Providing reliable dedicated servers, colocation of servers and reliable hosting since 1995.
Fresh Articles:
Internet Marketing
SEO
PPC Marketing
Web Hosting
Web site Design
Internet Marketing
Site Promotion
Free Ways to Promote Traffic to your Website
Website traffic has to be one of the most talked about subjects among website owners and the web marketing world. The whole purpose of being online is to get your business noticed and to drive a reasonable amount of traffic to your site. What many...
Increase the number of visitors to your website for free
If you are looking to increase the number of visitors to your website or increase your hits, I have a number of ideas that I hope will prove beneficial. By far the best advice would be writing articles, just like the one you are reading. If you...
Score BIG with the search engines - Maximising your site's potential
I often get asked, "How do I improve my site's performance in the search engine's." or "I have a small budget, how can I compete with the larger sites." It can seem daunting when you type in your key search term and you see Google returning 200,000...
SEO - Why Site Width Matters
Many search engine optimization efforts are focused on pushing the home page of a site. This is a fundamental mistake that can result in the site missing out on a lot of traffic. Go Wide, Young Man In nearly every case, a site should be...
Your Affiliate Marketing Website
If you are serious about becoming an affiliate, you will need to have an affiliate marketing website. This website can be designed to showcase all of the products and services you are promoting. This website can either be designed by you or you can...
So you want to succeed at eCommerce? Welcome to a very large group. First off, let’s be clear that there are a lot of ways to do business on the internet - and a lot of ways to both make and lose money. No way can I cover all of them in a few fairly short articles.
This article is going to assume that you have some of the fundamentals, that you understand the language and that you are serious. I’m not going to tell you how to set up a web site or get a decent hosting account. We’re a bit beyond those basics. The basics here have to do with factors which will influence the success (or failure) and the degree of success an eCommerce web site experiences.
First and foremost, you need to provide value for your customers. Absurd as it seems to have to repeat that, a lot of so-called eCommerce sites provide no or very little value for their visitors. Pretending to offer value is not the same thing as providing value. Promoting miserably written, hackneyed, cloned ebooks filled with questionably useful and/or outdated content doesn’t make for a high value site. Sure you can make some money. Once. And you’ll likely have a high refund rate. Essentially you'd be taking advantage of the inexperience of your customers and abusing their willingness to trust you. Not a good path to a long-term business with steady repeat customers.
Value on the net is not very different from any kind of off-line retail sales -- a quality product line that will attract potential customers and a competitive price that will lead to purchases. An honest, quality product that will meet the expectations you’ve created in your buyers. Hyped junk won’t do it.
Next, you’ve got to have a smooth, user-friendly, easy to follow process all the way to your thank you page. The simpler, cleaner and clearer you can make the process, the better. Where it makes sense you can augment this user-responsive site profile by adding live-response chat.
If you do use call-in or live chat, it’s imperative that your operators be well-trained, understand your products and your system and BE customer friendly. This can be a difficult job if you outsource. The less expensive out-source
alternatives can be a bad investment. You’ll need to check very carefully and be certain the operators do actually speak and understand the primary languages(s) of your targeted customer group. You’ll need to provide extensive background information and highly flexible, well-written scripts. You should also collect customer evaluations of these services - separately, and carefully monitor your results to be sure you are getting a decent return on the investment.
You need to have an attractive website. Some can do well with an ugly site, but, in that case, you need to really understand what you're doing and why it might work. The ugly site tactic is not for the inexperienced and very few individuals truly have the grasp of marketing and customer psychology that can lead to a successful "ugly" site.
To provide a pleasant experience, you need to be careful in what you use - colors, text-size, graphics, animation and white space can add value to your site or turn it into a user nightmare. Test your site with people who will tell you the truth. Just because you love it doesn't mean anyone else will. In general, aiming for a professional appearing site is your best option.
Wherever you can, provide incentives for customers to buy and to return. The return factor is a critical piece of a long-term strategy for success. Anyone who buys is your best possible future customer. Keep them, track them, make them special offers. Use coupons, discounts, special deals, customer-only offers and back end sales. Your customer base is your gold mine. They have at least some faith in you, enough to have purchased. Do your utmost to never damage that faith and treat them with the care they deserve.
The next article in the series will discuss factors such as personalization, security and assisting your staff in dealing consistently with customers customer support.
