Surfing around the net I came across a widget on a website where you will input your phone number and google will get you connected to this company; oddly enough I did a little research and came across Google Voice. Since I know Google will explain their new service better than I would here is what they have to say about Google Voice in their blog  “We’ve just started to release a preview of Google Voice, an application that helps you better manage your voice communications. Google Voice will be available initially to existing users of GrandCentral, a service we acquired in July of 2007.”

Here is a List of Features

Google number - One number for all your calls and SMS

* Call screening - Announce and screen callers
* Listen in - Listen before taking a call
* Block calls - Keep unwanted callers at bay
* SMS - Send, receive, and store SMS
* Place calls - Call US numbers for free
* Taking calls - Answer on any of your phones
* Phone routing - Phones ring based on who calls
* Forwarding phones - Add phones and decide which ring

Google voicemail - Voicemail as easy as email, with transcripts

* Voicemail transcripts - Read what your voicemail says
* Listen to voicemail - Check online or from your phone
* Notifications - Receive voicemails via email or SMS
* Personalize greeting - Vary greetings by caller
* Share voicemail - Forward or download voicemails

Voice features - More cool things you can do with Google Voice

* Conference calling - Join people into a single call
* Call record - Record calls and store them online
* Call switch - Switch phones during a call
* Mobile site - View your inbox from your mobile
* GOOG-411 - Check directory assistance
* Manage groups - Set preferences by group

Click here if you want to get an invite from Google Voice

Google Voice Homepage

As a small business owner I love the idea of putting all of my communications together where I can easily control where my calls and voicemails are coming from, not even mentioning the fact that it’ll be Free.

Post by: All Digital Media - Atlanta Web Design

You have employed every trick in the SEO handbook but that first page ranking in the search engines has been eluding you. You are about to give up. But before you do, perhaps you may wish to consider taking up article marketing.

First of all, what exactly is article marketing? Article marketing is the process of writing and submitting original content to article directories. This is not a new concept. For years, marketers have been publishing content in newsletters, magazines, and other publications to gain exposure for their businesses.

The process starts by submitting an article to an editor. If the content is suitable, the editor publishes the article, and the marketer gets some exposure. The process is then repeated with as many publications as possible. In theory, if each publication brings just one customer, then a hundred publications may bring a hundred customers. A hundred customers may just be what a new start-up is looking for.

On the Internet, the results can be astonishing. There are literally thousands of article directories on the Internet. With each article you submit, you are allowed to include two to three text links in the author resource box. Do note that most directories won’t allow you to include links in your article body. So keep them to your author signature.

Every time an article directory publishes an article, the website will experience an immediate surge in traffic. This traffic comes from the subscribed readers. After that, the surge dies down a little. The marketer now waits for the search engines to index and rank the articles. Once the article ranks in the search engines, the marketer will receive a constant stream of traffic from the indexed articles.

In addition, the links in the articles will also give the search rankings of the website a much needed boost. When someone writes and submits articles, the wheels of SEO has already started to turn, whether the marketer is aware of it or not. Each published article carries at least two links, pointing back to the author website. In other words, the author website gets high quality back links from well established authority sites whenever an article is approved for publication. But to achieve high rankings in the search results, you need to execute article marketing in the correct manner.

How to prepare your articles for submission.

Article submission can take up a lot of time. So you want to be sure that you get the highest rate of approval from the editors. Here is what you should do to ensure that you get most of your articles approved.

Appropriate word count - Articles should ideally be 500 words and above. You can write whatever you want. But bear in mind that the editors are looking for valuable content that their readers will enjoy reading. So your articles should not be self promotional. All promotional materials should be included in the author resource box, which will appear at the end of the article.

Proper formatting - The article does not have to be perfect. But it has to be legible, and relatively free of grammatical errors. The style of writing is not that important. Most styles will be accepted. Use the hard return to separate paragraphs, and do not include any HTML. Not all article directories accept HTML tags in the article body. As long as the article is of decent quality, it should be approved.

Include target keywords in article title - Your target keywords should be include in the article title. This will increase the chances of your articles rising to the top in the search results. Having keywords in the article title is also part of SEO. When performing SEO, you want the search engines to find relevant content that link to your sites. Having your target keywords in the title is one way of letting the search bots know that the content in the article is related to what you have to offer in your website.

Write a catchy title and interesting summary - The title is very important because if it cannot capture the attention of your reader, you have just lost a potential visitor. Your title should be speaking directly to your target audience. The article summary should also be clear and concise. Don’t beat around the bush. You can elaborate further in the article body. For the summary, use short and powerful sentences.

