1. To find out what type of content visitors want to see on your web site. This should increase repeat visits to your site.

2. To find out how to improve existing products or services. This
will attract new customers.

3. To find out which products or services your customers would like to see you sell in the future. This will increase your back end product sales.

4. To find out how to improve your customer service. This will cut down on customer complaints.

5. To find out how to improve your sales letters or ads. This will increase your sales, traffic or ezine subscribers.

6. To find out what kind of articles or interviews they want to see in your e-zine. This will increase your e-zine’s readership.

7. To find out how to design your web site to fit your visitors needs and wants. This will increase the time your visitors spend on your web site.

8. To find out what kind of non-related products or services your
customers would buy. This will help your business easily move into a different market.

9. To find out how to better price your products. This will help you sell your products or services at at a price that will pull the most orders.

10. To find out where your potential customers spend their time while online.. This will inform you where to market and promote your products.

============================================

Lewis Leake helps people work from home. His website at GrowNetProfits.com contains tools, resources, articles, newsletters, product reviews and traffic builders to help you make money from your home based business. Click here to get additional information about Surveying Your Customers and Subscribers.

============================================

1. Combine a few of your articles into a free report. Make sure
that each of the articles fits the theme of your report.

2. Take a survey and then compile the results into a report.
Most of the people that you surveyed will be interested in the
results.

3. Create a report from excerpts of an ebook that you have
written. Pick a chapter or two from your ebook for the report.
This will increase the awareness of your ebook and should result
in more sales.

4. Conduct interviews of people in your industry then compile
these into reports. This is an easy way to create a report that
has a lot of perceived value.

5. Have someone else write your report. Either pay them or
include their ad in the report.

6. Compile reports of statistical analysis relative to your
industry. You could identify trends or changes from one period
to another.

7. Compile a number of tips into a report. Everyone likes tips.
They are usually short, to the point and easy to read.

8. Gather news articles about your industry or company into a
report. Provide this as a service to your customers and to other
companies within your industry.

9. Create a report on a product or service. Have someone write a
review of your products or services and include these in a
report.

10. Ask other authors to contribute related articles to your
report. Most authors will be delighted as long as they can
include their resource box.

11. Bundle older information that is no longer available. This
could be back issues of your newsletter, speeches, surveys,
transcripts, lists or tips.

12. Combine articles that have been written about you, your
products or services, or your industry. These make excellent
reports. Just make sure that you get permission to use the
information.

Give away the free report as a bonus for buying your main
product or service or for subscribing to your newsletter. Make
sure that you have added links back to your website.

You could also insert text ads at the top and bottom of each
page.

Utilize a simple form of viral marketing, allow others to give
your reports away.

Copyright 2004 – Leake & Co. Inc.

============================================

Lewis Leake helps people make money from home. His
website at GrowNetProfits.com contains tools, resources,
articles, newsletters, product reviews and traffic builders to
help you make money from your home based business. Click
here to get additional Work From Home articles, tips and
resources. http://www.GrowNetProfits.com

============================================

Whether you sell a product or merely sell time to your employer in your labor, your main product is you. You sell yourself with every move you make, every word you speak or write, every attitude you display. How far you go up the ladder depends largely on the image you project to others.

If you are sincere, dependable, knowledgeable, and confident, you will be accepted. You will not be trusted if you seem unsure of yourself. If you appear overconfident, you will be thought of as phoney.

Before you can sell a product, you have to sell yourself. Before you sell yourself, you must be sold on yourself. You must get your doubts and failures out of your mind and replace them with memories of your successes. You have to psych yourself up. I remember a pitcher who would turn his back on the batter and work himself into a frenzy. He would then blow the ball past the hitter.

Hang around with upbeat successful people. Avoid being around those who are always feeling sorry for themselves and giving excuses for failing. Sales organizations keep their employees psyched up. Build up yourself and others with positive material. You will develop a habit of feeling great about yourself. That will come across to your customers and they will buy.

You have to come across to others as a winner. No one wants to buy from a loser. I know a salesman that was driving a car that was old and beat up and his prospect told him he would not buy from him because he was obviously not successful. You must have the appearance of success and act like a winner.

Your chief competitor is you. You won’t succeed until you learn to play up to your potential. Many are not defeated by their opponent but beat themselves. Winners don’t shoot themselves in the foot with silly mistakes. Be aware of what’s going on and take advantage of your opportunities. The difference between wining and losing is in the execution. When you make the right moves, you will be successful.

Decide what image you want to portray. Everyone is unique. It should display your personality, values and what makes you stand out from the crowd. Decide what is important and have a plan to put it across to others. You must do what you have a passion for. If you are excited about what you are doing it will be evident to your customer.

