If you’re a small business owner (like me) you need to get the most out of every dollar. Chance are you’ve thought about trying out some web conference softwarebut haven’t gotten around to it.

Small business owners often hesitate when thinking about internet conferencing services. There’s a fear it’ll cost too much or that they’ll get stuck paying too much for a bunch of useless features. This article will guide you through the types of plans available and the features you should consider.

Web conference pricing is much more accessible than a few years ago. Vendors are pursuing the small- and medium-size market, and have pricing plans geared for them. For example, Webex’s MeetMeNow prices out to as low as $35 a month for an unlimited number of meetings (10 participants per meeting).

How do you know if the price makes sense? Sit down for a minute and calculate how much you’re spending on travel. Add to it your long-distance phone call budget and what you spend on cellular minutes. Now, if you had web conferencing software available to you, how much of that budget would you save? When you calculate it out you’ll probably agree that web conferencing software can be a solid investment.

Now, of course, you have to figure out what features make sense for you. If you’ve used internet conferencing before you probably already know what you need. If this is new technology to you, I suggest you use one of the free trials to see which of these features make the most sense for you.

Audio Conferencing: Your web conference vendor should provide a toll free number for participants. If possible, they should also allow for VoIP calling (calling over the Internet).

Video Conferencing: Video streaming is going mainstream. You can hook up a webcam to your pc and let the attendees see you as you speak. Most web conference vendors integrate video streaming into their software.

White Board: I love whiteboards, real or virtual. A shared, online white board is a must for me. The group can work together on an idea, just as if they were in the same room.

Annotating Documents: Tired of reading through documents over the phone, or trying to integrate a slew of “track changes” documents? Instead, the group can review and edit documents together.

Number and Size of Meetings: I prefer a plan that allows unlimited meetings. Some of the entry-level programs will limit the number of participants per meeting, but how often do we need more than 10 people on a call anyway?

Take a few minutes to review this list of features and think about how you’ll use web conferencing software. The best way to decide is to sign up for a free trial and see if it meets your needs.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 3:50 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.