IdeaPro.com

Let’s say you’re a web-site designer or web marketing consultant. And let us stipulate that you have a client who wants you to do something that is either illegal or merely unethical — something that either violates State or Federal government laws, the Google Terms-of-Service, or Google’s Webmaster Guidelines or Adsense Program Policies.

You complain to your unwise client that this could get both of you in trouble. “Don’t worry,” says the client, “we can draw up a contract that says you’re not responsible for this project. I’ll take all the blame.”

So, are you protected?

What If Someone Dies?

To illustrate this kind of situation, assume that what you’re doing might result in someone dying. Hard to imagine, but grant me that for a moment. Are you protected from the legal, criminal or civil penalties because you had an agreement with your “employer” that spelled out a claim that only the hiring client was responsible?

Sounds silly, of course. No you would not be protected. Both of you would go to jail, maybe even get the death penalty if it applies.

What If People Merely Lost a Limb?

What if the contracted project only resulted in maiming someone, or seriously injuring them — say it chopped off their arm, for example. Could you avoid responsibility there? Surely not. You could be both criminally and civilly prosecuted for damages, assault, conspiracy, etc.

Okay, What About Causing Financial Ruin?

Say your project only did financial damages to someone or some company. Who is responsible? Can you avoid paying damages, since you only did the web design of the damaging web-site? Or, if you gave advice about contents for the site, will your contract absolve you of any responsibility for possible damages?

It’s a slippery slope, extending down from death, maiming, financial ruin to mere insults; who IS responsible, you or the client?

The “Devil Made Me Do It” Defense

This sort of reasoning didn’t work for the accused Nazis at The Nuremberg Trials. They died, even though they were only following orders (so they claimed).

Aren’t  Web-Site Contracts Different?

Working under a contract that says you aren’t responsible could help (possibly) give some protection from the client sites’ being banned by any 3rd party due to policies he recommends or requires of you. This is an EMPLOYMENT contract. You are a “work for hire” type employee, and he assumes all responsibility for your actions. That’s the point of the contract, one of them anyway. This is the intent of the document, but it may not survive scrutiny in cou

Just because you both signed it doesn’t mean a court will agree to it. The court didn’t sign it. In fact the court can dissolve it. Courts can “penetrate” the veil of protection enjoyed by parties to any agreement. A court can enforce the agreement, or completely erase it and treat the parties as unprotected actors; each responsible for his own actions. It’s done all the time in tax cases, for example.

The Judge Didn’t Sign Your Contract, You Did

When you walk into a court, you’re in a special place. The “boss” there is the judge (and/or the jury). While they CAN recognize instruments that create “fictional relationships” like partnerships, corporations, contracted work arrangements, etc., they are not required to. If they decide to set aside such a relationship, watch out! Each individual is on their own.

Even employees are required by the law to follow certain commonly accepted legal, moral and ethical practices.

Any contract between the client and the employed independent contractor, no matter what it says on its face, must still obey any and all controlling State and Federal laws governing the Internet. Further, they will both be liable, as agreed parties taking the contracted actions, to suffer any penalties exacted upon the action — whether such penalties are exerted or enacted by governing authorities, search engines, ISP companies or whoever.

Some contracts designed to avoid external authority, laws and regulations are really a CONSPIRACY instead of a contract. An agreement between two parties that any actions they take under the agreement that violate laws, terms-of-service, regulations of ISP firms and so on will only result in actions upon one of the signatories to the contract could easily be set aside by any court. The agreement presupposes that there will be a violation and tries to evade responsibility. This is certainly a kind of conspiracy.

A court friendly to the worker might preserve the contract to protect the worker against civil claims of damages in court — but only if the judge preferred to ignore the controlling body of common law pertaining to “generally accepted” practices.

Many judges can dissolve a contract if it flies in the face of a “reasonableness” argument. This always surprises people who are new to the courts. A judge and a jury (when convened) has enormous power. The best plan is to STAY OUT OF COURT. The way to avoid the court is to DO THE RIGHT THING in the first place.