When you sell in person, your prospect goes a lot by body language, tone and voice inflections. This is lost when you sell with the written word. You have to find ways to make up for it with your copy. Write so that he feels the emphases that your body and voice give. Show him that you can fulfill his need. He doesn’t care what you want. Tell him what’s in it for him.

You are thinking that you want him to buy now. He is thinking something entirely different. He is asking himself why he should buy now, from you, and not someone else. He is wondering if it will really do what you say it will. Learn to think like he does so that you can speak his language. You have to be on the same page with him to sell him. Anticipate his objections and give him answers before he reflects on them. Make him think that he is not being sold, but he is choosing the best. Give him something extra for buying now. A how to article for his field would show him you have his best interest at heart.

—

You have my permission to publish this article if you leave the resource box intact. It would be appreciated if you notify me when you do at lynn_b2@yahoo.com.

Lynn Bradley is also the author of the paperback book, "Climbing the Heavenly Stairs," which includes a chapter on Jesus’ answer for overcoming your obstacles and becomingly successful. You were created for success. Learn his rules for being a winner. Click on the following link for more information or use the title for the URL. http://www.thelynnbradleybook.com

I spent a lifetime in retailing and I’m still at it in retirement; albeit virtually.

You know how it goes.

You put up a web page and throw in some stock.

Your page begets another and another and another until one day you’re looking at a site that’s got more stock than Bloomingdales.

But you can’t stop?

The old sourcing skills are making a comeback, sharpening their talons, and coaxing you to duck and dive, bob and weave to find still more stock at even better prices.

So you build another virtual retail store and then another and another and another until you’re looking at an empire.

Then you diversify.

If you are upmarket, you go downmarket.

Why not?

There no shareholders breathing down your neck or smart ass vice presidents demanding that you pull in the reins.

And so you build a bargain basement store and another and another until you’re looking at Wal-Mart.

Expending your energy in this way is fun; it’s therapeutic, and if you go about matters in the right way, it doesn’t cost a thin dime apart from hosting fees – and it can be hugely profitable.

In between times you are still knocking out the odd bestseller just to keep your hand in.

But even now you can’t stop.

You dig deep into the inner recesses of the psyche and draw down expertise that has been rusting away for eons in the vaults of the supraconscious.

Ideas leap out at you from nowhere; you create courses on creative writing, starting a business, offline marketing, online marketing, maximising on retirement, and what have you.

So you build more websites and more websites and more websites and now you are busier than ever you were when you thought you were working.

So how am I doing with all these third age activities?

I’m not hurting.

Most mornings my inbox is crammed with cute little messages like ‘Invoice from Clickbank’ and ‘You have money at PayPal’ and so forth.

But don’t take my word for it.

Visit one of my stores and judge for yourself.

You’ll find an address in the resource box?

Jim Green is a retiree, entrepreneur, and published author with a string of bestselling hard copy titles to his bow including his latest ‘Your Retirement Masterplan’ ISBN 1857039874. You’ll get a taste of what he gets up to at this website http://howtoproducts-xl.com

1. To find out what type of content visitors want to see on your web site. This should increase repeat visits to your site.

2. To find out how to improve existing products or services. This
will attract new customers.

3. To find out which products or services your customers would like to see you sell in the future. This will increase your back end product sales.

4. To find out how to improve your customer service. This will cut down on customer complaints.

5. To find out how to improve your sales letters or ads. This will increase your sales, traffic or ezine subscribers.

6. To find out what kind of articles or interviews they want to see in your e-zine. This will increase your e-zine’s readership.

7. To find out how to design your web site to fit your visitors needs and wants. This will increase the time your visitors spend on your web site.

8. To find out what kind of non-related products or services your
customers would buy. This will help your business easily move into a different market.

9. To find out how to better price your products. This will help you sell your products or services at at a price that will pull the most orders.

10. To find out where your potential customers spend their time while online.. This will inform you where to market and promote your products.

============================================

Lewis Leake helps people work from home. His website at GrowNetProfits.com contains tools, resources, articles, newsletters, product reviews and traffic builders to help you make money from your home based business. Click here to get additional information about Surveying Your Customers and Subscribers.

============================================

1. Combine a few of your articles into a free report. Make sure
that each of the articles fits the theme of your report.

2. Take a survey and then compile the results into a report.
Most of the people that you surveyed will be interested in the
results.

3. Create a report from excerpts of an ebook that you have
written. Pick a chapter or two from your ebook for the report.
This will increase the awareness of your ebook and should result
in more sales.

4. Conduct interviews of people in your industry then compile
these into reports. This is an easy way to create a report that
has a lot of perceived value.