Delivering the promise of your article title - Make sure that you stay on topic and deliver the promise in the article title. For example, if your article is about link building, then make sure you share some methods on how to build one way back links quickly. Don’t stray and write about your pet and then forget to go back to your main topic.

Using anchor texts in links - Anchor texts are the words that are in between a set of HTML link tags. Before going into article marketing, you should already have a set of keywords to target. Use these keywords not just in your article title, but also as your anchor texts. For instance, if you are targeting the keywords “Search Engine Optimization”, use these words in your links. Don’t use words like “click here” or any other generic term.

Once you have the above in place, you can start submitting the articles to the article directories.

How to submit articles quickly and easily.

Before you start submitting the articles, you must first get a list of article directories. Your list should contain at least 200 article directories. Choose directories that have been around for years, and have high page rank.

The article submission process can be grueling if you don’t have the right tools to help you. As a business owner, you shouldn’t be doing such manual tasks yourself. You have more important things to do, like developing products, marketing, and so on. The process shouldn’t be consuming too much of your valuable time. Here are some quick suggestions.

Use a free form filling tool to help you - There are tools available for download, such as RoboForm that will help you fill up the forms at the article directories. Once you set this up, it’s just clicking and submitting. That will save you from having to copy and paste the article into each and every submission form. A great way to submit articles if you are on a shoe string budget.

Invest in article submission software - There are special software in the market that will help you submit your articles either on a semi-automated basis, or on a fully automated basis. If it’s a fully automated process, you don’t have to be actively involved. You will, however, have to let the software complete the submission process before shutting it down.

Outsource article submission - You can hire someone else to submit the articles for you. This can be a dedicated person that you work with, or it can be a professional service provider. The difference between this option, and that of using software, is that you don’t have to monitor the submissions. Simply place an order, and you can switch off your computer and go work on other stuff.

Article marketing, when done right, can bring short, mid and long term traffic. The short term traffic comes from the current readership base of the article directories. The mid to long term traffic comes from the search engines and the articles. As articles remain online indefinitely on the Internet, they remain as traffic baits and help to attract more visitors to your websites.

If you have done your keyword research, and heed the advice given above, your site could achieve top rankings in the search engines within weeks.

Following are the 9 Biggest SEO Mistakes which Web Designers & Web Developers should avoid.

Splash Page

I’ve seen this mistake many times where people put up just a big banner image and a link “Click here to enter” on their homepage. The worst case — the “enter” link is embedded in the Flash object, which makes it impossible for the spiders to follow the link.

This is fine if you don’t care about what a search engine knows about your site; otherwise, you’re making a BIG mistake. Your homepage is probably your website’s highest ranking page and gets crawled frequently by web spiders. Your internal pages will not appear in the search engine index without the proper linking structure to internal pages for the spider to follow.

Your homepage should include (at minimum) target keywords and links to important pages.

Non-spiderable Flash Menus

Many designers make this mistake by using Flash menus such as those fade-in and animated menus. They might look cool to you but they can’t be seen by the search engines; and thus the links in the Flash menu will not be followed.

Image and Flash Content

Web spiders are like a text-based browser, they can’t read the text embedded in the graphic image or Flash. Most designers make this mistake by embedding the important content (such as target keywords) in Flash and image.

Overuse of Ajax

A lot of developers are trying to impress their visitor by implementing massive Ajax features (particularly for navigation purposes), but did you know that it is a big SEO mistake? Because, ajax content is loaded dynamically, so it is not spiderable or indexable by search engines.

Another disadvantage of Ajax — since the address URL doesn’t reload, your visitor can not send the current page to their friends.

Versioning of Theme Design

For some reason, some designers love to version their theme design into sub level folders (i.e. domain.com/v2, v3, v4) and redirect to the new folder. Constantly changing the main root location may cause you to lose backlink counts and ranking.

“Click Here” Link Anchor Text

You probably see this a lot where people use “Click here” or “Learn more” as the linking text. This is great if you want to be ranked high for “Click Here”. But, if you want to tell the search engine that your page is important for a topic, than use, that topic/keyword in your link anchor text. It’s much more descriptive (and relevant) to say “learn more about {keyword topic}”

Warning: Don’t use the EXACT same anchor text everywhere on your website. This can sometimes be seen as search engine spam too.

Common Title Tag Mistakes

Same or similar title text:
Every page on your site should have a unique <title> tag with the target keywords in it. Many developers make the mistake of having the same or similar title tags throughout the entire site. That’s like telling the search engine that EVERY page on your site refers to the same topic and one isn’t any more unique than the other.

