Improving Conversion Rates
October 31, 2009
Improving Conversion Rates
by: David Andrew Smith
You have optimised your website and attracted a large number of inbound links by one means or another. The results of this are that your site now appears on the first page of the top three search engines, Google, MSN and Yahoo, for your chosen keywords or phrases. You have cracked it! Now you are getting hundreds of visitors a day to your website. Unfortunately very few are staying to browse your site and even fewer are purchasing your products or enquiring after the services you offer.
You must look closely at your site to find the reason behind this if you wish to improve your conversion rates. There are two immediate actions you can take. Have you optimised your site for the search engines or your visitors? You should always optimise your site for your visitors as they will provide you with your income not the search engines. The search engines are simply a means to an ends.
Expert Help From Google Answers
October 31, 2009
Web users turn to search engines for answers to their questions. This is usually done through various levels of searching the engine’s database. Sometimes though, no matter how hard they try, searchers can’t find the information they need. Maybe they’re not familiar with how to narrow and focus searches, or they may not have enough background in the subject they’re researching to recognize the answer they need. Google Answers offers a solution.
With Google Answers, you hire an experienced researcher or specialist in your field of inquiry to provide answers to your questions. In a sense, this process works much like bidding on an item at eBay or hiring work done through a freelancer web site. You will create a Google Answers profile, a nickname, enter your credit card information, and when you post your questions, you specify how much you’re willing to pay for answers and an expiration date for replies.
There is a 50 cent per question listing fee, and your payment offer for an answer can range from $2.00 to $200.00 currently. Your offered price needs to be high enough to justify and compensate the time a Google researcher will spend finding an answer. Researchers receive 75% of your offered fee, and Google receives the remainder to help support the Google Answers service. Once you receive an answer, your credit card will be charged the offer amount you made for that answer.
Resources for Starting an Online Business
October 30, 2009
Anyone trying to start an Online business needs to have a number of resources before it is possible to build and promote a successful website. The following are essential tools that I have found very valuable.
1) Wordtracker
Before you build a website you must target the correct keywords, otherwise you will not have the necessary traffic to run a business. You may have a good niche but if you optimise your pages for the wrong keywords, you will attract little traffic.
And without traffic on the Net, you have no business! Wordtracker is an excellent tool that evaluates keywords for their profitability. A free trial version is available. http://www.wordtracker.com
2) Ken Evoy’s Free Internet Marketing Ebooks
Ken Evoy of SiteSell has written some Free Ebooks which are essential for anyone contemplating an Online business. Topics covered include:
· How to be a successful Affiliate marketer.
· How to run a Net Auctions business without Ebay.
· How to develop your own Information Product. · How to be a successful Service Seller on the Net.
http://www.merchant-account-service.com/free_courses_online.html
2) Website Building Software
What Is Web Hosting?
October 29, 2009
The best way to explain this is by comparing it to a real-life (brick & mortar) situation. Picture a web hosting company as the owner of a shopping mall. The shopping mall owner invested a lot of money on hiring architects, constructors, engineers, etc. to build it. Now all the stores on it are empty and the owner is going to rent them to smaller businesses that can’t afford (or who simply don’t want) their own building.
As a small business owner, you can rent this store space on a per-month basis. But remember it is empty. So it will be your responsibility to decorate your store, fill it up with your own products, furniture & displays and to advertise your store to the world in order to get new customers.
The responsibility of the shopping mall owner is to keep and maintain the building in a top condition for your business to prosper. In the exact same manner, a hosting company invests a lot of money to set up high-speed connections and a full-fledged data center. And as a small business owner, you may rent virtual space on the web to set up your store and offer your products or services to the world.
You Cant Just Build A Website And Hope It Works!
October 28, 2009
Like any area of business your website needs some effort from you if its going to be successful. You’d be foolish to just build any old website and hope it works. Yet this approach, or rather lack of approach, is still widespread on the internet. Businesses still dont seem to understand what the internet can do to benefit them and their customers. They just dont get it.
This is not a new criticism, people have been saying it for years. Notice i used the word people, because thats exactly who suffers. You, me and the millions of people like us who are visiting those sites during our virtual travels. Many of these businesses do actually have great products and services to offer us, its just that they havent put the effort in to find out what we, their customers want. They havent bothered to find out about us, about our needs, about our wishes. They have other more pressing priorities it seems. So they just present them to us any old way and hope we dont notice or are too stupid to notice. Dont they understand they are losing sales, customers, repeat customers, referrals and more?