Website traffic has to be one of the most talked about subjects among website owners and the web marketing world. The whole purpose of being online is to get your business noticed and to drive a reasonable amount of traffic to your site. What many...
Increase the number of visitors to your website for free
If you are looking to increase the number of visitors to your website or increase your hits, I have a number of ideas that I hope will prove beneficial. By far the best advice would be writing articles, just like the one you are reading. If you...
Score BIG with the search engines - Maximising your site's potential
I often get asked, "How do I improve my site's performance in the search engine's." or "I have a small budget, how can I compete with the larger sites." It can seem daunting when you type in your key search term and you see Google returning 200,000...
SEO - Why Site Width Matters
Many search engine optimization efforts are focused on pushing the home page of a site. This is a fundamental mistake that can result in the site missing out on a lot of traffic. Go Wide, Young Man In nearly every case, a site should be...
Your Affiliate Marketing Website
If you are serious about becoming an affiliate, you will need to have an affiliate marketing website. This website can be designed to showcase all of the products and services you are promoting. This website can either be designed by you or you can...
A Successful eCommerce Website - Part 1
So you want to succeed at eCommerce? Welcome to a very large group. First off, let’s be clear that there are a lot of ways to do business on the internet - and a lot of ways to both make and lose money. No way can I cover all of them in a few fairly short articles.
This article is going to assume that you have some of the fundamentals, that you understand the language and that you are serious. I’m not going to tell you how to set up a web site or get a decent hosting account. We’re a bit beyond those basics. The basics here have to do with factors which will influence the success (or failure) and the degree of success an eCommerce web site experiences.
First and foremost, you need to provide value for your customers. Absurd as it seems to have to repeat that, a lot of so-called eCommerce sites provide no or very little value for their visitors. Pretending to offer value is not the same thing as providing value. Promoting miserably written, hackneyed, cloned ebooks filled with questionably useful and/or outdated content doesn’t make for a high value site. Sure you can make some money. Once. And you’ll likely have a high refund rate. Essentially you'd be taking advantage of the inexperience of your customers and abusing their willingness to trust you. Not a good path to a long-term business with steady repeat customers.
Value on the net is not very different from any kind of off-line retail sales -- a quality product line that will attract potential customers and a competitive price that will lead to purchases. An honest, quality product that will meet the expectations you’ve created in your buyers. Hyped junk won’t do it.
Next, you’ve got to have a smooth, user-friendly, easy to follow process all the way to your thank you page. The simpler, cleaner and clearer you can make the process, the better. Where it makes sense you can augment this user-responsive site profile by adding live-response chat.
If you do use call-in or live chat, it’s imperative that your operators be well-trained, understand your products and your system and BE customer friendly. This can be a difficult job if you outsource. The less expensive out-source
alternatives can be a bad investment. You’ll need to check very carefully and be certain the operators do actually speak and understand the primary languages(s) of your targeted customer group. You’ll need to provide extensive background information and highly flexible, well-written scripts. You should also collect customer evaluations of these services - separately, and carefully monitor your results to be sure you are getting a decent return on the investment.
You need to have an attractive website. Some can do well with an ugly site, but, in that case, you need to really understand what you're doing and why it might work. The ugly site tactic is not for the inexperienced and very few individuals truly have the grasp of marketing and customer psychology that can lead to a successful "ugly" site.
To provide a pleasant experience, you need to be careful in what you use - colors, text-size, graphics, animation and white space can add value to your site or turn it into a user nightmare. Test your site with people who will tell you the truth. Just because you love it doesn't mean anyone else will. In general, aiming for a professional appearing site is your best option.
Wherever you can, provide incentives for customers to buy and to return. The return factor is a critical piece of a long-term strategy for success. Anyone who buys is your best possible future customer. Keep them, track them, make them special offers. Use coupons, discounts, special deals, customer-only offers and back end sales. Your customer base is your gold mine. They have at least some faith in you, enough to have purchased. Do your utmost to never damage that faith and treat them with the care they deserve.
The next article in the series will discuss factors such as personalization, security and assisting your staff in dealing consistently with customers customer support.
About the Author
Contracting the computer bug in the early 80's (yes, pre-www) and never cured, Richard, a PhD Clinical Paychologist, now writes on eCommerce, RSS and Niche marketing at http://www.Building-eCommerce-Websites.com
You may freely reprint but the link must be live and spiderable
The ideal starting point for reliability in our 24 X 7 manned Data Facility for your dedicated server.