One good example of bad Title Tag use would be the default WordPress theme. In case you didn’t know, the title tag of the default WordPress theme isn’t that useful: Site Name > Blog Archive > Post Title. Why isn’t this search engine friendly? Because, every single blog post will have the same text “Site Name > Blog Archive >” at the beginning of the Title Tag. If you really want to include the site name in the title tag, it should be at the end: Post Title | Site Name.

Exceeding the 65 character limit:
Many bloggers write very long post titles. So what? In search engine result pages, your title tag is used as the link heading. You have about 65 characters (including spaces) to get your message across or risk it getting cutoff.

Keyword stuffing the title:
Another common mistake people tend to make is overfilling the title tag with keywords. Saying the same thing 3 times doesn’t make you more relevant. Keyword stuffing in the Title Tag is looked at as search engine spam (not good). But it might be smart to repeat the same word in different ways:

“Photo Tips & Photography Techniques for Great Pictures” “Photo” and “Photography” are the same word repeated twice but in different ways because your audience might use either one when performing a search query.

Empty Image Alt Attribute

You should always describe your image in the alt attribute. The alt attribute is what describes your image to a blind web user. Guess what? Search engines can’t see images so your alt attribute is a factor in illustrating what your page is relevant for.

Hint: Properly describing your images can help your ranking in the image search results. For example, Google image search brings me hundreds of referrals everyday for the search terms “abstract” and “dj”.

Unfriendly URLs

Most blog or CMS platforms have a friendly URL feature built-in, however, not every blogger is taking advantage of this. Friendly URL’s are good for both your human audience and the search engines. The URL is also an important spot where your keywords should appear.

Example of Friendly URL: domain.com/page-title Example of Dynamic URL: domain.com/?p=12356

These things are the pillars of Search Engine Optimization and so to your web site’s success path.

What Do You Want Your Online Business To Do? I’m sure you’ve heard the term Web 2.0 recently and wonder… What does that mean?

Well, “Web 2.0″ refers to a perceived second generation of web development and design, that facilitates communication, secure information sharing, interoperability and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Essentially, Web 2.0 changes the way people use and interact with the web.

The concepts behind Web 2.0 have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, social-networking, blogs, Twitter, et cetera, et cetera. There are some really cool web companies coming online and doing great things.

As a business owner, you’re probably thinking, “Web 2.0 means I need to spend even more money on my already oversized technology budget.” Well, we’re here to help.

With Web 2.0 we need to change some terminology. Instead of talking about your “web site” let’s talk about your “online business”. The technology changes to the web have changed the way web sites work, or at least, should work.

Instead of having your web site simply display your telephone number and physical address, web sites are now living working extensions of your business. Your web site should be more proactive and work hard to:

* Amplify Your Voice

* Automate Your Customer Service (Self-Service)

* Sell Products Online

* Generate New Leads

* Build Your Community

* Build Customer Loyalty

* Amplify Your Voice

Amplify Your Voice

One of the best ways to amplify your voice is through Blogs and Email Marketing. Good content addresses your customers’ information needs, and search engines love good content. It also gives your business a human touch.

Automate Your Customer Service (Self-Service)

How many customer phone calls do you get asking about the same thing? And, how much time is spent answering the same question? Every web site should have a section that focuses on Customer Service. It is important your web site has an FAQ section, Webforms and Workflows and Secure Zones to help your business automate your customer service.

Sell Products Online

Building eCommerce web sites and selling your products online was once a very expensive, time-consuming adventure. The cost to develop online shops has gone down dramatically. If you want to sell your products online, there is nothing standing in your way. Online shops are a great way to expand your business’ reach and product offering.

Generate New Leads

Your web site should offer users an option of getting in touch with you. Webforms and workflows help ensure your web site is converting users to new leads.

Build Your Community

A good business will always have a community of dedicated customers. With your online business, Blogs, Forums, Comments, Customer Databases help to build that community and keep it strong.

Build Customer Loyalty

Building customer loyalty is a lot harder than it seems. It takes incredible focus to make sure your customers are loyal. Your web site needs to help you do just that. Targeted Email Marketing, Comments, FAQs are all aspects of your online business that should be working for you to build that loyalty.

Businesses must embrace the strengths of the web and use it as a platform. Make your web site, your online business, work for you!

Oh, and if you need a great web site design and development company to help, let’s talk. We’ll take you by the hand and provide good guidance. We give concrete ideas about suitable design, what functions your web site should have, and strategy to help you achieve your business goals. We take the time to help our clients prioritize their goals so that we can provide you with a great solution.