The point is: Obey the laws governing the ‘net. Obey Google’s TOS. Obey the commonly understood ‘good practices’ of being a webmaster. You’re the professional. If you do something bad that was demanded by your client, any court or authority can judge you legally, morally and ethically (and even financially) responsible, setting aside any contract between you.

Not saying they WILL set it aside, only that they could and might do. Why not simply do the right thing in the first place.

If a web-design or internet marketing client insists that you break the rules, don’t take the job, contract or no contract.

We first published these comments in simpler form at WebProWorld.com, a great place to read lively discussions about web mastering topics.

There’s a common belief that being ‘creative’ is the way to be successful in the world of hype. Many advertising campaigns are judged as being successful if they are simply the most creative. Awards are given out for the most creative campaigns by the big marketing and advertising organizations. The Addy, the Cleo, and so on.

But, who gives out an award for the ad campaign that actually sells the most products?

Huh?

Hey, why mention SALES at a time like this, and ruin the romance of the moment. Creativity — that’s what we’re after.

Thousands of artists, performers, radio jocks, DJ’s, actors, models and impressarios occupy the CEO or President’s desks at thousands of ad businesses across the country — all of them calling themselves “advertising agencies”. You can tell they are an advertising agency because that is the way they list themselves in the Yellow Pages. “Get yourself a Yellow Page ad, and you can be an ad man, too!”

But did they get their college degree in advertising? No. If they got one, they got it in the College of Design. The Advertising Department would have been across the campus, located deep inside the College of Business. In that building, people also study marketing, use spreadsheets, and do consumer research. They study sales. They know something about mathematics, something about art, something about theater, something about music, something about focus groups and consumer polling. They know about demographics, psychographics, studies of brand recognition, consumer motivation, selling strategies, and market testing. These folks are sales people. They use mathematics, analytical market research, comparative product testing and similar approaches. And, they marry those technologies to artwork, illustration, photography, singing, dancing, acting, page design and layouts.

The idea is to SELL something.

Selling requires a witches brew of art and science. Combining them successfully demands a special ability to converge these two worlds into one productive team. You know the team has ‘won’ when the product being advertised SELLS MORE than it did before. It’s that simple.

I’ve met them socially hundreds of times. All dressed up in a suit and tie. Expensive duds. Very slick — hair in the latest styles. You engage them in small talk, and finally they get around to asking what you “do”. I’d reply that I’m an advertising agent and they’d say, “Hey that’s what I do. I own Fancy Stuff Creative down the street. You’ve probably seen my stuff for Sad Schmuck Jeans all over, huh? That’s me! The ads, not the jeans, of course. We won a bunch of awards on that run.”

After a few painful bouts negotiating myself through this verbal minefield, I soon learned to wean myself away from these folks — asap. I found you could never ask them how much money their award winning campaign made the client — they didn’t know (or care). You couldn’t even mention money, increased market penetration, and so on. That would be changing the subject. “Hey money, sales, market share — that is marketing, not advertising!” they would exclaim. “We leave that to the bean counters and boys in pin-stripes. We’re not MARKKETING people, we’re ADVERTISING people. Creativity, man… that’s our thing.” And then they would shun us real ad agents… as if we were members of those offensive sales-oriented counters of beans.

But if ad men are not artists, and not marketing people, then who are they?

They’re salemen, pure and simple. They’re salemen who lead a team of creatives and bean counters. They are people who come up with a real reason people should and probably will, actually buy the product. Then they produce the ad campaign that will end up doing the job.

Somewhere along the way, there may be a bit of creativity. It may show up in the way research is done to find out why people prefer the competitions’ products, or it may show up in the way the music and the video is done in a TV commercial that delivers the selling proposition. But, creativity is not the main thing.

But of course, the artists who run ad agencies have the cart before the horse. Advertising is the name of the industry. Artists are hired by ad agents to illustrate, to act in, to photograph, to portray and to dramatize a selling concept — a sales proposition. It’s all about sales. In producing sales, sometimes it pays to be creative. But usually, it pays to purposefully NOT be creative. We want memorability, and comprehension, and persuasion, and action (purchasing).

