The Silent Avatar Speaks

Your venture desires to make a good image in the minds of consumers. Contrary to what generally people believe, branding isn’t only a symbol. Your venture objective, concentration, and image all combine to establish your brand. Why should you make this try? I believe there are some positives:

Company Image Branding

• Branding gives recognition. It is difficult to remember a company with a generic name. You may not be able to distinguish their objective and business’s concentration. And why would you call a business if you couldn’t portray the basis of their business? Branding your business ensures consumers will see what your business is all about.
• You build customer loyalty. The fact is, people make familiar bonds with brands. Consumers want good products they can believe in. So, your business should have an uniqueness that your customers can cling to. If your business delivers great stuffs and services and has a immense brand identity, people will reminisce you. In addition, they will usually refer you to friends and family.
• You become well known. You want the people who have not done business with you to still know who you are and what you do. If they see your ads on billboards, hear them on radio, see them on television, or any other media, they will know your brand identity. And when the situation arises that they need your product or service, your company will be the first to appear.
• Customers pay for image. We are a very brand conscious society. People usually associate with brand names with quality and may only obtain certain brands for that reason. If people only want one brand of a specific product, they are willing to pay a higher price. Having a great brand will make your business have a better image and trigger consumers overlook about the competition.

I’m the silent avatar and I have spoken

Tags: Marketing and Advertising by the silent avatar
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I’ve surfed thousands of websites and as a website designer I often shake my head and silently say to myself “WTF were thy thinking?”

Often times the website is offering a great product or service and yet their website really stinks and seriously questions whether it is bona fide.

Now I want to mention this before I reveal what your website should look like to give credibility to your business, and it’s this…

Just because a website has been designed to look slick and have all the necessary components to look a credible business, it isn’t always the case.  There are ways to find out certain information about the site and I will cover those in my next post which I will call “Wankers in Wonderland.. A Guide to Checking Out the Scammers”.

However, if you are a legitimate business or hobbyist who wants to present their business in a professional matter here are my tips and advice for doing just that.

1. Have your own domain name.
Nothing shrieks lack of credibility more than a website url which reads like the Gettysburg Address, and bears no relationship to your business.  For example www.geocities.com/Area51/sellmystuff/ or www.geocities.com/(yourname)/(YourProductOrService).

The usual reason for this idiocy is free hosting, and being too tight to pay for your own domain name.  Really… if you cant afford domain hosting or to buy your own domain name to have an online business then give up the deal now. Good quality web hosting like Bluehost is so cheap now, and a domain name?  Less than ten dollars and it’s yours. So for God’s sake give your business credibility from the get go and get your own domain name and a reputable hosting.

2. Have good quality graphics on your site.
The Internet really is about what you see and read. If you can manage to put up a great video demonstrating your products or talking about your service then do it. As more and more people come online with high speed Internet connections video will be the norm and not the exception.  That being said, if you are going to put up a video make sure it is good quality. If you can;t manage a good quality video then stick with good quality photos or graphics.

Definite “no-no’s” include:

• using geeky clip art
• poor quality products images
• images which are too small
• images which are too big
• blinking borders around images
• animated cartoon gifs (unless it’s in keep with the website theme)

3. Have a means of contact for your site visitors.
Nothing infuriates me more and screams “caution” than not being able to contact the site owner. I live by the saying “people with nothing to hide, hide nothing”, and if you want an online business make sure you are available to your site visitors… and respond!

The simplest way to do this is include a contact form on your site where they can fill in some details and submit their query to you.

You may also want to include your telephone, fax and mailing contact details. Few would argue that this increases the perception of credibility (though this information in itself can be bogus and requires vigilance if you plan to transact money through the site).

4. Have a colour theme and stick with it
Your website colours should integrate with your overall branding of your business. Got a business card?  Incorporate the same colours into your website, letterheads, and office stationary. But a word of caution – think carefully about what colours you use and stick with three main colours which compliment each other.

If you are colour challenged, check out this site for useful information on determining the colours you might use for your website.

Once you have an understanding of how a colour wheel works you won’t end up with a site that looks garish and unprofessional.

5. Use testimonials
While testimonials can be concocted, having testimonials on your site increases visitor perception of trust and authenticity. Again, be authentic. Get written testimonials from customers or those who have tried your product or service. Scan the letters and have a link underneath the html written testimonial reading something like “view original”. Being able to “see” the written letter affords more credibility than just writing a testimonial and sticking it up on your site.

If you don’t have testimonials, get them! (even if it means a freebie to get it).

6. Use consistency
Keep all of your pages looking similar with the navigation in the same spot on each web page. Site visitors like predictability and being able to locate the navigation links will help eliminate frustration.