About the Author: John Sullivan - After 5 years as the Interactive Director for a fortune 500 company, Bullsprig was started by John Sullivan in 2003. Since then, we’ve done a lot and learned a lot. We take pride in being partners with major companies, small start-ups and everything in between. Our work has won national and international marketing awards.

Sending out sales letters to prospective customers or potential clients can be one of the most effective ways to create loyalty and get your market to buy.

But so many sales letters are regarded as junk mail by today’s consumer - and they are right. When was the last time you opened a sales letter in the mail and actually read it? Why not? Because the bulk of today’s sales letters don’t entice you, they don’t speak to you, and most importantly, they don’t give you any reason to bother. Here are ten mistakes that you might be making now that is costing you thousands of dollars:

#1. Your letter doesn’t speak to anybody in particular.

Okay, you bought a mailing list and you shipped out a letter. Who is receiving it? Is it a specific gender? Do they have a particular career? How much money do they make?

Companies fail to get to know their market, and it cripples not just their sales letters, but their marketing in general. Take some time to study your target - what makes them tick? Then you can craft a sales letter that speaks directly to their wants and desires.

#2. It’s missing a headline.

Sales letters need to attract the eye. Without a headline, a sales letter is just a block of words that can easily be ignored. Just look at the headline of this article: it speaks directly to YOU, doesn’t it? It speaks in the present tense, and it implies that there is information in this article that you need to read now (and it’s true, too!). That’s a big reason why you are reading this, isn’t it? Motivate your readers to keep reading!

#3. You don’t know the difference between FEATURES and BENEFITS.

This is the biggest, most common mistake that companies make in their sales letters. If somebody writes me a letter and says, “Hey! Look at what we’ve got! Look what we’ve done! Aren’t we great?!?”, I’m going to throw it away in a heartbeat.

What do people want to hear about? They want to hear about themselves. It’s simple human nature. We all have egos, and they need to be stroked. So talk about them: “Hey! You know that problem you have? This is how we can help you out…”

If you are writing about your business, you are writing a FEATURE. That’s not what you’re supposed to be writing. If you are writing about the consumer, you are writing a BENEFIT. That’s what people want to hear about - what’s in it for me?

#4. Give them a reason to respond.

If your response rates are down, you may not be giving your market enough of a reason to contact you. Where’s the offer? If the consumer reads your entire sales letter, but they are not motivated to take action IMMEDIATELY, you did it wrong.

Give them a discount or some form of special offer for responding to the letter. You need to motivate them.

#5. You are assuming they’ll take your word for it.

You need proof. That means statistics that show it works. That means testimonials from people who have enjoyed the benefits. People won’t just listen to you based on what you say - show them what others are saying.

#6. Your letter is unpleasant to look at.

Beyond the headline, how have you formatted your letter? Is it just a bunch of words? Then forget it. You might as well have mailed them a 700-page Charles Dickens novel, because that’s what they will relate this to. You don’t have to put in pictures necessarily, but at least put in some sub-headlines or lists. They need something they can easily scan to get the gist of the letter beforehand. It will increase the odds of them reading the whole thing.

#7. You didn’t break down the barriers.

Barriers are things that keep the consumer from buying from you. Most of the time, this refers to risk: they worry that they are investing their time or money in something that won’t work. You need to guarantee them that it will be worth it. Offer them a 30-day, money-back guarantee. Give them a reason to take the plunge, risk-free, and there’s a good chance they will.

#8. You don’t have a “P.S.” at the end.

The “P.S.” is a great way to hit the last few skimmers - people who aren’t reading. Sum up your biggest benefit, combine it with your offer, and throw it in as the last line in your letter. Watch those response rates grow! For example:

“P.S. Stop wasting your time resharpening those old knives! Order your complete set of 6 Revolution Steak Knives and use them for 60 days at no cost!”

#9. Nothing makes you stand out.

Who are you targeting and why? You need to position yourself as something unique. If you are just like the others, then no one will buy. Remember that when you make your offer and explain your benefits. They need to have something different about them to motivate your specific target market.

#10. They’re not even opening the envelope.

If your letter comes in a plain white envelope, you’re going to lose. Put a killer headline on the outside of the envelope. Consider hand-addressed envelopes. Or, as many companies do, take advantage of the “lumpy mailer”, where you put something in the envelope that makes it feel bulky - so people will tear it open just to find their free gift. Your envelope needs to stand out from the rest of the mail in their mailbox. How is your sales letter standing out?