Creativity usually gets in the way of sales.

John O’Toole was for many years the Chairman of Foote, Cone & Belding Communications, Inc. Under O’Toole, Foote Cone became one of the world’s largest agencies with annual ad budgets in the billions of dollars. He was well known for devising advertising campaigns that continued to produce well for clients for many years, sometimes even decades. His client product’s became famous, and very profitable. And, while his campaigns were enormously successful for a wide range of famous brands, he disavowed any reliance on creativity, in fact he often warned young advertising agents:

“If you want to invest in creativity, buy some beautiful artwork and donate it all to a museum. Don’t waste your money forcing it into your ad campaigns.”

– John O’Toole, Chairman of Foote, Cone & Belding Communications and later President of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, from “The Trouble with Advertising”, Time Books, 1985.

Another great ad man often warned about relying on creativity in his books and speaches around the world. David Ogilvy was founder and Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, which was also a multi-billion dollar agency with famous brand campaigns that produced for clients over decades. Ogilvy devised simple, dramatic and persuasive presentations. He had few secrets about the reasons for his success. He wrote about the whys and wherefores in 3 books:

1. “Blood, Brains & Beer: The Autobiography of David Ogilvy”, now out of print (written in the 1950s)
2. “Confessions of an Advertising Man”, Atheneum (1963)
3. “Ogilvy on Advertising”, Vantage (1985)

David Ogilvy and Ogilvy & Mather became so successful — due to the success of their sales campaigns — that Ogilvy himself became an icon of the industry, amassed a fabulous personal fortune, and retired to a castle in France. Throughout his career, he was known as an opinionated, rule-driven master of the science.

Ogilvy never said that he had “created” an ad. He preferred to say he had “written” it. Ogilvy had cut his teeth on working in the consumer behavior research department for George Gallup, starting in the days before World War II. As a result of that experience, and the laboratory experience of spending many millions of client dollars proving what works and what doesn’t, Ogilvy became convinced of certain simple guidelines that he called “hints” on how to write his sales communications, his ads.

Ogilvy used to say that “I hate rules.” But he used consistent principles driven by consumer research over a lifetime to make billions in profits for his clients. Ogilvy was well-known to start his pronouncements to clients and coworkers with “Research shows…” He could do that because he had always done his homework.

“Do your homework.” Ogilvy used to say to understudies in his office. He practiced what he preached. Before writing an ad, he would intensely study the product, the competition, and the product’s potential buyers. This homework often lasted for weeks. He developed ideas about how the product played in the market, which he called ‘positioning.’ And, he extracted some ways to inform the buyers decisions — to persuade them to buy his product instead of the competition’s. He called that ‘benefit-driven advertising.’ But he disowned any allegiance to creativity:

“I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to say that you found it ‘creative.’ I want you to say you found it so interesting that you bought the product. When Aeschines spoke, they said, ‘How well he speaks.’ But when Demosthenes spoke, they said. ‘Let us march against Philip.’

– David Ogilvy, Ogilvy & Mather, from “Ogilvy on Advertising”, 1985.

You want to accomplish these things in an ad:

1. Have your audience know what this about at a glance.
2. Associate the ad’s ‘aboutness’ or subject with an already existing internal value. Something they know and understand, and already think is important — and want more of, or want to know more about.
3. Then you want to link the product or service — the content of the ad — to that value. You want to show how that product or service is unique and superior to other products, and where and how to buy it. You want the audience to buy it!

This means that the audience must:

1. Understand the sales message
2. Comprehend it
3. Believe it
4. Remember it at least long enough to…
5. Act on the sales proposition by…
6. Buying the product

What does this strategy require from the person producing the ad?

