My 2¢ Worth

ost Web sites don't have an ending, per se, however, all sites do have a beginning. We call this the Home page.

he Home page is like an index in a book and users should quickly see what the site contains. Using a Home page as a front cover, however, is the wrong tactic.

hy? It penalizes your site with the search engines. Graphic-driven Web site covers keep the content hidden from search engines. If the search engine cannot find any text on which to evaluate your site it cannot be added to the database and will therefore will not direct anyone to your site.

he look and feel of your Web site should follow common usability rules. Don't make your Web site look like a brochure when it should be like a book, for example.

here are many different usability rules primarily governed by "simpler is better". Make a good impression with a clean design and lead users through your site. Using black text on a white background is comforting for users when your site contains a fair amount of content for them to peruse. Simple, intuitive navigation is imperative. Navigation should also not be purely button-driven.

void JavaScript driven menus if possible. If you do use these types of menus, provide an alternate text menu.

Feature Article

Is Your Business Leaking Profits?

by: Jinger Jarrett Internet Marketing for Fre

Recently I launched a new promotion for my business. As I put the finishing touches on my latest promotion, I tried to decide whether or not to add it to my affiliate program, After all, it was a private listing, and I would be testing sales before releasing it to my affiliates.

I realized then I had been leaving money on the table. I hadn't been adding my products to my affiliate tracking software.

The problem I had was that by not integrating an autoresponder into my sales system, I had failed to build a list of my customers.

This is by far the most valuable list you can build for your business because this is a warm market for you. Your customers have already bought from you. They are more likely to buy from you again.

Although building a list may seem obvious, automating your list of customers may not.

You may have made the same mistake. What I'm talking about here is automatically capturing the email address of your customer when you sell him a product. This is far easier than trying to compile a list of your customers manually.

I've sold thousands of products during my internet marketing career. My list of customers should be several thousand people long. It's not. The reason is that I didn't put a system in place to capture customer information while automating the process.

This is crucial to your business success because you are leaving money on the table if you don't remarket to your customers. They have already bought from you in the past. They are more likely to buy from you again. Whenever you create a new offer for your business, you should send them a mailing first. This can dramatically increase your sales.

Let me explain.

It is true that most payment processors capture the email address. After all, you need to send your customer confirmation of payment, as well as let him know when he can expect to receive the product.

However, once this initial contact is made, unless you have a system in place to add your new customer to an autoresponder, you won't be able to add your new customer in the future. The reason is that most autoresponder systems now require you to have your customer's IP address to manually add him to your autoresponder.

The only way to do this is to contact the customer and ask. Unfortunately, if you have a lot of customers the way I do, this isn't feasible.

So how do you stop the money leak?

You'll need some type of script to help you.

The easiest way to do this is to add a subscription box to an autoresponder on your download page or redirect page. Explain to the customer that you offer some type of updates to the product. When the customer adds his name and email, you can follow up.

You can also send an email to your customer offering him an opportunity to join your list.

The main disadvantage to a system like this is getting the customer to subscribe. He may simply download his products and never return. I did try this system with my site, and it didn't work very well.

Another solution is to integrate an affiliate tracking script or shopping cart script into your site.

Most affiliate tracking scripts or shopping cart scripts have this option and allow you to integrate the information into your sales process. This allow you to capture this information during the customer's purchase. This is the easiest way to make sure you capture the customer's information.

You can find scripts to integrate into your shopping process by visiting one of the scripts sites. If you prefer not to add another script to your site, or you can't, you can purchase shopping cart software, as well as affiliate program management software to handle these tasks for you.

Make sure you shop around. These solutions can be quite expensive.

You may assume that somewhere you already have the customer on your list. This may or may not be true. If the customer found you through the search engines, or another site, he may have been looking for your product and not another list to join. He may not be on any of your lists.

Don't take this for granted. One of the biggest mistakes I see new small business owners make is that they don't offer a list or have lead capture on every page of their sites if they include it at all. If they don't already offer a list before the sale, chances are, they don't have list building integrated into the sales process. This is another costly mistake.

