Use Your Website To Get Purchasers to Your Physical Store

As we transition more toward a virtual world, it is quite amazing to see that more than 50% of “bricks and mortar” businesses do not yet have a web presence. As potential consumers use Internet search engines to do their research before they go out into the real world, those companies without a website risk being left out. For the off-line retailer, however, it is not good enough to just throw up a portal and expect to earn riches, as the entrepreneur must pay attention to the site composition to ensure that visitors make the connection between the online site and the off-line location.

On-site optimization is often focused merely on helping the website achieve a great position in search engine rankings, so that the would be consumer can find the site in the first place. This is of course very important, but if you are mostly relying on actual visitors to your bricks and mortar store then you have to do a lot more.

One of the biggest mistakes that many retailers make when considering a website is to assume that the website should be divorced from the actual physical location for some reason. They assume that a website is only good for e-commerce and they may or may not be geared up, or wish, to sell any of their products online. They are missing the bigger point here – the website is primarily a source of information and they should do everything they can to ensure that the visitor is “converted” in one way or the other.

If the website is not to be used for e-commerce, then the page must be designed to lead visitors easily to information showing your physical location. This will require a clear link in a prominent position on every page, using appropriate texts such as “find our locations,” or “how to contact us.” Some webmasters make the mistake of including contact details within a vaguely termed “about us” section. Don’t make the visitor think twice about anything, make it obvious.

These days it is fairly easy to incorporate a Google maps widget showing in clear detail exactly where your location is and remember to include your opening hours and customer service phone lines in prominent positions. Additional phone lines are very cost effective and should be used to help you track your clients. For example, use a different customer service phone number on your “contact us” page and another phone number on each of your product pages. Remember to keep track of client paths by asking the appropriate questions at the point-of-sale.

Any marketing initiatives that you engage in should be tracked and tested. This may require a process of education amongst your staff. They should get into the habit of asking appropriate questions to determine whether visitors found your location through your website or not. Always try and get your visitors to give you their e-mail addresses, so that you can send questionnaires for more feedback.

Is your website connected to your physical store?

Adam Toren

Try Brizzly to Manage Your Lists

Guess what? Twitter is making more and more sense, at least when you integrate some new applications and platforms. Brizzly, a web-based social media reader may be in beta – invite mode only right now, but it promises to elevate the usability of Twitter and even make it, dare I say it, more Facebook-ish.

Brizzly has a ton of features and essentially makes Twitter less clunky and more user-friendly. It displays tweets in line, but with expanded URLs, so that you can see exactly what you are being asked to click on – no more bit.ly calls and trojan invasions? Photographs are displayed fully in line, as are YouTube videos, which you can watch directly from the page without having to click elsewhere.

You can easily add people to your pre-existing groups, simply by clicking the user icon and adding. You can also make new groups on-the-fly and then add members to that. All your groups appear in the panel on the left hand side and you can add up to 50 users per group.

As you scroll down the page, earlier tweets are automatically added, giving you a constant flow as you move down. Within the page or within your groups, if one member suddenly develops Twitter diarrhea, you can “mute” him or her temporarily, rather than actually removing them from your account.

On the right-hand side, direct messages appear in a chat format, or a running thread and you can also include photos in your direct messages. Brizzly has also developed an API called “Lets Be Trends.” Current trends will appear within this box and you can expand by clicking on “why” and see exactly what is happening in the real world. Add your own definitions and trends and related news items will appear within the content.

If you conduct a search, your history can be saved and you can also save drafts so that you can work on formatting later on. If you have multiple Twitter accounts, Brizzly handles them all within this single interface.

While it is basically designed for use with Twitter, Brizzly may also be used with your Facebook account to group together and show you threads and comments about stories that you are currently interested in.

Have you had a chance to try Brizzly yet?

Adam Toren

Get Up and Running Quickly with Windows 7 Using These Free Tools

Early reviews about Windows 7 have been largely positive and many consumers are opting to review the operating system for themselves. To some, however the prospect of migrating all the programs and applications and configuring Windows as they like it can be daunting, even though it may be time for a pretty comprehensive spring clean on your desktop anyway!

It’s always great to find a solution to such a problem, as we have faith in application developers to dig deep in their quest to serve their fellow man. Enter Ninite, a great new service that will automatically download and install your favorite applications and popular software packages, a good number of them at any rate. Ninite will install the applications with their default settings and thankfully reject the browser toolbars that we are always being plagued with.

The service will check to see whether 64-bit support is appropriate and will install the best versions of each application. It does not install itself, but only what you need.

Over 70 different applications are available and you simply scroll and check the boxes for programs that you want. For example, Chrome, Safari, Opera or Firefox, Skype, Thunderbird, iTunes, WinAmp, Picasa, Open Office, BumpTop, WinRAR or Filezilla. When you have checked your boxes you just click “get install” and Ninite takes care of the rest. Sure beats all that clicking around and fumbling for CDs. This free service could save you hours – highly recommended.

Don’t forget that you can also use Google Pack to install your Google stuff and turn to Xmarks, available for Firefox or Internet Explorer. This service can automatically synchronize your bookmarks. Before you migrate to 7, install Xmarks within your Vista or XP and then when you arrive at 7, simply load the program, sign in and all your bookmarks, together with your web passwords will be ready for your use.

Now you can really enjoy exploring Windows 7.