1. Research on the features of the product/service being offered.
2. Research on the competition.
3. Research on the values of possible customers. Who they are, what they read, watch, listen to, purchase. Where they shop and play. How to reach them.
4. Research on the market for this product or service. How much is being sold now, by which competitors. Where is it being sold? How much is it sold for? Who is the buyer by age, sex, lifestyle, income, neighborhood, etc.
5. Development of a selling proposition that may persuade the possible customers to buy the product.
6. Produce and illustrate this proposition with dramatic sales campaigns.
7. Measure the success of these campaigns against profits, market share, and possible future trends.
8. Adjust strategies and re-produce new campaigns to improve on those sales figures, or continue and expand the campaigns — whichever is needed.

Where did you see creativity in that list? You didn’t.

Oh, well maybe it might be involved in the production of Step 6: …dramatic campaigns.

1. You could decrease or increase the length of your ad copy. There is no rule on how long your ad copy should be unless space is a consideration. The ad should be long enough to sell your product.
2. You could add some sub headlines on your ad copy. Sub headlines act just like headlines; they grab the readers attention. They'll keep the readers interested as they continue to read your ad.
3. You could ask your reader questions through out the ad copy. They will answer the questions in their own head as they read your ad copy. The questions you ask should persuade the reader into buying.
4. You could highlight keywords through out your ad copy. The keywords should be attractive to your target audience. You could highlight them with color, underlines, italics, etc.
5. You could bullet or indent your benefits on your ad copy. Must people won't read a whole ad copy, so make your products benefits standout and you won't lose the sales from all the skimmers.
6. You could change the size of your text on your ad copy. You want to make your text large enough so it's not hard to read. You also want your headline and major points to be larger so they will standout.
7. You could raise or lower the price on your ad copy. A higher price could increase the perceived value of your product and a lower price could lesson your product's value.
8. You could add proof of results on your ad copy. You should include testimonials, endorsements, and factual statistics to prove your product's claims.
9. You could add special offers on your ad copy. It's usually easier to sell the offer than the product. You could use discounts, free bonuses, volume sales, etc.
10. You could eliminate the hard-to-understand jargon on your ad copy. Unless your product calls for technical words, you want your ad to be read without people pulling out a dictionary.

About the Author: Scott F. Geld is the Director of Marketing at Marketing Blaster, Inc., a firm dedicated to low-cost, super targeted traffic for small businesses operating on the Internet. For more information: http://www.MarketingBlaster.com

1. Design your web site to be a targeted resource center. Choose one subject and build on it. You'll gain repeat visitors that are interested in that topic.
2. Offer something that is really free. If people go to your site and what you said was free really isn't, you'll lose their trust and they won't buy anything.
3. Add a chat room or message board to your web site. People want to interact with other people that have they same interests as them.
4. Entice people to link to your web site by giving them something free in return. This'll increase your ranking in some search engines.
5. Trigger your reader's emotions in your ad copy. Example, if you sell a book on gambling tips, tell them the feelings they'll get when they win money.
6. Make sure your site looks good in all browsers. You could be losing sales because it looks distorted in some web browsers.
7. Increase your sales by e-mailing full page ads to your e-zine subscribers. Remember to tell people before they subscribe or they may consider it spam.
8. Make inquiries in your ad copy that make people consider their personal issues. An example: Do you want to be debt free?
9. Magnify the size of your prospects problem in your ad; show how your product can solve it. The bigger the problem, the more sales you'll have.
10. Invest a percentage of your profits right back into your business. Spend it on marketing, product improvement, customer service, advertising, etc.

About The Author: Scott F. Geld is the Marketing V.P. for Marketing Blaster. Feel free to email him with any questions or comments about this article at: http://www.MarketingBlaster.com

Do you have a business web-site with some detailed product and service pages, but you are not converting many visitors into paying customers? The key is to develop an effective sales page that wins them over. Once you have created an internet sales page that works, then you have a template you can use again and again, customizing the basic formula to any product in your line. The key is to be sure to include all the elements of an effective sales page, and use a ‘formula’ that has been tested and is known to work.

If you are hiring a copy writer or writing the copy yourself, here is a checklist of the essential elements to help you organize and plan your next internet sales page.

