• Take the Survey of Rural Challenges
  • Small Town Speaker Becky McCray
  • Shop Local video
  • SaveYour.Town

Small Biz Survival

The small town and rural business resource

A row of small town shops
  • Front Page
  • Latest stories
  • About
  • Guided Tour
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • RSS

What hours should a retail store be open in a small town?

By Becky McCray

  Setting business hours is a big mess. In our Survey of Rural Challenges, small business owners told us that trying to be open later hours with no success was their number one challenge, two years in a row. When Deb Brown and I did our Q&A session on The Future of Retail, several people asked […]

February 12, 2018 Filed Under: Best of, customer service, entrepreneurship, marketing Tagged With: retail

How independent retailers can trick Alexa, Siri, and Google Home to capture orders from local customers

By Becky McCray

  People are happily using smart voice assistants more than ever. You know their names: Alexa, Siri, Google, Cortana. It’s so easy (and fun!) to just say what you want, and your magical assistant orders it for you. Then it shows up at your doorstep, and you’re living in the future! This isn’t great for […]

January 29, 2018 Filed Under: Best of, entrepreneurship, marketing, rural, tech, tools Tagged With: retail

The end of year checklist for small businesses

By Becky McCray

  As you wrap up one year and prepare for the next, your business needs to do the same. You have some accounting tasks to reset and some backups to make. Must do Jan 1 These are the ones you can’t easily do later, so you don’t want to put them off. The good news: […]

December 26, 2017 Filed Under: Best of, entrepreneurship, organization

Survey of Rural Challenges 2017: What Small Town People See as Their Biggest Challenges and What Topics They Most Want Help With

By Becky McCray

Survey Crew Ahead. Photo by RustyClark on Flickr

  By Becky McCray When you ask small town people what challenges they want help with, the responses provide an interesting insight into rural areas today. SaveYour.Town and SmallBizSurvival.com conducted a survey among subscribers and visitors to their sites during 2017, receiving 250 individual responses. Participants included 215 from the USA, 25 from Canada, and […]

December 18, 2017 Filed Under: Best of, economic development, entrepreneurship, rural, trends Tagged With: survey, Survey of Rural Challenges

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Howdy!

Glad you dropped in to the rural and small town business blog, established in 2006.

We want you to feel at home, so please take our guided tour.

Meet our authors on the About page.

Have something to say? You can give us a holler on the contact form.

If you would like permission to re-use an article you've read here, please make a Reprint Request.

Want to search our past articles? Catch up with the latest stories? Browse through the categories? All the good stuff is on the Front Page.

Shop Local

Buy local buttonReady to set up a shop local campaign in your small town? You'll need a guide who understands how we're different and what really works: Shop Local Campaigns for Small Towns.

Best of Small Biz Survival

What is holding us back? Why does every project take so long in small towns?

How any business can be part of downtown events by going mobile

Concert-goers talking and enjoying the evening in downtown Webster City, Iowa.

Why do people say there’s nothing to do here then not come to our concerts?

Retailers: Fill all empty space, floor to ceiling

More of the best of Small Biz Survival

Copyright © 2023 Becky McCray
Front Page · Log in