February 2005
 
 


Seven Practical Tips
for Keeping Balanced

I am consistently challenged to maintain balance in my life.  How about you?  Do you ever feel you’ve met all your major commitments to your team at work, to your significant relationships and to yourself? Congratulations if you do!  May the rest of us mortals take out our frustrations on you?  ;-)

It is highly uncommon to find individuals with the uncanny innate ability to balance work, family, and life commitments.  It seems our nature is to swing to extremes or to get overwhelmed and just give up.  Our enthusiasm and commitment ebb and flow like the tide—sometimes it’s there; sometimes it’s not.  But one thing is for sure—it’s always changing.   

I find that balance is mostly about perspective and targets.  For example, for weeks at a time, I’m thrown hundreds of details in my life that I must manage.  Things like phone calls to be returned, emails sent, tasks to be done...you know the drill.  Those kinds of days when you begin with all your Outlook tasks colored red because they didn’t get finished the... [more]

 

#1 Key to Selling Products Online - Keep it Simple for the Customer pt1

It may sound overly simplistic to keep things simple, but I am constantly amazed at how hard some companies make it to buy their products. It's not just about the products being sold; it's about how they’re sold.  It is vital to convey the message to your customers that it’s safe to purchase from you, that you are credible.  It's not just about the product anymore. 

Here is a quick list of simple things that will increase your customer purchase conversions. Although they might seem like “no-brainers,” it’s  amazing to me how many small business owners don't do these: 

1. In the footer of each page, put links to Company Info, Privacy Policies, Return Policies, a stand alone Contact Us page, a page about security, and possibly a FAQ page. I will explain these more in detail below. 

2. Make it easy for your customer to get an estimate of shipping costs. The best place to give them... [more]

 


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Add a Search Engine to
Dramatically Boost Online Sales

For budding ecommerce developers and new e-entrepreneurs, one of the biggest mistakes made is the exclusion of some type of product search feature on their site.  It's a commonly overlooked feature that has a huge impact on sales. We’ve seen 30% or more of sales come from internal search results, depending on how complex the feature is. 

Using the figure of 30%, let’s take a quick look at the what using a search feature could do for you.  If your sales are $20k per year,  that’s an additional $6k per year left on the table [My father used to say, “It’s like picking it up off the street!”]. If your sales are $200k a year, that’s an additional $60,000 bucks. Whoa! You can see where I’m going with this...keep doing the math. Depending on volume, even a small percentage can make a huge difference as far as the bottom line is concerned. 

For Yahoo! store merchants, utilizing their basic... [more]

 
 


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