Headlines: There can be up to three parts to the headline. First, there is the pre-headline, which is a note to attract your target market, letting them know you have something for them in particular. Second, is the main headline, which describes the big benefit of whatever you’re offering. The main headline should be in large font, and nothing elsewhere on the page should be larger or distract from it. Third, is a post-headline, which is only necessary if you need to clarify or elaborate upon the main
headline.

Introduction: The first few sentences of the letter should grab the visitor’s interest at an emotional level. The introduction draws the visitor further into the copy, allowing you to make a presentation of your product and offer. To appeal to the emotions, show the reader the benefits of your product or service by describing how they will feel or how their life will improve once they own and use the product.

Your Credibility: This is especially important on-line, and needs to come early in the letter. Some of the ways you can build credibility include testimonials about real results, that include the full name of the person giving the testimonial. Also, use specific numbers rather than approximations in your copy overall. If you have expertise and credentials related to the product, say so. When applicable, explain product test results. Quote favorable reviews from newspapers or magazines. And give your contact information with an address. This proves you are real. Don’t worry that someone will show up on your doorstep, and if someone calls you, that’s good. You learn from contact with clients.

Benefits of the product or service: Using bullet format, because bullets are easy to scan, itemize all the benefits (not the features). Put them in order of priority. It is better to have too many than too few because it often takes just a single benefit to inspire a prospect to purchase, but every prospect has their unique hot button.

Specifications and features: Tell exactly what the product is. Give details about what the buyer is getting.

Bonuses. Always include something extra, and make sure it has value - that it could be something people would order the product just to get the bonus. Tell the specific dollar value so you can use that information in the value build-up, or close.

Value build-up: Be explicit about the reasons the price of the product is a good value. Make comparisons to other similar products that are more expensive with less gained. Offer a guarantee if at all possible. Anticipate and counter objections. Create a sense of scarcity. That is to say, give a deadline, explain why they need to act now, and keep your deadline real. Help the visitor feel the pain of not ordering~ exactly what won’t change or get better unless they have your product.

Ordering: Make this absurdly easy. Assume the visitor has never ordered on-line, and give clear step-by step instructions and several options of how to purchase. Offer a secure on-line credit card page, Pay Pal, call to order, or how to send a check, (it is rare that anyone ever actually does this). And remember, ask for the order! Write, “Order Now.”

Post Script: This is a summary of your sales page, a one- paragraph sales page in effect. Include a reiteration of the highlights, and ask one last time for the order.

After reviewing this list, find good examples by doing a little online research. You wouldn’t ever copy another sales page, of course. Simply look for inspiring examples, and then say it in your own way.

About the Author: Loren Beckert is Marketing Director at ClickTracs Advertising Service a company that specializes in delivering highly targeted traffic to internet businesses. For additional articles and resources to promote your online business, visit www.ClickTracs.com

Think you know how to write a business website homepage? Read this article to make sure. You probably think you already know what a homepage is. But if you’re like many business website owners, you really don’t. The homepages of many business websites are suffering an identity crisis. They’re trying to do the job of several web pages, and doing none of those jobs well.
What a Business Website Homepage is Not:

• A homepage is not the place to dump a long description of your business. That’s for the “about us” or “company information” page. On the homepage, this information will just bore most people.
• A homepage is not the place where you list and sell all your products (unless you only have one or two). You should have a special products and services page for that, and preferably a shopping cart or catalog. Trying to make people buy right on your homepage is a little pushy. The homepage will also get over-crowded as your offerings expand. Instead, just include a list of product categories with links to inside pages, along with direct links to your biggest sellers.
• A homepage is not the place to include the full text of your announcements and press releases. Just include a teaser paragraph of each article on the homepage, with a link to the web page with the full text. If people want to read the full text, they can. If they don’t, you haven’t bored them to tears.
• A homepage is not your company president’s or owner’s personal blog. It’s OK to rant, rave, or preach the need for world peace. Just don’t do it on wesellwidgets.com

As you’ve probably noticed, a good website has multiple pages. You should have special web pages for special topics: an “about us” page for company information, a products and services catalog, the president’s blog, etc. When you advertise or send out links to your site, you should link directly to the most appropriate page, rather than just the homepage. Of course, that doesn’t mean you don’t need a homepage, just that you don’t need it to do every single thing you want your website to accomplish.