About the Author: Peter Geisheker is the CEO of The Geisheker Group of marketing companies. The Geisheker Group marketing firm performs strategic marketing and copywriting for mid-to-large companies. For more information, please call (920) 471-1638.

Search Engine and Website Optimization

SEO is an essential part of website optimization, involving the formatting of a web page so that search engine algorithms score it highly for the relevant keyword.

Each page should be optimized for only one keyword so that the page is listed in as high a position as possible for that keyword.

If you understand how search engines work you will be able to apply your knowledge of SEO to optimize your website and ensure, not only a listing, but a search engine listing worth having. So, exactly how does a search engine such as Google work?

The answer to that is that nobody knows - except some Google employees of course. However, by carrying out certain actions and analyzing the results, it is possible to come to certain conclusions as to what Google are looking for and using that information to your advantage. Keep in mind, however, that the number of variables Google is evaluating is believed to reach three figures, so you will only ever scratch the surface, but we know that some of these are given more weighting than others.

SEO variables come in groups, and your website optimization strategy should take as many of these into account as possible. These groups can be categorized into increasingly narrower sets, the broadest being on-page and off-page optimization. The variables with most weighting are currently believed to be:

1. ON-PAGE WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION

On-page optimization is, as the term suggests, carried out on the web page itself. This can either be on the visible part of the page, or in the underlying source html code. This optimization can be further classified into:

a) The Keywords. Each web page should be optimized for one keyword, and can contain a few sub-keywords for which the page might also be listed. These, however, are less important than they once were in view of Google’s latent semantic indexing (LSI) algorithm. That is another subject! The choice of keyword is important, and there is software available (free and not so free) to help you choose the best keyword for your needs. Do not overuse keywords - instead use lots of related text and synonyms to tell the spiders what your page is about.

b) The Title. This ‘title’ is not visible on the page, but contained within the html ‘Title’ tag prior to the ‘Body’ section of the page html. It should contain the keyword, and is the title that appears at the head of the search engine listing for the page.

c) Meta Tags. In SEO, the Meta tags, again contained prior to the visible ‘body’ section, provide the search engine crawlers or spiders with information about your site. The only tags of use today are:

i. The Description Meta tag. This describes the content of your site and is shown in full or part below the title in your search engine listing. Include your selling point and any toll-free number you might have.
ii. The Keyword Meta tag. Not generally used, but who knows - it costs nothing and does no harm.
iii. The Robots Meta tag should be used to block any page from spiders that you don’t want visited, in case they dilute the overall site relevance. For example, duplicate sales pages. Use it blank even if you are not blocking anything.

d) Headings Page and paragraph headings should be in bold text within H (heading) html tags, H1 for page and H2 for paragraph headings. Use keywords because heading tags stress the importance of the text within them, especially if formatted bold.

e) Navigation Links

i. Your navigation is best if made using keyword anchor text and with a small description of the page linked to just below it.
ii. Try to arrange your html so that the spider sees your body text first, followed by the links that will lead it away from your page. Most importance is placed on the first 100 words and the last paragraph, so don’t let these words be your navigation links.
iii. Pay attention to your on-site linking strategy. There is a formula you can use to maximize the PageRank points for each or any individual page.

2. OFF-PAGE WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION

Off-page optimization is a massive subject, and would require a separate article to even scratch the surface. It includes techniques such as one-way back links, reciprocal linking, article marketing, directory submissions, interlinking your own sites and blogs, use of social bookmarking sites and social networking, Twitter and so on.

These SEO techniques can in many respects be more important than on-page SEO, and it is not uncommon to see a page with no content but adverts listed at position #1 on Google due solely to the number of other web pages linked to it.

SEO is an extensive subject, but you can improve your chances of getting a high listing if you take advantage of what is known. Information is available, some of it genuine and some opinion. Make sure you find the former and avoid the latter in your website optimization strategy.

About the Author: Peter Nisbet - These are the basics of SEO. For the details that determine succes or failure visit SEOcious where Pete also offers a free SEO course.

Most small business owners/operators would probably agree that developing a stand-out brand identity is an essential part of the marketing package for corporates and large companies.

Many would add that branding is not that important for small businesses and see it as an additional expense on the P&L. So they head off to the local printer or graphic designer who designs a logo (sometimes even for free) that gets used on stationary, vehicles and other marketing materials.

From our experience in this field, we find that most logos designed for small businesses are simply graphic devices and not actually brands in the true sense of the word, and portray little about the value proposition of the company, its personality and service promise.