History Of The Computerflip-Flops - A Basic Counter
October 27, 2009
History Of The Computerflip-Flops - A Basic Counter
by: Tony Stockill
Flip-Flops - A basic counter
We looked at the Binary system, and basic computer logic elements, in previous articles, “It’s a binary world - how computers count” and “How computers add - a logical approach”.
Now we can combine two parts of these articles to look at a counter. Another common logic element in a computer is a counter or timer. This can b to count items going past a sensor on an assembly line, or possibly a count-down timer. For example, if you have a late model washing machine it will have a simple computer using a count down timer to give 10 minute wash cycle, etc.
There are several types of counter, nearly all of which use a basic element of electronics, the Flip-Flop. And you thought they were rubber shoes English people wear to the shower or the beach. (At this point Australians say “I thought they were called thongs”).
OK back on topic. The flip-flop is as old as electronics, and is a classic example of the binary system. It has two possible stable states, A or B, and can be ‘toggled’ from one state to the other, just like a ‘push-on, push-off’ switch. It was originally made with two vacuum tubes (or one, for example a double triode).
Online Website Promotion: How To Expand Your Business By Staying In Touch With Your Customers
October 26, 2009
If you want your customers to keep coming back To buy from you, then keep in touch with them.
It is an important online website promotion Secret that can keep you generating orders continuously from your present customers and the news ones they will refer to you.
If you don’t remind your customers that you are still in business they may forget.
Repeat customers are the lifeblood of any business.
Below are three effective strategies you can use to remind your customers that you are still in business and get them to buy over and over again.
1. Ask your customers to subscribe to your free publication. It could be a print newsletter, e-zine, newspaper, journal etc. You could send out the publication weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, etc. The articles in the publication should be informative and helpful to your readers.
You can increase repeat purchases by including advertisements of new products and services that you offer.
2. Ask customers to sign-up to an e-mail update that tells them when you have made changes to your web site.
Whenever you update your web site send them an e-mail to remind them to visit again.
Help Your Visitors Zero in with Site-Flavored Google search
October 26, 2009
As Google has gained in their search reputation the past few years, many webmasters have added a Google search box to their pages. This is meant to provide a quick path for visitors to continue their search, should they not find what they’re looking for on the original site. To help these webmasters provide even more service to their visitors, Google is currently beta-testing a new feature called Site-Flavored Google Search.
A site-flavored search will allow searchers to view results more closely related to the site where they started their search. For example, a webmaster for an auto parts site can fill out a profile to tell Google about their site. Searchers from that site can then use the Google search form to view search results more closely related to automotive topics than a general search might provide. A search from that site for “oil” might return information about the various types and brands of automotive engine oil, while a generic Google search might return broader business-related results from oil refiners and industry sites.
Just Because You Can…
October 25, 2009
Just because you can communicate with hundreds of people virtually via email, doesn’t mean you should. The phone still exists because it’s a valuable tool — especially for small business owners.
Over and over again in the places I frequent on the Internet, I hear calls for help from small business owners for different services. One needs promotional items, another needs an accountant, yet another needs some other type of service — you’ve probably heard it too.
And time and again I see people responding to those calls for help with a casual attitude via email. They’re trying their best to make that connection using a method that has no emotion and plenty of personal detachment.
Don’t make the same mistake. Email is fine as a medium for communication but lacks a lot in helping you acquire a new client. There’s just something about connecting with a real live person that can take you a long way to success.
Make that phone call!!!
Denise O’Berry is a small business expert who helps small business owners take action to grow their business. Learn more about how to be a successful small business owner at http://www.smallbiz-bootcamp.com
10 Things You Should Try To Barter For Before Buying
October 24, 2009
1. Information Products - it could be ebooks, “how to” videos, cassettes, magazines, newsletters, paid e-zines, courses, etc.
2. Advertising Space - it could be banner ads, ezine ads, ebook ads, magazine ads, newspaper ads, tv ads, fax ads, online classified ads, etc.
3. Web Hosting - you could offer a free advertisement for their web hosting service on your site in return for free or discounted hosting.
4. Software - it could be for tax software, web site authoring software, accounting software, newsletter software, graphic design software, etc.
5. Writing/Editing - it could be for web site content, promotional articles, press releases, e-zine articles, promotional ebooks, etc.
6. Accounting/Bookeeping - you could offer a no cost advertisement in exchange for their accounting and booking services
7. Consulting - it could be market consulting, legal consulting, computer/software consulting, business consulting, etc.
8. Copy writing - it could be for brochures, business cards, classified ads, sales letters, product packages, banner ads, promotional products, etc.
9. Merchant Accounts - you could offer no cost insert ads in your product packages in exchange for the option of accepting credit cards.
