My 2¢ Worth

he winner of last weeks contest was Tom M. Tom knew that the game BOOKWORM DELUXE comes from PopCap Games and has one a free ad in the ad box #2 spot.

ou could win too. Just answer the following question: Where can you find "plenty of parking?" The answer can be found somewhere in this issue. Submit you answer here.

ell I found out why my php search function, that I spoke of last week, didn't work in the Opera browser. I had used some double quotes where single quotes should have been used. What threw me off was that it worked in the other browsers. Usually if you make a mistake in your php coding, it doesn't work anywhere.

hat being said, I do, however, stand by my statement that the browsers all become standards compliant.

Feature Article

BUILDING PROFITABLE RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR WEB SITE

by: Charlie Cook charliecook.net

Wouldn't you like to use your web site to convert more prospects to paying clients? Imagine your prospect, Tom is online looking for a particular product or service. He has found your web site either through a search engine or a link from an ad. Tom clicks through your web pages. Your product or service meets his needs perfectly, but he clicks away. What can you do to turn more site visitors like Tom into customers?

Like any sensible person, Tom is cautious about making a purchase or a contact on the Internet. There are thousands of honest and helpful service providers online but unlike local shopkeepers Tom isn't familiar with any of them.

Your challenge is use your web site to engage your prospect so he/she discovers what an expert you are and knows and trusts you. People buy from people they know and trust. If you want to connect with prospects, you need to personalize your online marketing. Here's how:

1. Introduce Yourself

You want people to remember you, your products and services. Add a personal introductory note to your homepage or your site and include a picture of yourself so people have a face to associate with your name.

2. Include Personal Testimonials

Get past clients to make your selling points for you. Use personalized testimonials from clients that refer to you and your firm by name and describe the incredible results you achieved for them.

3. Demonstrate Your Expertise

Use case studies on your web site and in your newsletter to explain how you help people. With permission, refer to the clients involved, their situation and how you helped them.

4. Engage Site Visitors with Questions

Find out what your prospects are looking for. When people leave a page, prompt them with a question so that you can find out what they were looking for and what they want to achieve.

5. Include Pictures of People in Your Firm

People love to look at pictures. Include photos of yourself and your employees at play and at work. If you have a dedicated contact page, include thumbnail photos of your staff next to their contact information.

6. Add Audio or Video Clips to Your Site

When people hear your voice or see you in action you become that much more real and credible to them. This is one reason public speaking works so well to generate new business. Add an audio clip of yourself discussing the problems you solve. If you do public speaking, include a clip from one of your talks.

7. Include Full Contact Information

When you are looking through a web site and contact information is buried, or only an email address is provided, it makes you question the credibility of the firm. While the web itself is intangible, you want your prospects to know they are buying from real people who work at a real company. Include your firm's name, phone number and mailing address on every page of your web site.

8. Answer Email Inquires

People half expect that they won't get a response when they send an email to a business they don't know. Pleasantly surprise them by thanking them for their inquiries and answering their questions promptly. They'll appreciate you and be much more likely to buy from you.

9. Follow Up with a Phone Call

Prospects are amazed and delighted when, minutes after leaving your web site, their phone rings and a live person calls to follow up on the question they just asked by email. Use their inquiry to start a conversation and discover what their needs are and how you can help them.

Whether your goal is a hundred thousand or a hundred million dollars in revenue for the year, your business is built one prospect and one client at a time. Use your web site to help each of your prospects get to know you and your business personally and you'll build both trust and sales.

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The author, Marketing Coach, Charlie Cook, helps independent professionals and small business owners attract more clients and increase their earnings with the 5 Principles of Highly Effective Marketing. Sign up to receive the Free Marketing Guide and the 'More Business' newsletter, full of practical tips you can use at www.charliecook.net

Use your own image to submit a form

To submit a form normally you would use an INPUT with type="submit". This creates a dull grey button with the word submit on it. But sometimes its nicer to jazz thing up a bit using your own image for a submit button. This can be done by using an INPUT with type="image", like this:

<input type="image" src="your-button.gif" border="0">

Here's what you get:

Notice that I've used the border="0" attribute. This prevents having that blue line around your image.

* Get these syndicated tip feeds for yourweb site, free. *

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Second Article

Benefits to Shareware

by: Sharon Housley NotePage, Inc.

Shareware has been fighting the stigma of being misunderstood for decades. While corporate software giants can no longer ignore the marketing potential of a trial version, small software startups are struggling with new listings and bandwidth costs. Businesses and individual consumers need to take a closer look at the benefits of taking advantage of shareware marketing. The concept of a trial version is not a new one. Consumer expectations, and the need for immediate satisfaction have spurned the industry to realize the need for instant software. The availability of file downloads in the Internet era, is spurning a revolution of purchasers who never leaving their homes or offices. As a result, the Internet has taken the proliferation of shareware to a new level.

Why the Success? Why developers have succeeded using shareware marketing under poor global economic conditions is fairly obvious. Shareware allows consumers to evaluate an application prior to making a purchase decision. There are no risks to the consumer, if the trial version does not satisfy a purchasers needs, they do not spend the money registering. Evaluating the software prior to purchasing also increases consumer satisfaction as they gain a complete understanding of the software they are ordering and there is little room for surprises. Trying the software before buying is no longer a novelty it is a consumer expectation.

Traditionally, because the barrier to entry is fairly low, companies participating in shareware marketing are usually small and willing to provide personalized service uncommon in large companies. Customers often speak directly with developers requesting feature enhancements, thus improving the software for all. Software support forums with users helping other users have become commonplace. These allow developers to focus on future upgrades, while repetitive user issues can be quickly dealt with. Software developers, who market via the shareware method, have revolutionized traditional support models.

Many of the shareware directories provide ratings and user assessments. Often the user reviews provide insight to important feature sets. Allowing consumers an opportunity to assess and compare multiple products prior to making a decision.

Let us not forget the delivery advantage the shareware model has over the traditional retail counterpart. Shareware allows for instant gratification, there is no need to wait for a shipment because consumers can download and use the software immediately.

What does this all mean? Marketing via the shareware method is far less expensive than traditional advertising, the increased customer demands, personalized service and instant satisfaction all provide an added consumer benefits. With Shareware, software developers, have a great method for consumers to evaluate and purchase their software. Consumers can easily determine if the software is suitable. Ultimately, by allowing the software to sell itself, consumers often obtain top quality software that is priced far less than traditional retail applications.

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Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at www.softwaremarketingresource.com, and www.small-business-software.net

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Download of the Week

It is important to have a good zip ultility to unzip all your other downloads. WinZip is one of the best ultilities for this purpose. You can even use it to zip your own files. WinZip includes built-in support for popular Internet file formats such as TAR, ZIP, UUencode, XXencode, BinHex, MIME, and Unix-compressed files. WinZip 8.1 SR-1

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