What are your first impressions of Windows 7?

Matthew Toren

Give Your Online Shoppers What They Need

As an e-commerce retailer, one of your first priorities should be to give your website visitor as perfect an environment as possible and one which is completely conducive to consummating a sale. Unfortunately, findings of an e-commerce survey commissioned by iperceptions found that this is a perception which may be far removed from reality. Four out of ten visitors arrive at an e-commerce site to conduct research, but only 85% of them are able to complete the task successfully. Of those who arrive with the intention of making a purchase, only six out of ten actually complete this task. These are worrying figures and it pays to try to get to the bottom of this research to make sure that you are giving your online shoppers what they really need.

Fundamentally, your site architecture should be very intuitive. It must relate directly to the source, so that visitors who are arriving due to a marketing process that you have initiated do not have second thoughts about the validity of this trail. Calls to action should be very clear and apparent and you should make sure that you do not place too many obstacles in the way of allowing your visitor to move all the way to the checkout page.

Here are some considerations:
• Have you fully answered a “features and benefits” analysis of your own products or services? You should have answered any potential questions yourself and make sure that you have provided the information and any FAQs; don’t leave any stone unturned.
• Include testimonials and customer reviews. Remember social proof is very important.
• Have you addressed any potential purchasing options and different scenarios – what if the product is being bought as a gift for somebody else?
• Clearly enunciate your return policies, warranties and confirm the security of your purchase arrangements.
• Detail all “supplemental” costs, including shipping and tax early on during the decision-making process.
• Do not require customers to go through lengthy registration processes prior to making a payment!
• Give as many payment options as you can.
• When it comes to check out, do everything you can to make this as simple a process as possible. Multiple checkout pages are not a good idea, as every additional stage here increases the abandonment ratio exponentially.

Choose a trusted confidant, with little direct input into your business or experience of your site, to do a complete run through as a new client. Encourage them to give you honest and complete feedback on every element of their experience and use this information to make your site highly user-friendly.

How have you made your e-commerce site user friendly?

Matthew Toren

How To Live The 4 Hour Work Week

Still Doing It All Yourself When it Comes To Blogging? You Need To Read This – And It’s FREE

I recently stumbled across this great little report called Secrets of Outsourcing Experts Revealed – and I had to let you know about it straight away.
You see, I come across SO MANY bloggers who are going out of their mind trying to do everything themselves – from building their blog to customizing their design. They get home from work at around 7.30pm, eat, touch base with the family – and sit down to work on their Internet marketing . . . sound familiar? I know – I’ve been there – and this little gem is specifically for those of you who do it all themselves – and wish you didn’t.

The Secrets of Outsourcing Experts Revealed is not just another report about outsourcing. It melds together leading experts such as Tim Ferriss, Jeff Mills and John Jonas, all of whom have outsourced their entire businesses and live the lifestyle they desire, working as little as 4 hours a week. The report is packed with insights from these leading Internet marketers – they reveal their screwups, and their successes – and what they’d wished they’d done in the beginning. They also wish they’d had the kind of knowledge about outsourcing delivered in this report – and these guys know what they’re on about. One of the things all of them agree on is they wish they’d outsourced more of their businesses earlier – and that struck a chord with me because, like you, I know what it’s like to be drowning in a ‘to-do’ list for my online business.

The report is by Tyrone Shum, a young entrepreneur who has already cracked the secret of outsourcing successfully and now rakes in a cool 6 figures a year while working only 4 hours a week. He has implemented the strategies covered in his report, and knows exactly what (and what NOT) to do.
This is a perfect example of learning from someone else’s mistakes without making them yourself – the report covers the pitfalls and ripoffs people like John Jonas have already experienced – so you don’t have to. Know exactly where to go and how to begin outsourcing from the start – and I recommend doing it as soon as your business can afford it; according to the report, you can begin hiring staff from as little as US$125 a month part time – and think of the time that will get back for you…

I was literally bowled over by the amount of information and knowledge in this report – the more so cause it’s absolutely free. I personally would be happy to pay for this sort of information, so grab it while you can. All of the information you need on outsourcing are in the report, so take a little time right now to download it. After all, if it’s good enough for John Jonas, Tim Ferriss and Jeff Mills, it’s worth your time to look into.

YOUR DOWNLOAD LINK TO THE REPORT

To download your own copy of Secrets of Outsourcing Experts Revealed
report, please visit the following page:

Free Report Click here

For best results, I recommend you print out the report and find a nice and quiet place to sit down and read it from start to finish without being interrupted. That way, you’ll get to enjoy the interviews and have a much better overview of what it takes to outsource your Internet business. You’ll probably get loads of ideas from these Internet marketing experts and start jotting down ideas right away – I know I did. So far I’ve noted dozens of ideas for my own business.

Not everything in the report will apply to all of you, but there’s a lot of information to work with as you grow your online business. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all about leveraging your time. Think about the parts of your business you don’t really like, or that take you far too long (like technical stuff if you’re a copywriter – or content creation if you’re a techie). Do you spend time writing invoices, when you should be strategizing for growth? This is exactly the sort of thing you can outsource – and you’ll get stacks more ideas about leveraging your time in this value-packed report.

If you’re thinking about outsourcing, I recommend you read this report first – doing it the wrong way can cost you a lot in time, money and lost business revenue. Check out this report – you’ll be glad you did.

Free Report Click Here

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