In actual fact, development of a meaningful, representative and outstanding brand identity is just as critical for small businesses and if properly executed, can actually be a powerful competitive advantage.

For corporates, an effective and powerful brand is a ‘must-have’, simply in order to be in the game.
It may not necessarily differentiate them but it does at least give them parity with their competitors.

Unfortunately, some corporates still don’t understand the value of a great brand and have cruddy logos that are, in short, embarrassing and doing nothing for their businesses.

But there is significant value to the small business that has the vision and commitment to invest in having a professional marketing agency develop a meaningful and appropriate brand identity.

A brand identity is more than just a visual symbol or logo design - it defines your company’s unique service promise, builds lasting brand recognition and invokes positive recall.

A strong brand enhances your company’s credibility by integrating your brand strategy with consistent graphic application across all market and customer contact points.

Think about this - if most small businesses have weak branding, then by developing a compelling and effective branding package you can position your company ahead of your competitors in the mind of your target market.

A strong and effective brand can definitely be a competitive advantage in the cut throat world of small business.

To develop a strong brand identity, your marketing agency needs to work closely with you to understand the needs of your customers and prospects.
They need to explore suitable graphic elements and branding metaphors for the logo device, develop appropriate colour palettes and provide guidance on how to effectively apply your branding and logo design in specific applications.

Your goal should be to ensure complete brand integrity. If the brand development process is executed correctly then your company will stand out from the mass of small businesses that simply couldn’t be bothered, or more likely, don’t know any better.

Professionally designed brands, usually most visibly represented by the logo device, tell the market a visual story about your company.

It speaks of attention to detail, professionalism, pride and investment in your company, presents your unique value proposition and helps you to stand out above your mediocre competitors.

About the Author: Wayne Attwell is the founder and senior brand strategist at Bold Horizon. He has over 25 years of international marketing and business experience across large corporates and SME’s. Initially trained as an industrial designer, Wayne also has an intuitive feel for great design and presentation. For more marketing, brand development and internet marketing information visit www.boldhorizon.co.nz.

I’ve seen it many times. A new entrepreneur is excited because their website just went live after weeks, or even months, of hard work. But the excitement doesn’t last long when they see that they have yet to make a sale. Or maybe they’ve only made one or two. They’re not covering their expenses, and they’re certainly not making enough to live on.

I make sure to tell them not to worry, because it’s happened to all of us. Especially with a new website. And there is an answer. Or, I should say, a few answers.

There are some steps you can follow to make sure you are doing everything right to maximize your sales. Look through the list below. If you can say definitively that you have taken all of these steps, then you should see a big increase in your sales. Here you go:

1. Make sure there is a market for what you’re selling

By now, you’ve probably heard a lot about finding your online niche. If you did your research properly, you should have found a market that has a problem that you can provide an answer for. That’s probably the most important part of your business.

If you haven’t done the proper research yet, get started now. Use a keyword tool like Nichebot or Wordtracker to find what people are searching for online. And visit the forums to see what people are talking about and what problems they need to solve.

Don’t skip this step. It’s important that internet users are going to want what you’re selling or your whole business is lost before it even begins.

2. Make sure that you’re selling something that solves their problem

If you’ve found the right niche, then you should have some idea about what their main problems are. Do some research to find out what they need to solve that problem, then offer it to them. That’s the formula in a nutshell. Don’t let your product stray from the main topic. Solve their problem, and you’ll have success.

3. Make sure you’re getting enough traffic

It’s difficult to make a good decision about how effective your sales process is if you haven’t had enough traffic to your website yet. I recommend waiting until you’ve had at least 1,000 visitors. Anything less and you won’t really have enough data to work with. Be patient.

4. Find out where your traffic is coming from

It’s important that you are getting targeted visitors to your website. Make sure that if you’re using pay-per-click advertising you’re bidding only on words that are right for your market. If you’re selling cell phones, you don’t want visitors who are searching for land line phones for their office. Remember who your visitor is.

5. Test different headlines

Your headline is the first thing your visitors see on your site. Make sure it’s compelling and gets them to keep reading. How do you do that? Simply by testing different headlines and seeing which one works best.

You can do that by rewriting it every now and then and checking your stats, or you can split test your headlines using Google’s website optimizer. Website optimizer is part of your Google adwords account. If you don’t have an adwords account, you can get one free at a href=”http://adwords.google.com”>http://adwords.google.com.

6. Make sure your sales copy is effective

The last thing you want to do once you have a visitor reading your sales copy is to distract them with something that isn’t leading directly to a sale. In other words, leave out any links to other websites, forget about adsense and banner ads, and don’t start talking about things that don’t relate to your subject.