When a visitor first visits your site, make sure you have a way to capture his contact information. When you sell him a product, make sure you capture his email address again. Now he is your customer. He's part of your warm market and is far more valuable to you because you have sold to him.

Focus on your warm market. Take care of your customers. By simply making this one change to your business, you can easily increase your profits.

**************

Jinger Jarrett is the author of "1001 High Traffic Sites to Market Your Business for Free". She will show you where to market your business to get the most sales. Get your copy now before it's gone.
Internet Marketing for Free

Trailing Forward slash

Here is a very simple trick you should employ if you have other sites linking to you, and you want your pages to load as fast as they can. It's a very simple trick, but not many people realize the logic behind it. The object is to make sure your links have a trailing forward slash on your URL, unless you are targeting a specific page. Here's what I mean:

http://www.yoursite.com/shop/

Note the final forward slash on this URL. This tells the server that shop is a directory, and not a file. If you don't use that final forward slash, the server will go through its entire directory tree searching for a file named shop. When it doesn't find that file, it assumes you really meant to find the default file associated with that directory, commonly index.html, or default.php, etc. By using a forward slash on directories, you save the server from redundant work, and pages will load faster.

This is especially important if you run your own server, and if you have many other sites linking to you. Get into the habit of using final forward slashes on your directory URLs.

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

Second Article

Importance of Integrated Marketing

by: Scott F. Geld Marketing Blaster, Inc.

In today's world when there is a trend towards old wine in a new bottle thinking many a people don~t take integrated marketing seriously. They simply consider it to bet yet another fad, here today gone tomorrow. However, this is not the case. In fact, integrated marketing is an amalgamation of all the marketing roles, resources and responsibilities catering to all kinds of customers. These customers could be present or future, internal or external. The function of integrated marketing is to attract the customers through marketing, promotional and customer service activities. It is due to the far-reaching approach of integrated marketing that many companies consider it to be the smart option.

The key driver for implementing integrated marketing is that when everything works together, you have a higher chance of delivering successful outcomes on your marketing and business goals. Having several different departments who don't talk to each other does not send a unified message to your audience and can wreak havoc with your branding. You are also wasting resources by not pooling ideas or having a cohesive unit that is strong and manageable. Unfocused marketing efforts are ineffective and wasteful.

Integrating all aspects of marketing into one department ensures that your company's strategic marketing plan is being followed because it can be led, driven, monitored and championed by one or two individuals. If each department does their own marketing, it's difficult to measure and evaluate the results effectively. Also, why leave the marketing up to accountants, assistants, and IT people? Marketing should be done by marketers. Accounting should be done by accountants. It just makes sense to get certain professionals to do the jobs they are trained for.

This new strategy of having integrated marketing set up, where all aspects of marketing are clubbed under one department ensures that there is one common strategic marketing plan which is being followed. Since there is one marketing department for all the divisions, the marketing plan will be driven, led, monitored and the responsibility of few select professionals. In a scenario where each division of the company has its own marketing plan and activities, it is difficult to measure and evaluate the results and effectiveness of each divisions plans. At times in these kind of scenarios, it is difficult to hire marketing professionals, specially if the amount of marketing activity for that division does not permit the hiring of an extra professional. In these situations say for an accounts division, an accountant will be given the additional responsibility of handling the marketing activities for that division. There is no point in getting marketing activities handled by the accounts people and vice-versa. Marketing should be done by marketing professionals and Accounting should be done by accountants, period. It makes good business sense to get certain professionals to do the jobs they are trained for.

For good and an effective marketing program it is important that all your marketing resources should work together each complementing the other. This is important to keep your brand identity strong. Don~t make the mistake of scattering your resources and saying one thing to the press and another in the print ad. All your messages to the people should say the same thing. Otherwise, you will end up with a weak, unproductive marketing program with thinning resources.

**************

Scott F. Geld is the Director of Marketing for MarketingBlaster.com, a company specializing in affordable traffic (5 cents/visitor) and direct links for $5/link. For more information please visit: www.MarketingBlaster.com

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