5. Have someone else write your report. Either pay them or
include their ad in the report.

6. Compile reports of statistical analysis relative to your
industry. You could identify trends or changes from one period
to another.

7. Compile a number of tips into a report. Everyone likes tips.
They are usually short, to the point and easy to read.

8. Gather news articles about your industry or company into a
report. Provide this as a service to your customers and to other
companies within your industry.

9. Create a report on a product or service. Have someone write a
review of your products or services and include these in a
report.

10. Ask other authors to contribute related articles to your
report. Most authors will be delighted as long as they can
include their resource box.

11. Bundle older information that is no longer available. This
could be back issues of your newsletter, speeches, surveys,
transcripts, lists or tips.

12. Combine articles that have been written about you, your
products or services, or your industry. These make excellent
reports. Just make sure that you get permission to use the
information.

Give away the free report as a bonus for buying your main
product or service or for subscribing to your newsletter. Make
sure that you have added links back to your website.

You could also insert text ads at the top and bottom of each
page.

Utilize a simple form of viral marketing, allow others to give
your reports away.

Copyright 2004 – Leake & Co. Inc.

============================================

Lewis Leake helps people make money from home. His
website at GrowNetProfits.com contains tools, resources,
articles, newsletters, product reviews and traffic builders to
help you make money from your home based business. Click
here to get additional Work From Home articles, tips and
resources. http://www.GrowNetProfits.com

============================================

–Online Commerce–

E-Commerce website is all about selling products and services over the Internet. Amateurs may think that it is easy to build your own e-commerce system and our advice to you is to stay away from these amateurs. Building an e-commerce system is a complicated process and it requires web professionals who know the intricacies of building secure systems. Building an e-commerce system comes with the potential for a lot of errors and it is advisable to find security and database experts for the job.

Resource-consuming tasks such as order and supply tracking needs to be automated for e-commerce websites. Automated billing, invoice handling, accounting, and report generation tools make your e-commerce web sites easier to manage and handle sales. These are essential features to look out for in e-commerce websites.

–Building One Yourself–

Sure, you can try to build a basic E-commerce web site. But, an E-commerce web site without the tracking and automated is quite useless when you are trying to determine how your sales are derived and business expansion.

Lester Boey works in an Australian SEO and Web Design company (Australian Search Engine Optimization and Web Designs Company). His life revolves around SEO; providing full-time and freelance seo services to US and Australian businesses. Email: projects@definiteweb.com

A common frustration among merchants who sell online via a shopping cart is the percentage of people who abandon their cart and leave the site never to return. This is known as the shopping cart abandonment rate. It is not unheard of for companies to experience as high as a 99% abandonment rate. Getting the abandonment rate under control can go a long way towards increasing the income your company earns from their online venture.

1. Don’t make them register until they have to

A common complaint amoung web shoppers is the irritation and invasion of privacy they feel when they have to register for a new account before they can even use the shopping cart. If people have to share their personal information with you before they even know if they want to buy from you, they’ll often click away never to return. Whenever possible, get them to register after they know how much something will cost them including shipping. This will help them to feel good about your company and will result in more sales.

2. Make it easy for your prospect to find out how much it will cost them

Many people will use your shopping cart to price out what your product will cost them after shipping. On the web, everyone knows that a tangible product must be shipped. Knowing this, the number one cost people are always reluctant to spend on is the shipping. People want to know what the final price they will pay to get it to their door. If this price is reasonable to them, only then will they go through the trouble of registering for an account.

3. High Shipping Costs

Almost anyone who has purchased a product online has run into a company that was charging a sky high rate for shipping. Do everything you can to keep your shipping costs as low as possible. Shop around for a good rate. Try to include a shipping estimator from the company that will be handling your shipping featured on your website. Make it easy for your customers to find it.

4. Keep the number of steps they need to take at a minimum

Many shopping carts take people through four, five or six steps before they can finalize their purchase. Every extra step you force people to take in your shopping cart system is one more chance they have to abandon the shopping cart. Collect as much information as possible in as few steps as it is reasonable for you to take. This will encourage fewer people to click away.

5. Keep outbound links to a minimum

Don’t give your prospects an easy way to exit the shopping cart process. Forcing them to click the back button will at least make it more of an effort for them to click away. People can sometimes have second thoughts that an extra link on your website may encourage. For this reason, keep any links on your order pages to only the most necessary.

Overall, if you treat your prospects with respect, make it easy for them to find the information they need, and streamline your checkout process to make it easy for your prospects to buy from you, you’ll succeed at making more money and lowering your shopping cart abandonment rate.

This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of http://www.yowling.com/, a web hosting company that specializes in helping online business owners increase their website traffic. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely as long as you link back to my website from this resource box.