Quick Guide to Writing a Business Website Homepage

Important Points to Consider

Target Audience

Your business website’s homepage must be all things to all the people who type your URL in their navigation bar, whether it’s their six-hundredth visit or whether they just happened to catch your web address painted on the back of your car.
Content

For the benefit of new visitors, a homepage must provide a snapshot of who you are and what visitors can do on your website. Your first one to three paragraphs should give a quick overview of what visitors can do on your site. For example, you could include a short paragraph each on “buy widgets,” “learn more about widgets,” and “meet other widget enthusiasts,” with links to your shopping cart, informational articles, and message board, respectively.

For returning visitors, the homepage must serve as a touchstone for navigating the site, announcing new developments and pointing out especially popular or useful pages. For these visitors you don’t have to write anything new especially for your homepage. Anyone who’s coming back to your site is already interested and is going to want to jump right into the deeper pages of your site, rather than linger on the homepage wondering whether it’s worth their time.

That’s why your homepage should include teasers for the inside pages of your site. For instance, you could have a tip of the week, linked to a web page on your site with an article explaining it. Good navigation (list of links to the four to eight most essential web pages on your site) is also a must.

For both new and returning visitors, always give a prominent place to a featured product or service (or two or three) with a picture, one or two-sentence description, and a link to its own web page or its place in your "products and services page," catalog or shopping cart.

You should also always feature a satisfied customer. It’s great if the satisfied customer can send you a picture of himself or herself. But no matter what, always include a testimonial quotation, and a link to a case study or customer story on its own web page, which you should definitely find time to write or have written for you by a website content provider.

Title

Don’t title your homepage “Welcome to [name of your site].” Don’t include that message anywhere on your homepage, in fact. It’s a waste of space. This was normal in 1996 but it’s pretty passé now. Everyone already knows they’re on your site. What you need to tell them is what they can do there. Try something like “Buy, Study, and Discuss Widgets.”

Also make sure your title incorporates any keywords you think people might use to search for your product or service on the internet. Search engines decide how to categorize pages largely based on the homepage title and first heading text.

Length

Ideally, the first few paragraphs of the homepage (the ones aimed at new visitors) should not be more than 100-350 words total. The teasers for inside pages targeted to returning visitors should not be more than about 100 words each.
Making Sure Your Website Has the Best Homepage Possible

Before your homepage goes live, test it out on a few people. Don’t just ask your volunteers how they like your homepage. Courtesy may prevent you from getting an honest response. Instead, ask them to find how to buy your latest product or if they understand what’s the most important development in your company recently. If they can navigate to the correct page within about eight seconds (the average human attention span on the web), you’ve done well.

You may just want to hire a website copywriter, online copywriting firm, or website content provider to create your homepage for you. After all, you wouldn’t build your own office building, would you? Of course, that’s not an entirely fair comparison—more people will see your business website homepage than will ever see your office building.

About the author: Joel Walsh is the head writer for UpMarket Content, a website content firm serving business sites. You can find more information on writing a homepage, including a template, along with the rest of the seven essential web pages for business websites, such as the “about us” and “product and services” pages, at Upmarket Contents Templates.

Is your web-site customer friendly? Customer service is increasingly seen as one of the most valuable uses for a commercial World Wide Web site. Your Web site is available on a 24 hour, seven days a week basis. So it is well worth exploring ways in which your customers can virtually “serve themselves,” without the need for overtime staff, or lengthy voice mail procedures.

James Feldman is President of JFA, Inc., an online business offering high quality and unique gift items including automatic watch winders, Grundig shortwave pocket radios, and nitroglycerine pill fobs. The JFA Web site has been online since 1997, and has doubled its income every year - it’s now a multi-million dollar e-commerce enterprise.

