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Archive for May, 2010

Shopping Cart abandonment is the process of a customer adding things to their shopping cart with intent to purchase then never finalizing the purchase and if you’re running an eCommerce store it’s likely to be costing you lost revenue. Some online store see figures up to 68% abandonment, over three quarters of their customer who place products in their cart do not finalize pay. This article is going to look at how you can minimize the impact of shopping cart abandonment on your sales.
Like all problems, In order to tackle the problem we firstly need to know what causes it. There are a multitude of reason why people abandon their carts, speaking to online customer and store owners we have pin pointed what we think at the top ten reason people doing finalize a purchase and we’re going to give you some guidance on how to avoid each one.
1. Cost of Shipping too high and not shown until checkout: Sticker Shock does not just happen on products, it’s as much a problem with the shipping costs on your store. Especially if you sell low priced items. The best way to limit this is to make sure your customer know how much the delivery is going to cost them as soon as possible. Make sure you shopping cart page has a good estimate of the final shipping cost, and if possible place estimated shipping cost on your product pages.
2. Changed mind and discarded cart contents: If your customer genuinely changes their mind and decides not to purchase there is not much you can do about that. But you can try and minimize the chances of them becoming distracted. Removing all unnecessary links from the checkout process stops customer from clicking away from the checkout process. This can include removing site navigation during the process.
3. Comparison shopping or browsing: The popularity of shopping comparison sites is increasing all the time and there are really only two ways you can deal with this. The first is to undercut all your competitors and make sure you come up on the comparison sites as being the cheapest. Unfortunately this isn’t always possible and the only other solutions is honesty, explaining why your products are at a higher price help, also more and more sites are beginning to include price comparisons with their competitors on their own site, if you show your customer you have nothing to hide then they’re more likely to trust you and purchase from you.
4. Total cost of items is too high: Make sure that your customers are aware at all time of the value of the products in their shopping cart whilst they browse. Placing a simple running total at the top right of your store will make sure the customer is aware of the prices adding up and won’t get sticker shock when they click on the ‘what’s in my cart’ button.
5. Saving items for later purchase: Make sure your customer can do this easily, more current shopping cart software provides you with a facility to allow customers to save their carts and come back and checkout at a later date.
6. Checkout process is too long: Make sure your checkout process is as short as possible, and don’t ask for information from your customer that they don’t need. Don’t make then enter their postal address multiple times for shipping and billing if they’re the same. Also as stated above make sure there are no distraction in the checkout process.
7. Out of stock products at checkout time: Like shipping costs make sure you customers are aware as soon as possible that your products are in or out of stock as soon as possible. The best place to show this is in your product listings and on the product pages themselves.
8. Poor site navigation and long download times: There is nothing more infuriating than a slow loading site, make sure you work with your host to provide your customer with the fastest loading page possible, make sure you shopping cart software code is optimized and delivers pages fast.
9. Lack of sufficient product or contact information: Information = Reassurance, the more information your site contains about your company and your product the more reassurance it provides to the customer that they’re going to get the products they want, and the products they ordered. Make sure that your product descriptions contain as much information as possible and they you include pages about your company including contact information. It’s always good to have a phone number, most online shoppers will never call you, but a large number will be reassured that you are reachable on the phone if something goes wrong.
10. Site unclear on delivery times: Just like the above point, make sure you have all the information about your delivery times visible and easily accessible at all times, in an age when customer can get all the information they need at the clicking of their fingers they increasingly want their real world products just as fast.

