or personal.
• Updated: QuickBooks Online Advanced: QuickBooks Online Advanced was introduced in 2018 to serve a gap in the small business market, providing high-growth small businesses with a cloud-based solution that leverages AI, automation and data innovation to deliver more ways for them to grow. New features coming soon include the ability to automate transactions and workflows and an integration with a leading cloud-based organization and CRM tool. Additional robust QuickBooks Online Advanced features designed for high-growth businesses include advanced reporting, the ability to process more transactions, and increased in-product support, as well as the integration with 700 apps.
• New: QuickBooks Online Accountant Business Performance Dashboard: The new Business Performance tab in QuickBooks Online Accountant provides key metrics, trends and ratios with the click of a button. Specifically designed for accountants, the powerful technology automatically calculates ratios and displays key trends from client data that can help accountants identify areas their clients should focus on to improve business performance.

Smart Connections: As the world’s leading small business ecosystem, QuickBooks now intelligently matches small businesses to experts to help them grow and prosper with the launch of QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping.

• New: QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping: QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping is a platform of assisted professional services that connects small business and self-employed customers with on-demand accounting experts inside the QuickBooks product. Offered via a monthly subscription, and using one-way video conferencing capability, small business owners can connect to a virtual bookkeeper to get the help they need and ensure their records are accurate and up-to-date.

This solves the two biggest challenges small business owners without accountants face: the lack of confidence that they’re managing their books correctly and finding an expert to help them manage their books on an ongoing basis. Today, 40% of small businesses using QuickBooks are not connected to an accountant. Yet, small businesses connected to an accountant say they are twice as likely to succeed.

For accountants and bookkeepers, QuickBooks Live provides the opportunity to earn extra money with the flexibility of working remotely and setting their own hours. To participate as a QuickBooks Live bookkeeper, professionals must be QuickBooks Online certified and meet several other qualifications, including active credentials and work history with small business clients.

Ger more information about QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping.

 

15—Zoho Hits Historic Milestone

Zoho Corporation, a global, privately held company that offers the most comprehensive suite of business software applications in the industry, just hit another historic milestone—50 million business users in more than 180 countries.

Zoho is growing its infrastructure to support this level of client growth, boasting 10 global data centers, supporting the more than 45 different business apps.

With the recent launch of Catalyst, Zoho continues to be a major player in the developer space as well, offering no-code, low-code, and pro-code applications. As more and more people around the world turn to Zoho for their business needs, the company is redoubling its efforts to provide the best, most unified platform, services, and applications in the industry.

To do this, Zoho has rearchitected its content collaboration platform, optimizing it for teams and businesses. WorkDrive now provides underlying document management across all Zoho business applications, allowing for unified search, single storage, contextual integration, as well as many other vertically integrated capabilities.

Businesses need more than storage today—they need enterprise-grade solutions in areas like multi-level security, compliance, and audit control. And for many businesses, it’s not about an individual, it’s all about the team, making sharing and collaboration necessary in workflows and business processes. WorkDrive is integrated into the platform, services, and applications layers of the Zoho technology stack and incorporates capabilities like virus detection, encryption, image processing, and other AI tools in the proper business context.

“A content collaboration platform must understand the context of the documents it stores. A proposal may turn into a sales contract and then into a service level agreement. In this case, the customer engagement went from prospecting to sales to service management. By understanding the connections between these documents—hence their underlying context—a content collaboration platform can connect and engage the relevant people,” says Vijay Sundaram, Zoho’s Chief Strategy Officer. “WorkDrive creates a common, unified file system across all business processes, so the business context is easier to understand and preserve, making the system significantly more valuable to the customer. This unique type of a solution can only come from a vendor who also offers the business applications.”

Zoho is revamping its Workplace suite of productivity applications, which includes Cliq, Notebook, Connect, Writer, Sheet, Show, Showtime, Mail, Meeting, and WorkDrive. Among other new capabilities, Workplace now features an integrated app dashboard that houses customizable widgets that display information from each of the nine apps included in the suite. Here are some of the key features of WorkDrive and the revamped Workplace suite:

WorkDrive:

• comes with a built-in Zoho Office suite (Writer, Sheet, and Show).
• introduces Team Folders, a shared workplace with role-based member permissions for cross-team collaboration and storage.
• deploys virus scanning, encryption, and WAN acceleration at the platform level, strengthening all Zoho services and applications built on top of it.
• introduces image, video, and document conversion services.
• is integrated with Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant, providing unified search as well as OCR in applications such as Zoho Notebook.
• features an advanced external file-sharing feature, allowing users to collaborate with external stakeholders while maintaining control of the files.
• brings businesses advanced team management capabilities, allowing administrators to manage settings at the team and Team Folder levels.

Workplace features

• Zoho Sheetis integrated with Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant, giving customers automatic insight into their data, data cleansing, and even the ability to scan data tables within images and convert them into spreadsheets.
• Zoho Cliqallows users to build bots, custom message actions, commands, and schedulers that connect with other workplace tools to centralize and consolidate data.
• Zoho Writergives business users the power to create documents with fillable fields. They can publish those documents as a web form to collect responses or generate merged documents (docx/PDF). Users can deliver the merged documents via email or send the filled document for signature.
• Zoho ShowTimeoffers on-demand training with ticketing and course completion certificates, allowing trainers to reach customers across time zones and provide flexible learning.
• Zoho Mail features email retention and eDiscovery so admins can retain organization-wide emails for a specified period and easily search across those retained emails and retrieve relevant information.
• Zoho Notebook is enhanced by Zia. Users can employ the Ask Zia feature to save content to Notebook, search for notes, set reminders, and share notes with voice commands.
• Zoho Meetinghas added new moderator controls, including the ability to lock meetings, switch presenters, and mute or remove participants.