Jim, who’s also a professional speaker and expert on customer service, highlighted for me how the online buying experience differs from the bricks-and-mortar model.

Buying online eliminates the physical presence and personality of the salesperson from the process. This makes the Web site copy critical in creating a one-to-one relationship with the customer or prospect.

Which echoes one of my favorite mantras:

Every page of your site should be written from the visitor’s point of view, not yours.

A visitor should be able to look at your offerings, and immediately answer the questions:

“Why me?” – that is, is your Web site the right place for me?
“Why should I care?” – does this copy convince me that you can meet my needs?
It’s much easier and immediate to jump from Web site to Web site than to move between real-world stores. So the visitor has far more freedom of choice online. Jim says that the challenge for customer service is therefore very clearly to focus on one customer, one purchase at a time. E-customers expect great service, with little or no direct interaction. They will tolerate some mistakes, but not many.

Jim offers five rules for effective online customer service:

1. Be accessible. Show very clearly on your site all the ways that your customer can contact you – including e-mail, phone and fax numbers, and your office hours.

And, if it’s practical for your business, be personal – give your visitors a real person to call who has a name, as opposed to sales@mycompany.com

Of course, if you’re really upscale, you can include a “Call-me” button on your site.

2. Return every e-mail or phone call in the same day, as far as reasonably possible. This may sound simplistic, but a recent experiment with the top Fortune 100 companies showed that nearly a third failed to respond to e-mail sent through their Web site within one month! Some of these companies still don’t provide a usable e-mail address on their sites at all.

3. Acknowledge all orders. Send e-mail confirmations (this can be done very effectively with autoresponders), and if you’re shipping actual products, give tracking numbers and expected delivery dates.

4. Provide a clear return policy, honor it and learn from it. This may give you more information about what’s working and what’s not. Jim’s products are sometimes returned with no explanation, so his staff always call the customer to establish and resolve the problem.

5. Expect more phone calls. Jim says: “Customers can’t read or write!” If your Web site traffic and response rates grow (which is, of course, what we want), so will the volume of phone calls, whatever your business or industry.

Regardless of the site quality, clear returns and privacy policies, secure servers, etc., people still require human interaction. All of my clients report talking to customers on the phone, and walking them through the Web site, where their questions are clearly answered. Maybe these psychological barriers will lessen over the next few years, but right now, they are very much there.

If you can get the customer service aspects of your business working well, there’ll be a definite bottom line impact. Jim is quite clear that his business has grown substantially through repeat business and referrals from satisfied customers.

And in contrast, we can see the impact of poor customer service and fulfillment procedures in many of the dot.coms that are currently failing. Jim says that people buy things online in the expectation of getting something more valuable than the actual money they spend.

Does your Web site do this? JFA Inc. can be found at http://www.jfainc.com/

About The Author: Philippa Gamse, CyberSpeaker, is an internationally recognized e-business strategist. Check out her free tipsheet “Beyond the Search Engines” for 17 ideas to promote your Website: http://www.CyberSpeaker.com/tipsheet.html Philippa can be reached at (831) 465-0317 or mailto:pgamse@CyberSpeaker.com.

If you want to establish your company’s position in the market place, then the company branding is one of the most important components of your marketing plan. A well branded company projects an image of professionalism and competence. A company’s branding package consists of identity, differentiation and reputation.

The way people look up to your brand largely depends upon your brand efficiency, the way it is portrayed, recognized, respected and remembered in the community.

A brand is essentially a way of communicating a promise or an exchange between you and your
customers. It is a way of you communicating to you customer who are you are what you promise to deliver to them.

These independent marketing consultants will help you decide on the right branding message that you should communicate to the community and the customer. They will also guide you in choosing the correct medium to get your message across to the customers. The marketing or branding message should communicate to the customers that your company/product is the most able and preferred resource available in the market.