Many of the visitors to your home business website will remain just that: visitors. What is it about a home business website that keeps potential customers returning and eventually beginning to buy your products? Here are a few ways you can make the most of your home business website.
The most important part of your home business website is making the site very easy to navigate. All of your home business information should be easily accessible to site visitors. If the home business website is confusing or even slightly complicated, this will turn away many potential customers right away. Slightly less crucial, but still very important, is your home business website design. Have you laid out the home business website with colors that work well together and don’t blind the eye? Is your font easy for anyone to read, and professional looking? These are the very first important questions to ask yourself when assessing your home business website, or your plans for a home business website.
Also, be aware that information from your site visitors is crucial for your success. Find out how customers found your home business website, because this will enable you to advertise your home business in a more directly targeted way. It is also beneficial to get the names and addresses of your website visitors. Provide a sign up form on your home business website that allows customers or potential customers to receive email messages from you. You may want to offer some sort of contest or drawing in order to encourage customers to sign up for your home business email list. Be sure to make them aware of how often you plan to email them. In other words, if you send out only one or two home business emails per month, this information would help put people at ease, knowing they will not be receiving an inbox full of messages.
Additionally, your home business website can also provide testimonials from previously satisfied customers. You can help give credibility to these testimonials by adding pictures, website addresses, etc. of the businesses and people your home business has helped in the past.

Blogging is at its zenith and everyday millions of people worldwide use blogs to promote a product or service or just to share information. You may be one of the best writers on the Internet or even one of the best creative writers but that will not make you the best blogger on the internet. Successful blogging is about creating a connection; it is about writing in such a way that the audience can relate to your content and themselves. You can do that by providing relevant and meaningful content to start with and keep the flow with links and comments.
Let us take a look at some of the important facets of corporate blogging that can assist you to strengthen your position as one of the best bloggers on the internet:
Know the fundamentals of Blogging
There are millions of bloggers out there on the World Wide Web but only a few successful ones. This is because most bloggers have not understood or realized the true fundamentals of blogging. You can start a blog at any time and publish your articles but realizing the true benefits of blogging and understanding its importance as a tool for driving traffic and attracting readers is another story.
The first and the foremost thing is to have a strategy in place, a blogging strategy that will be supported by your marketing strategies, PR strategies, advertising strategies etc. The strategy should also be in-sync with your business goals. The second important aspect is to build blogger relations. Blogger relations is where you start a blog and keep building upon it and keep it alive by adding new content, features, comments etc.
What blogger relations can really do is get other people involved in a discussion that could span over many months. As these discussions progress, you will get to know other people working in your industry. You will be able to share information and even get important and exclusive information that can provide you with a edge over other businesses in the same industry.
Value Creation
Why have you started a blog? This is one of the most important questions and the answer is also fairly simple. You should create a blog not only to promote your ideas but to provide value addition to your audience or readers through meaningful and relevant content. If you provide informative and interactive content then there is a high possibility that it will indirectly increase the flow of traffic to your parent or business website. No value addition – no traffic!
Sustain and grow
Sustaining is important and not easy but is required for overall growth and success as a blogger. The best way to do this is by keeping your audience up to date. To do this, you will need to know what is happening out there in terms of industry news and what your audience wants. If you keep providing interesting information from the industry and news snippets then more and more readers will be visit your blogs. This will lead to the growth in readership of your blogs and increase the visibility of your blog.
Provide an opinion
There are times when you may have a news snippet but you might not be able to form an opinion or perspective. In those times, try to provide a community opinion or a general perspective. This will open a thread of discussion and readers will get involved.
Always Respond
Responding to a comment left by another blogger or a reader is important as it will nurture relationships and increase the traffic to your blog or website. The essence of blogging lies in communication and discussion. A blogger or a reader will leave a comment expecting you to get back or for starting a discussion. If you are unable to carry the thread or keep the flow of the discussion, then it will eventually stagnate your growth process and your business will suffer. Replying to a comment will help in opening a discussion that will help in building bonds or relationship with other industry experts, readers and bloggers. Your comment should also be in context and not something that has no relevance with the discussion or blog.
In the end, be open to criticism and share as much information as possible and always remember that blogging is one of the most powerful tools for promoting your business.