Concentrate on your sales message and proof elements, and dispelling any doubts they may have about giving you their money. This includes using testimonials if you have them, a 100% satisfaction guarantee, and good strong sales copy that keeps them interested all the way through to your “buy now” button.

7. Test different price points

It’s hard to know what’s the right price for your item right off the bat. You may have it at the price you’re willing to pay, but that may not be the price everyone is willing to pay. A lot of people will expect to buy something in your market within a certain price range. If your price is too high, they’ll shop elsewhere. If your price is too low, yes too low, they might think that what you’re offering is of poor quality. You can answer this problem by simply trying out different prices to see what works best.

8. Make sure your order processing works properly and is easy to use

Test all of the links from your “add to cart” buttons all the way through to your “thank you” page. You can normally run a $0 test before you go live with most shopping cart and merchant account systems. Obviously, if your ordering system isn’t working right, you’re not going to see any sales.

Also, make sure that it’s easy to use. Get a friend to run through it for you. It may make perfect sense to you, but that doesn’t mean that it will for everyone. Let some other people try it out and see if they get stuck anywhere. Chances are good that if they do, then others will too. If everything isn’t as easy as possible to use, then some people will just leave rather than trying to figure it out.

There you go. Eight steps you can follow with your site to make sure that you are maximizing your sales. Just from my own experience, anytime I was able to say that I went through all of the steps above completely, I saw significant improvement, and found good success with my website. I believe that you will, too. Good luck.

About the Author: Mark Yarrobino is the president of Maroon Enterprises. One of their websites, Home Business Endeavors (http://www.homebusinessendeavors.com) was created to help internet users find the right information about starting their home based business while avoiding online scams.

As much time as business website owners put into finding a good web designer, it’s amazing how little time gets spent in actually creating the website content - also known as the sales copy. This is the content that will help the customer make a decision whether to take action - or leave.

It’s one of the most important keys of any successful website, and yet it’s often ignored or patched together at the last minute and rushed off to the web designer to add to the site. Unfortunately, this can leave a lasting impression on that company’s target audience.

Look over your website’s front page copy - as this is where most of your visitors will ultimately end up. See if any of the following mistakes appear in your site. You may be surprised at what you learn!

* Welcome to XYZ Company Website - This was the most common headline for sites established back in the mid 90’s, when just having a website showed that you were “ahead of the technology curve”. These days, customers can use the web to comparison shop and do research - much of this research is aimed at which company to do business with.

That said, your very first headline should be one that draws them in and perks up their interest in what you have to offer. A good example is the headline of this article. You were curious enough to click and find out what your website content says about you. Having “Welcome to Our Company” on your front page signifies that your company is “behind the times” and gives the visitor no information to go on about why they should buy from you.

* My, I and We - It’s great that you want to tell customers what your company does. Unfortunately, they don’t really care. They want to know what you can do for them, instead. Rather than focusing on what you can do for them, tailor your website content to emphasize the benefits to the reader.

You can do this as simply as writing sentences that start with things such as “You will learn…”, or “You will find that…” and then ending them with a benefit to the customer, such as “how to improve your marriage in less than a week”, or “you have a brighter, whiter smile”.

Your readers will almost automatically imagine themselves better off as a result of your product or service - and this kind of “written visualization” will help them see that your offer is the logical choice to get the desired result.

* Lack of a Compelling Headline - This ties into point #1 - but a compelling, action-oriented headline gives your customer the impulse to read further. That doesn’t mean you should take your headline to the extreme and dress it up with bright red text, heaps of exclamation marks and CAPITAL LETTERS. Those are major copywriting “turn-offs” for a professional business and they show that you’re unenthusiastic or bored with the product.

You know your product is the best - so why not share that enthusiasm with your reader? What is it that you enjoy or admire about the product? What can it do for the customer? Say it up front in your headline. That’s what urges them to keep reading more.

* Lots of Tech Specs - It’s great that your product is powered by an X250Q fusion engine and 220ZX turbines. Unless your end user is intimately familiar with those products and specs - they’ll simply leave…confused. And they probably won’t come back.

On the other hand, if you tell them that 1. They’ll never have to buy gasoline again and 2. They get the kind of hauling and drive power they need to move those heavy loads - NOW you’ve got their attention! When you write your website content, after everything you believe is a benefit to the consumer, ask yourself, “So what?” Eventually it will boil down to the core reason why the customer needs it - and that’s the gold you’re looking for!