Company branding makes it easy to build momentum in your advertising. When people know your company name, your logo, your products and your brand, it tends to stick in their minds. So when you run a commercial or a print ad, you don’t have to work as hard at gaining visibility. You can just work on selling your products. Once people know what your company stands for, when they recognize your logo, they will immediately tie it to your products and services.

When the people know your company, its name, its logo and what it stands for, they will relate the logo to your products and services. To position your self in the market is a tedious and time consuming process. And once a definite market position has been attained, then to
maintain it is not so difficult but effort and energy will have to be put for maintenance of positioning. The marketing consultant will be able to assist your company in building and maintaining a brand image and winning customers. Your brand should be communicated to the customers in a way that whenever they need the product or service that you provide, they should automatically think
of your company/products. This should be the ultimate goal for every business.

About the Author: Scott Geld serves as the V.P of Marketing for Marketing Blaster. Feel free to contact him with any feedback or questions about this article or any marketing topic.

Your web content makes or breaks the profitability of your site. Here’s how you can develop a strategy to make the most of your site’s content.Your content is what gets you in search engines, speaks to visitors, and ultimately decides the success or failure of your site. Meanwhile, your content has to be updated at least once a month if you want to get return visitors and search engine traffic. You need to have a web content strategy for your site to succeed.
Web Content Strategy Components

There are four basic ways you can get content for your site.

1. Free-reprint content that you can publish on your site in exchange for putting a link to the authors’ site under the article. The main benefit of this kind of content is that you can build up your site quickly.

2. Original content contributed freely by your visitors, such as message boards and guestbook-style comments. The main advantage of this content is that it costs nothing and gives you insight into your visitors. The disadvantages are low quality and the constant vigilance needed to police it for misbehavior.

3. Original written content that you allow other sites to republish in exchange for a link to your site. This content is usually informational articles, whitepapers, and sometimes, press releases. Exchanging content is an essential component of getting links to your site.

4. Original written content that’s exclusive to your site. You should have some content that you hold back from republication, to avoid giving visitors or search engines the idea all your content can be had somewhere else. This can include FAQs, “about us” pages, case studies, testimonials, and other content that other sites would not want to reprint anyway.

What Kind of Content to Use

So, which of the four kinds of content should you use on your site? Ideally, all four. That way you’ll maximize the amount of quality content your site can have.

Just be careful not to rely too heavily on free-reprint content. If most of what’s on your site isn’t original to you, you’ll suffer in credibility, both with your visitors and the search engines.
Here’s a good starter content strategy:

1. One-quarter free-reprint content.
2. One-quarter content contributed by visitors.
3. One-quarter originally written content you let other sites reprint in exchange for a link to your site.
4. One-quarter originally written content you do not redistribute.

Scheduling Content Updates

Search engines, especially Google, seem to give pride of place to sites that regularly update their content. Regular content updates also give visitors a reason to return.

In short, if you have thirty web pages worth of content this month, it’s better to post one page each day rather than put them up all at once. To make sure you do this, schedule an hour each day for updating your site’s content.

One way to get regular content updates for your site is to start a blog, a “web log” in which you write your thoughts and post news. The one disadvantage is that many web users are getting tired of blogs, which are often not well written and contain more opinion than information. Search engines, too, seem to be featuring blogs in their results less often.
Identifying a Content Provider

Ever wonder how Bill Gates keeps the MSN and Microsoft sites so content-rich? Doesn’t he get RSI from writing a thousand or more pages a day?

You guessed it: Bill Gates does not write the content for any of the Microsoft websites. Nor should you write all your own content. All successful website owners have someone else write a large part of their content. This person or company is called a “web content provider.”

Your web content provider has to be a person or company with proven experience writing content for the web, rather than just print content. Ask to see writing samples. You might even ask if you can commission just a single page to start with, for evaluation purposes.

In short, your web content is too important to leave to chance. Make sure you have a strategy for getting the best content. Contact a content provider to develop a web content strategy today.

About the Author: Joel Walsh, a professional content writer and founder of UpMarket Content, recommends you check out their site to learn more about what you can get from a web site content provider: http://upmarketcontent.com/website-content