Colorado Web Solutions

Do you Ship to Colorado? Merchant Advisory

Posted on March 23rd, 2010 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

As the owner of a small business in Colorado I am downright ashamed by the new tax laws that were just passed in Colorado. The Colorado government has decided that small businesses should be punished not only in the state but also out of the state. We have been very active in writing letters and campaigning but it has been met with greedy, deaf ears. This new law is effecting our business as well as thousands of others in the state. Regardless of what your opinion is, it’s the new law for now, so we will all have to comply.

Personally, if I were a small business owner not based in Colorado, I would seriously consider not offering shipping to Colorado because of this law. In a nut shell for retailers, the Colorado Government thinks that it is the merchants responsibility to be able to provide sales summaries for EVERY Colorado Customer annually to each individual customer (not the state) so that they can file their taxes. It’s a complete joke of a law.

This article was provided by Yahoo! Small Business and covers everything in full. If you have any questions, consult your tax adviser. Good luck Colorado… This could be a rough one…

If any members of the Colorado Government that voted for this law are reading this blog, I challenge you to defend yourself to our retailers. This is a sad excuse of a law and the desperation to collect revenue is only going to bite you in the ass.  It’s sad to me that the state that originally encouraged exploration, self sufficiency, entrepreneurs and creativity is now a state that does not support small businesses or their customers.

Matt Sampson | CEO | Colorado Web Solutions

The following information is provided as a courtesy to our merchants. The tax law information may not be an accurate description of Colorado tax law requirements and, as such, should not be relied upon as advice on how to comply with tax laws. Merchants are urged to seek their own counsel on this and all tax matters. The intent of this article is to provide our merchants who are subject to the new Colorado tax law with technical instructions that may facilitate merchants’ compliance with some of the requirements of the new law.

Recent legislation in Colorado places new obligations on companies that do not collect Colorado sales tax. Certain exceptions do apply. For detailed information about these requirements, merchants should consult with their tax advisors. Merchants may access a copy of the new regulation on the Colorado Department of Revenue web site. A recent article from E-Commerce Times provides a summary of the new requirements.

Among the new obligations is a requirement that merchants provide notice to certain customers of such customers’ obligations with respect to sales tax. In connection with this new obligation, our merchants may wish to include the notice during checkout, either on the Billing Information page (the Shipping & Billing Information page for merchants using a single-page checkout flow), the Order Review page, or on the Order Confirmation page. To add this information:

1. In the Page Configuration section of Checkout Manager, select the tab for the page you wish to add this notice to.
2. Enter the required notice information in the Page Message field. Please consult with your tax advisor and see the Colorado Department of Revenue web site for details of the information to be included here.
3. Save your changes, and publish your Order Settings.

If you do not wish for this notice to appear to all customers, you may instead wish to add JavaScript code to your pages to detect a Colorado billing address, and to display this notice only upon a Colorado billing address being provided.

For more information about adding custom information to checkout pages, please see the Customizing a Specific Page section in Checkout Manager help.

Also among the new obligations is the requirement that merchants distribute annual information statements to their Colorado customers. In connection with such annual information statements for Colorado customers, Merchant Solutions Standard and Professional merchants who use Order Manager may wish to export their orders to search or sort orders by state. Merchants who use third-party order processing solutions may wish to use export, search, or sort capabilities available within the application being used.

Yahoo! Small Business recommends that you consult with your tax advisor with respect to the new law. We hope that the information we’ve provided here is helpful to those of our merchants who are subject to the new Colorado tax law. For more information on the new Colorado tax law, please read the E-Commerce Times article and visit the Colorado Department of Revenue web site.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business
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The Ultimate Salesperson: Your Website

Posted on March 16th, 2010 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

I saw this article today on the Yahoo! Small Business site and thought it was worthy of posting for our clients and visitors. I agree with the theory behind this article completely. I don’t completely agree with the implementation, but overall, a great piece worth reading. If you’d like to read the entire article, I added a link to it below. Enjoy!

Matt Sampson
Colorado Web Solutions

By Ramon Ray – Entrepreneur.com

I know that a business’s website is one of the most powerful sales tools a small business can have, but I’ve never thought of a website as a salesperson until now. Do it yourself and you might start looking at websites differently.

If you think of your website as a salesperson, you’ll begin to think of it as more than just a glorified brochure.  You’ll even want it to be better designed, since you probably want your sales reps to look good.

To help develop your website into a salesperson, ask these four questions:

1. Does your website know everything about your business that it should?

2. Do you measure your website’s success (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually)?

3. Do you offer your website “training” on your business fundamentals, new trends or economic changes in your local market or in the national business climate for your industry?

4. Does your website have all your current products, services and pricing?

You would never send a sales representative to prospective clients without ensuring he or she had all the needed information, so your informational expectations of the website should be no different.

If you are selling a line of women’s handbags and scarves in person, for example, it would make sense to describe the fabric and the show the bags from all angles, detailing which scarves are machine washable and which scarves are not. The same sales routine applies to your website.

Sales representatives also educate themselves about their clients, so they spend a lot of time listening to the customer’s needs and concerns before selling a product or service. The same applies to your website.

Read the rest of the article at: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/r-article-a-113115-m-3-sc-17-the_best_salesperson_your_website-i

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