Advice for Small Business Websites
There's a lot of information out there about the best way for a business promote themselves online, but is it all good advice? You may be tempted to send out hundreds of emails in the hope of capturing new clients, but if you aren't careful about the emails you send you could be wasting your time as well as the hundreds of people you email. That's a lot of wasted time! Through effective email campaigns you can build a rapport with your clients instead of being sent directly to the recycle bin or caught in the spam filter. One effective tool out there is purl-mail, which is both engaging to the recipient and can also return valuable information about what your potential client really wants. Once you've captured the attention of your client the first place they'll look is your website. This is where you need to show off what you have to offer to the best of your site's ability. Treat your website like a shop, feature your best product in the shop window and make it easy for people to find what they're looking for.
Don't Send Another E-mail Until You Read This
Have you ever made a purchase at a store or through a website, only to be bombarded by a stream of e-mails and offers to buy more? Today, it's just too easy to capture a customer's e-mail address and automatically add the person to your marketing database in the hopes that he or she will buy again. Far too often we assume that since customers provide their e-mail addresses to make a purchases, we can continue to market to them. Nothing could be further from the truth. "Capture" is the word commonly used to convey this approach to marketing. It's as if we're holding the e-mail address hostage. In response to a deluge of unsolicited e-mails, many customers opt out of future notifications, block the sender and are less likely to be repeat customers. We've become accustomed to this tug-of-war when it comes to eliciting customer responses to marketing campaigns. After all, we've been trained to think that a 2 percent response rate is actually good. Can you think of any other realm where a 98 percent failure rate is considered good? It doesn't have to be this way. You can actually build a good rapport with customers, entice them to want to continue the conversation with you, and inspire them to be repeat customers through effective e-mail campaigns. But first, you must earn the right to connect with your customers in between purchases.
Read More at openforum.com
8 Tips for Small Business Homepage Design
I hate to dash one of your childhood maxims, but people do judge books by their covers. And in web terms, your book cover is your website's homepage. For small businesses especially, your homepage is your storefront, your calling card, your pick-up line. Here are eight tips to de-cheese your small business homepage.
Read more at mashable.com