Pricing & Availability

WorkDrive is available starting at $2 per user/month. Zoho Workplace is available starting at $3 per user/month.

 

16—NETGEAR Enables AV Over IP

NETGEAR®, Inc. recently announced new additions to its M4300 line of switches, 16, 24, and 48-port 10 Gigabit models are now available for purchase. Additionally, the new M4500 series 100 Gigabit Network Switches have been added to the NETGEAR managed switch line. All of these new offerings are purpose built to streamline audiovisual solutions over IP by reducing the complexity and cost of networked deployments but are equally applicable to standard IT network deployments.

To address the expansive growth of AV deployments over ethernet, NETGEAR is introducing the M4500-32C and M4500-48XF8C, a new class of switches for the market. These AV over IP-ready 100G and 10G Ethernet switches combine the configurability of an AV matrix switcher with the power and scalability of Ethernet to support hundreds of AV over IP endpoints, at a price point that is dramatically lower than comparable matrix switchers.

The M4500-32C 32-port 100Gbps switch can be leveraged to aggregate the edge switches for a complete set up for large projects up to 320×320 SDVoE (10G) devices in a single architecture. Installers opting to use M4500-48XF8C switch in their installation will find that it is already preconfigured out of the box enabling true AV and multicast Zero Touch network configuration. Connect AV endpoints, and power on the switch.

“NETGEAR is driving the technology transition for the audiovisual space by offering more managed switches that can ease the move from the traditional complexities and expense of disseminating video and audio to big screens,” says John McHugh, senior vice president of SMB and services at NETGEAR. “We now offer a range of port options to meet the needs of smaller deployments such as in home or small business and the 100G option will address the growing demands of providing the highest quality video to the stadium level displays.”

The M4300-16X is the world’s first 16-port 100M/1G/2.5G/5G/10GBASE-T copper switch with an option for PoE+ across all ports in full provisioning mode. The M4300-16X is a half-width 1U switch that comes either with a non-PoE power supply or with a power supply capable of providing 500W of PoE power to the 16 ports.

The M4300-24XF is a 24-port 10GBASE-X SFP+ fiber switch with two shared 10GBASE-T copper ports. The M4300-24XF is a half-width 1U switch that dramatically lowers the cost of fiber-based project installations up to 24 nodes.

NETGEAR is also introducing the M4300-48XF, a 48-port 10GBASE-X SFP+ fiber switch with two shared 10GBASE-T copper ports. The M4300-48XF is a full-width 1U switch that dramatically lowers the cost of fiber-based project installations up to 48 nodes.

All M4300 models are certified for Software Defined Video over Ethernet (SDVoE) devices for the ultimate in AV over IP deployments. They are also ideal in any IT deployment that need fast, reliable and cost-effective networking.

Availability: The full line up of NETGEAR M4300 and M4500 managed switches are now available worldwide from authorized NETGEAR partners and reseller channels.

• NETGEAR M4300 16X, managed switch with 16x10GBASE-T ports and APS299W PSU (199W PoE budget, all ports PoE+ for suggested price of $1,899.99 USD with copper ports and 500W PoE budget $2,199.99 USD.
• NETGEAR M4300 24XF, managed Switch with 24x10G SFP+ ports for suggested price of $1899.99 USD.
• NETGEAR M4300 48XF, managed Switch with 48x10G SFP+ ports for suggested price of $3,399.99
• NETGEARM4500-32C managed switch with 32x40G/50G/100G QSFP28 ports, 2xPSUs and 6xFan trays is available now for the suggested price of $14,999.99 USD.
• NETGEAR M4500-48XF8C managed switch with 48x10G/25G SFP28 ports and 8x40G/50G/100G QSFP28 uplinks, 2xPSUs and 6xFan trays is available now for suggested price of $12,999.99 USD.

To learn more about these new managed switches please visit NETGEAR.com.

AV Design Center: To learn more about Pro AV custom integration visit the Pro AV page on NETGEAR.com. NETGEAR provides technical assistance for installers, integrators and manufacturers who are interested in how high-performance low-cost IP networks can be used for AV installations from residential to the most advanced solutions for healthcare, public safety or commercial deployments.   The 24/7 service can be accessed via contacting NETGEAR through the email proav.engineeringservices@netgear.com.

 

Quick Clicks

 

17—Want to Start a Podcast?

Podcasting is big and gaining in popularity. Thinking you want to start your own? (Me too!) Check out this complete guide to podcasting from DJCity in Australia.

 

18—Loyalty Programs

Have questions about the components of the best loyalty programs. Clarus Commerce has your answers in this free e-book—Premium Loyalty: Answers to the Questions You Should be Asking.

 

19—Most Profitable Industries

For the nation as a whole, says Comparisun, profit margins are 8.89%, but some industries boast profits well over 20%, while others are in the negative range. Check out this blog post to find out which industries are the most profitable.

Business stock photo by mavo/Shutterstock