Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Is Your Business Real?

No matter what type of business you have, are you taking it seriously?    

Here's a few tips from David Bullock for knowing if you have a real business or simply an income opportunity (hobby):

image courtesy Microsoft.com

  • A business has its own clients/customers
  • A business is not dependent on one channel for traffic
  • A business can be sold later
  • A business can run without me
  • A business needs people working it (whether you call them employees, contractors, outsourced vendors, etc.)
  • A business needs infrastructure (financial, marketing, customer systems, etc.)
  • A business has "flow", a way to sustain a level of income
  • A business is scalable
 If what you are doing does not fit with the statements above, then you don't have a business.

If you want a real business, focus on connecting with people and learn what they want from you. Then provide it.

Use the Internet as a vehicle to connect with these people. David says, "do things that are beyond business as usual." Find ways to create meaningful connections with people to grow your business and keep it moving forward.




Monday, August 27, 2012

Web pages: Tunnel Vision

This information from Jakob Neilsen shows how users interact with the information on Web pages "Users don't see stuff that's right on the screen. Selective attention makes people overlook things outside their focus of interest."

image of a web page | marketyourbizonline.blogspot.com | smallbizwebtips.com | paula bonelli
web image courtesy of Microsoft.com

He goes on to say, "...Selective attention is really a survival instinct; if people had to pay attention to all stimuli in the environment, they'd never get anything done. They are also more likely to overlook something important...It's only human: focus on a few things and ignore the rest."

The most important information often gets overlooked.; focus on it when analyzing the layout of your page(s) and test your pages with real users.

If you're redesigning your site or just a page or two, get some real users and test it before taking it live. And read his entire article on the subject here:
Tunnel Vision and Selective Attention (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Increase Revenue by Using Your Website


Listen up all you small, local businesses! I've been telling you (my small business clients) this for years, but it is falling on deaf ears so it bears repeating.

Your Web site is a great marketing tool/channel. It isn't simply an online brochure. You must use it as a marketing channel and treat it like any other marketing effort by tracking the return on your investment (ROI). You must also be fervent about constantly improving it. It will cost you far more money to guess than it will to actually know what's working.



Your Web site is open 24/7. You're not limited to retail hours. If you don't already sell from it, consider what you could sell online. It doesn't have to be every product you have, just something that you feel is easily sold online. This will allow you to work smarter, not harder [hmmm....where have you heard that before? :-)] and to increase sales with little extra effort.

A BIG plus to adding eCommerce to your Website? It increases your revenue AND it makes your business more saleable!

Here's 10 things you'll want to track:
  • number of sales (orders, leads, phone calls, etc.)
  • number of unique visitors (all visits except repeat customers)
  • conversion rates (traffic divided by sales)
  • traffic from search queries (people using a search engine from their desktop or mobile device)
  • direct traffic (they already know your Web address and type it directly into their browser)
  • visitor loyalty (are your customers returning to your site and buying again?)
  • traffic from social media sources (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn - anywhere you have a social profile)
  • traffic from email newsletters (Please tell me you're building an email list and communicating regularly with your customers.)
  • traffic from offline marketing campaigns (radio, TV, newspaper, etc.)
  • traffic generated for online advertising (paid online advertising like Google AdWords or Bing adCenter)
Most of the areas listed above can be tracked by setting up a free Google Analytics account and connecting your Website URL (Web address) to the account.

If you would like assistance setting up and monitoring the data, let me know. I've provided these services for many clients and I work in it daily. I can help you get set up and interpret the data.

Challenge for August:
Find 1 thing from your local business that you can sell online.

Note: It doesn't have to be costly to sell from your Website - you can do it using a simple PayPal account. In fact, you don't even NEED a Website to use PayPal to sell products.
I can help you get started!