As the holiday shopping season begins in earnest, consumers say they’re just as willing to buy from small online retailers as they are from large, national e-commerce providers.

In addition to this key finding, a new national survey of 2,500 consumers discovered extremely high levels of consumer participation in – and satisfaction with – shopping on the Internet, despite continuing concerns for security and privacy.

According to the survey, sponsored by Hostway Corp., a global leader in Web hosting and managed services, more than three-fourths of consumers who have shopped the Web sites of both large and small companies said company size is not a factor in having their online shopping needs satisfied. Only 15 percent of respondents expressed a strong preference for dealing with large companies online, opening the door for small- to medium-sized businesses to get in the e-commerce game.

"These survey results provide very encouraging news: The Internet ‘Gold Rush’ is far from over for small businesses," said John Lee, Hostway’s vice president of marketing. "The Wal-Marts of the world may be hurting sales for Main Street retailers, but consumers are telling us size doesn’t matter on the Information Highway.

"Our message to small retailers is this," Lee continued, "You clearly have an opportunity to succeed in e-commerce. Consumers are able to find you online. They’re willing to buy from you. But it still takes a lot of work, and you should get help from the experts in building and promoting a successful e-commerce Web site."

Overall, nearly nine of ten survey respondents reported buying products online, and of that group, 94 percent said they are satisfied (30 percent) or very satisfied (64 percent) with their overall experience. Participating consumers ranked the following attributes as being the most important factors in shopping online:

- Assurance of security (97 percent)

- Promise of privacy (96 percent)

- Prices (95 percent)

- Web site ease of use (94 percent)

- Availability of desired products and services (94 percent)

Market research firm TNS conducted the survey for Hostway between November 10 and 13, questioning 2,500 adult consumers nationwide about their online shopping experiences.

Lauria L.

Inherent (or Business) Risk

Inherent Risk is the risk that exists in the environment around your portal project. It will tend to be unique to your organisation; it’s culture and politics. For example, if you have a fragmented business (either geographical or functional), then this will create a higher inherent risk of poor communication.

Project (Specific) Risk

Project Risk is the risk specific to your project. Some Project Risk stems from the nature of what you are doing; there are certain risks common to any project (e.g. the unfamiliarity to users of the technology you are deploying). However, most project risk is under your direct influence; for example the skills of the project team, the level of governance effectiveness and so on.

Stage Risk

Finally, there is ‘stage risk’ which is the risk associated with the particular activity of any given phase of the project plan.

The Risk Log & Risk Plan

In order to stay in control of the risks to your portal project, it makes sense to have a formal log of all risks, to which anyone involved with the project is entitled to add. You might use a formal workshop to first populate the log.

Assessing Risks

Each risk (however derived) can be assessed using a simple methodology, whereby the probability of the risk being realised (‘likelihood’) and the size of the impact on the project objectives (‘severity’) can be measured.

The simplest system (based on the PRINCE project management method) is to give a score of 1-3 for likelihood and severity (where 1 is low and 3 is high). From these scores, the importance of each risk can be measured as the product of likelihood and severity.

Clearly, any risk of importance 9 demands immediate attention, followed by risks rated 6 and so on.

Risk Counter-measures

The importance of each risk should be regularly maintained, based on the extent to which the likelihood and severity of impact change over time.

For each risk, one should enter a counter-measure in the risk plan. Where a risk can be eliminated, then this will be the counter-measure. Where it cannot be fully eliminated, then risk mitigation actions will be the most appropriate.

Issues Log

A Risk is something that is yet to happen, whilst an Issue is something that has already happened. It may well be convenient to use the Risk Log to also track any issues on the project. Issues will generally fall into one of the following categories:

(R) – Request for a change (in the scope of the project);

(O) – An item has been identified that is Off-Specification;

(Q) – A Question has been raised that needs to be resolved;

(S) – A Statement of Concern has been raised by someone; and

(I) – Other issues.

To score issues, just ascribe an importance score (of between 1 and 9).

Managing Risks and Issues

Once you have put a Plan in place, then it is important to regularly monitor and report on the counter-measures that have been deployed and whether or not they have been successful in reducing the overall risk profile of the project.

For templates and examples of risks and issues pertinent to intranet portal deployment projects, please check out my chapter on Managing Risks and Issues in the (free to access) Intranet Portal Guide.

If you act, manage and report regularly on risks and issues, you will have substantially improved your chances of project success!

About the author:

David Viney (david@viney.com) is the author of the Intranet Portal Guide; 31 pages of advice, tools and downloads covering the period before, during and after an Intranet Portal implementation.

Read the guide at http://www.viney.com/DFV/intranet_portal_guide or the Intranet Watch Blog at http://www.viney.com/intranet_watch.