Everyone knows that marketing a home business is one of the most tricky things about having one. You have to be sure that you are doing it correctly, because no matter what your business is, chances are good that there are a lot of people who have home businesses that are going to be able to compete with yours. Because the internet is open to everyone all over the world, you are going to find that it often comes down to people choosing the business that markets themselves the best.
Make Your Mark
So, how can you make your mark on the world and be sure that you are noticed? First of all, you have to have something that no one else does. Chances are good that other people have your same idea, unless you have come up with something that no one has ever heard of before. So, this means that there has to be something about your business that is unique, whether it is in your web site, the way that you do business, or the product that you are offering. You have to be sure that you can easily say that you have something no one else can offer, and that when you say this, you can actually mean it. If you can do this, you are going to be on the right track.
Market Market Market
Another thing that you have to be sure to do is to market yourself. No matter what you are doing, there is a place somewhere that is going to be able to market you. You have to rely on yourself and do your own research, and figure out where you can best market yourself. If you are just starting out, a good thing to do would be to search online for your product or service, and see what comes up. See what your competition is, and then figure out what they are doing to market themselves. Then, see where you can get your name out there and how you can make yourself known in the world where you want to be.
Another thing that you have to do is to get creative about how you market yourself. This could even be the thing that sets you apart from all the rest. If you can be sure that you really know what you are doing, you might be able to find your way to the top of something, and you might be able to be more of a success than you ever thought it would be possible for you to be. Get out there and market yourself, in the best way possible, and see if you can bring yourself to the forefront.

In order to build your home based business you will need to market it both online and offline. Here I will discuss marketing it online and what can produce the greatest benefit with the least cost. While there are many ways to promote your home based business through free advertising not all of those ways will be productive. Sometimes what looks to be the most productive way is actually the least productive?
Free FFA Pages
Free For All sites known as FFA sites can appear to be very productive. Most have extremely large user bases, often with millions of members. Nothing sounds better than advertising your Home based business to 1 million people and more for free. It is simple to submit to these sites.
The submission form has a top box for your “Headline” a second box for your text and a third box for the URL of the site you are promoting. They ask for your name and email address but your email address is not published in your advertisement. It is though given to the other members of the FFA site to use for advertising their product. You can expect to get hundreds and thousands of emails from site members all promoting what they have to offer. If you use these sites use an email address that is not your main email, gmail and others are good for this.
The problem I see with this type of advertising comes from my own behavior when receiving the hundreds of emails. I often just highlight as many emails as possible and delete them all very quickly. I don’t bother trying to read them because of the sheer numbers I receive. I am sure most members do the same thing. Also, I track all my advertisements using specific URLs and I have not once had a response even when sending many advertisements. In my opinion it is a waste of time.
Traffic Exchanges
To me these sites are actually fun to use. You start out by having a certain number of free advertising credits given to you when you join. To gain more credits you simply click on advertisements placed by site members, usually hundreds of them. You are put on a timer and must wait 10-20 seconds between clicks. The credits you gain can be from 1 credit to 5 per click. The key to using these is the page you are promoting. Many people will advertise their main sales page or their personal website. That will often be the least productive site to use. Because members are clicking for credits your page has to be easy to read quickly. The best page to use is a “Lead capture” page or a Splash page. The benefits of your program and what it will do for the reader must be main function. Using a sign up form is a must so you can capture the prospects name and email address, Requiring to much information will cause them to leave quickly. These sites can be productive but spending hours to click for credits can be a waste of truly productive time.
Article Marketing
Article marketing is by far the number one way to promote your home based business. The good part is it can be done for free. Many people believe you must have a lot of skills to affectively write an article but that couldn’t further from the truth. It simply involves having knowledge about the subject you are writing about. If you can talk about a subject with your family and friends or can write an email you can also write an article. The benefits of Article writing are very long lasting. It’s common for website publishers to add articles to their web sites that were written many years earlier if the information is still applicable as it often is.
When you are finished writing your article you simply submit it to Article Directories who then publish it on their site and offer it to their members to use. This can be thousands of site publishers and if you have used Keywords in your article it will be found by those publishers whose site relate to those words. It is true Viral marketing because your article can be found on may sites and used by publishers. It takes a little time, often a month and longer, but one article can provide hundreds of backlinks pointing to your site. These links are more valuable than all the site optimization you could do.