When you keep these copywriting suggestions in mind, you not only help make your website content stronger and more compelling for your reader, but you also instantly improve your product or service’s credibility in their eyes. Give these tips a try and watch your conversions go up! All the best!

About the Author: If you enjoyed reading this article, you can find even more web design tips at http://www.iElectrify.com/resources/. Sherice Jacob holds an M.A. in Media Studies and has played an integral role in creating several successful web businesses - for herself and others. She currently manages a full service web design and internet marketing firm at http://www.iElectrify.com. iElectrify specializes in creating professional, affordable and creative websites that get results. With a strong background in internet marketing and niche marketing, iElectrify.com works with small to medium businesses to help them easily create and manage their own websites.

The most important function of a website is to help a company to sell their services/products to new clients.

When potential new clients/tourists need to choose between two companies with whom they aren’t familiar, they are most likely to compare the websites. This is because a website is almost the only method for a person to actually see beforehand what he/she pays for. In general, more than 90% of these potential new client’s decisions are decided upon the impression that is reflected from the website, regardless of the competence of these companies. The general truth is that most potential clients do not know how to technically compare companies, and therefore trust that the website’s professionalism will reflect the expertise.

Therefore large amounts are invested in corporate website development.

Unfortunately most companies tend to overlook the importance of building a trusted web presence. Without having a web presence with authority almost no new visitors will end up at your website. And since every company wants to expand, they need to focus on improving their web presence in order to increase the chance of getting new customers.

The best and most effective long term solution to increase your web presence is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It is a highly specialized field that focus on improving the amount of trust the rest of the world will have in your website. The more trust you have, the more potential new clients will visit your website daily.

The amount of trust your website has, is most of the time determined by search engines (for example Google, Yahoo, etc.). This is because the search engines have the most advanced mathematical algorithms available today, hence the acronym, SEO. Of all these search engines, the world’s most accepted benchmark of website trust is known as the Google rank (or page rank) of your website. Therefore, if you could increase your Google rank, your number of new visitors to your website will most certainly increase.

Google Rank of well known organisations’ home page:

4/10: Pick n Pay, Steers, KWV, News 24
5/10: Anglo Gold, Checkers, Spur, Shoprite, Nedbank, Old Mutual
6/10: Anglo American, Absa, Stellenbosch University, Telkom, MTN, Vodacom, Mobil, Virgin, Standard Bank, Die Burger, Sasol
7/10: McDonald’s, Ford, General Electric, Nike, Coke
8/10: General Motors
9/10: Microsoft, eBay, Amazon
10/10: Google, Facebook

Another reason why Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is so important is because of the quality of the traffic (website visitors) you receive on your website. If somebody visits your website due to a search engine query, as opposed to other reasons (such as typing in the web address/clicking on a link from another website, etc), the new visitor will most likely already be looking for your services. For example, if someone types in the word “wine” in Google, they are probably looking for wine. So if your site comes up first on Google you can probably sell a bottle of wine if your offering is satisfactory. The contrary is that the person accidentally lands on your website, but has no immediate desire for the product or services.

Please note that it is possible to buy quality traffic, but this is expensive (depending on the product value and competition) and only effective in the immediate short term i.e. while it is active. SEO has a long term cumulative effect and is relatively inexpensive to maintain once a certain level of optimisation is reached.

Tips when hiring SEO experts:

- Whenever using a company in order to improve your SEO, always check out the Google Rank of their website. Since SEO is not that well known in management circles, there is a lot of companies that will try to sell SEO skills while there own SEO are terrible.

- Also try to get some form of guarantee. It is very rare that marketing companies ever give guarantees about the effects of their efforts, but if they actually do, you know they are serious about their skills.

- Try to get clear benchmarks to calculate the results of the SEO campaign. For example monitor the number of visitors that your website receives that came from natural search engine queries during and after the time of your campaign. (If your marketing team don’t know how to get these figures, don’t use them!)

- Make sure your SEO team have a clean record. Sometimes SEO companies may get desperate in order to get results and might step over the moral line by trying to fool search engines with unnatural ‘black hat’ methods. When caught out, these websites are usually banned from search engines and will not show in any search result. To look into any company’s track record simply Google them. Disgruntles clients tend to write their bad experience in public forums that will normally be listed in Google’s search results just below the company’s own website.

Good luck with your marketing campaign!

About the Author: Wim Conradie is a majority shareholder in Matogen Corporate Web Development (www.matogen.com). He studied electronic engineering, computer sciences & industrial engineering at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and started first web development business in November 2003. He has a ‘passion for business and adding value to other busnesses’.