Even an online/web business cannot live in a vacuum.

When you started your web based business you probably had coffee with your suppliers, posted freshly signed contracts through the mail and called potential new clients. All of these really important milestone events happened offline, in the “real world”.

Whilst it’s great to meet face-to-face, we have to admit it’s not practical all of the time which is why the UK portion of MOO’s Marketing team don’t fly from MOO HQ in London (UK) to our office in Rhode Island (USA) for our weekly Marketing meeting (despite how much fun it’d be to pay the Providence office a visit). Instead, we try to make use of all of the latest technology to keep us close to our US team mates.

The team are always chatting on IM (instant messenger) and sharing files via email, but we sometimes need to store files so the whole team can access them when we’re on the move, anywhere in the world. We use Huddle for sharing files – it’s free and the perfect place to keep up to date files for the entire team. The feature that comes in very handy is the version tracking of uploaded files to see who last worked on a particular document. Very nice indeed.

We also use VoIP (voice over internet protocol) to keep in touch. It’s just like a normal telephone service, but has the added benefit of no line rental and you can call other VoIP users for free – a great way to save on the cost of phone calls (especially when you’re calling across the ocean). Another feature of VoIP that we love is the ability to conference call for free too.

The guys at Gradwell have a whole set of VoIP options and some great tips on the other benefits of VoIP – things we’d never even considered:

• Using local numbers (making it cheaper for your customer to call you) and redirecting the caller smoothly to your VoIP phone number.
• Forwarding incoming calls to a VoIP enabled mobile, letting you easily take your work on the road – never missing out on an important business call.
• Sharing the workload of incoming calls by sharing your VoIP line with a team mate and delegating calls – making you more productive.
• ‘Smart’ call forwarding to different VoIP lines or team mates based on where the caller is calling from making it more relevant for the caller and easier to manage.
• Free, customised VoiceMail – tailoring the message for your unique business.

Gradwell have extended a kind discount to MOO customers – 1,000 FREE minutes (to 01, 02, 03 and 0870 numbers) for any of their VoIP packages. Simply enter the code MOO2009 in the signup process to get the free minutes added to your new account!