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Talladega County, Alabama

Talladega County Extension Coordinator, Wanda Jurriaans, has seen great success in a four-part workshop series to promote e-commerce to small business owners and potential owners. Using funding attained through a mini-grant from the National e-Commerce Extension Initiative, Jurriaans conducted worked based on the learning module "e-Commerce A Tool for Profit" by Dr. Kimball P. Marshall.

"With our high unemployment rates, I am hoping this information will create ideas for families to learn how to supplement their incomes," Jurrianns said. "I think there are good products in our area, but because some are in rural areas, reaching a market is more difficult."

The workshop series, which began Thursday, August 26, 2010 and continued on consecutive Thursdays through September 16, was advertised through announcements at local meetings and information posted at public buildings as well as the Talladega county Web site. The workshop series also attracted the attention of the local newspaper, The Daily Home, who featured story for the community.

The first workshop was an introduction to e-commerce, followed by a discussion of the workshop series' objectives and goals. Addressing the idea that rural skills have value that can be easily sold, the workshop emphasized the use of e-commerce for selling these skills from a rural setting. A representative from Jacksonville State University Small Business Development Center followed this discussion with the presentation, "Services Available to Small Businesses." Offered as proof that e-commerce is a valuable tool that is already being used locally, the workshop concluded by highlighting 12 Web sites from e-commerce business owners who were within a 10 to 100 radius of Talladega County. All of these web-sites operate from a rural location.

Following a homework assignment on Web site exploration, the second workshop focused on a discussion of the participants' findings. They were asked to consider the following points about each Web site: how easy was shopping, how enticing was the Web site, why would you and why would you not feel comfortable shopping there, what did you like best and least about the site, what would you change, did you learn anything that will be of value to your e-commerce business? After a detailed Web site review and discussion period, some current e-commerce business owners gave two presentations and responded to questions from the group.

The third workshop, on September 9th, addressed issues of record keeping and the legal requirements for operating a business. The topics included individual and corporate tax, sales, use and business tax and simple record keeping. As an added bonus, representatives from the Alabama Department of Revenue presented the tax requirements for operating a business. All the workshop participants received handouts to serve as reference materials for later business use. These materials also included e-mail addresses and 800 numbers that all Alabama business owners can use for clarification of any questions concerning taxes.

Scheduled for September 16, the final session is slated to include a computer specialist from Auburn University who will discuss and model how to set up payment accounts and how to handle feedback from customers. Additionally, the workshop will spotlight customer delivery and shipping.

Preliminary evaluations show that these workshops have been well attended and highly received. Learn more about the mini-grant program at http://srdc.msstate.edu/ecommerce/grants/minigrants.html.