7. Use banner ads and affiliate links sparingly
Well placed banner ads and affiliate links can increase revenue and offer additional information for your site visitors, but remember this… your site visitors are there to see what YOU can offer, and not to be taken away from your site (unless of course you are operating an affiliate driven site).

8. Don’t use “tiny urls“
They are ugly and while they do the job, they conceal where you are really asking the site visitor to go when they click on the link. If you have your own website they are unnecessary as you can conceal a long link link this: Are you a time waster? Check out Silent Avatar Blog post

9. Incorporate a FAQ section in your site
Getting in to the head of your site visitor and offering answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) can really enhance the visitor experience and your answers can increase the trust and credibility of your site.

10. Give something away for free
Yes.. we all love a “freebie”. Offering a free report, or additional product information which can be downloaded and printed out will enhance customer confidence. Just make sure what you give away is of value to your site visitor and combine it with an “opt in” to build your list.

Well.. that’s my Ten Tips to include in planning a successful website.

Do you have any tips which could help others create a professional looking website?  Add a comment.

I’m the silent avatar and I have spoken

Tags: Web Design, Web Development by the silent avatar
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How many times have you said to yourself, “Where did the time go. I don’t feel like I accomplished anything, or at least not what I set out to do?.

A lot of times we may set out to do some specific tasks, whether it’s online business or just taking care of some needed chores around the house.

It’s particularly easy to get distracted and lose some time that should be devoted to working through task especially when you’re involved in an online business.

Today’s time is a time when we are drowning in data, facts, figures, junk mail and it seems if it an electronic item its got some kind of message it’s delivering to you. All of these, plus some, can tend to keep you from doing all that you should.

I’ve found that working in your own online business, is that there are a whole lot more possibilities for distractions than you could ever imagine. If you think about it, not only have you lost the time from the distractions but it generally takes another 5-10 minutes regaining your focus on what you were originally working on before the call.

It doesn’t seem like a lot of time but over the course of a day, like a cowboy getting on his horse, it can really mount up.

Take for instance when I was wriiting my article on reciprocal linking.

Secrets Of Reciprocal Linking I wanted to be sure to include some information on automated linking strategies.

What I thought would take less than an hour led to several hours that were filled with information that wasn’t quite relative to the contents of the article. I ultimately left the automation part out of the article. It wasn’t a total loss though. It taught me a lesson about better defining the type of information I was after. You can go here to check linking automation…

http://www.cashway.com/powerlink.htm

Or how about this….

You’re looking for ways to automate and improve your online business. So your’re checking the SE’s for information and products when you all of a sudden find yourself looking at trips to Europe! It’s winter and ohh how nice it would be to be sipping Margaritas on a sandy beach.

Boy, how did that happen?

Now don’t get me wrong, there is nothing bad about taking a “brief” break from work…as long as its a planned break that doesn’t interfere with you accomplishing what you set out to do. When it happens several times a day it can amount to a lot of wasted time that could have been better spent.

So how do you accomplish all of the tasks you set out to do without extending the amount of hours you’re working in a day? (Emergencies excepted of course).

Adding some structure to your day like limiting the number of hours your’re going to work can help. There are also a few quick and easy ways to tame the time bandits without having to sacrifice the quality of your work.

Here’s my 15 Tips to Take Charge of Your Time

1 – At the end of the day make a “To Do List”. Setting up your list of tasks at the end of the day will help you get an early focus on starting your day and moving in a positive direction. When you get the hang of this you’ll be able to make your lists up a week in advance.

2 – Break down larger tasks on your To Do List into smaller more “accomplishable” task that won’t be so overwhelming.

3 – Keep you long and short term goals in focus and develop your daily goals from them.

4 – Set a limit on how much time you’re going to work on a task. You know as well as I do that if you have an online business or website it’s easy to be distracted. It’s the nature of the beast and you have to set your limits and follow them.

5 – Schedule the harder or more complex task early in the day when you are fresh and your energy level is high.

6 – If you get tired and don’t seem to be making headway then switch to another task. Doing this can sometimes give you an insight into the task you were trying to accomplish before.

7 – Don’t add new tasks that are not essential to completing your goals. You have to realize that taking on another task may overload you and won’t help you accomplish anything that you set out to do.

8 – Recognize and eliminate tasks that don’t provide a payoff that will help you reach any of your short or long term goals.

9 – Remember that time is always of the essence. You can never manufacture anymore of it, so don’t waste it.

10 – If your life is also busy outside (ha-ha) of your online pursuits then opt for an organizer to keep track of other areas of your life.

11- On that subject above it would be a good practice to always keep your organizer and “To Do List” with you at all times.

12 – You may want to consider out sourcing or eliminating tasks that eat up a lot of your time but produce little or no measurable results in accomplishing your goals.

13 – Give yourself a pat on the back or a reward for a job well done when you’ve worked through and completed one or more tasks.

14 – Pause to reflect. One of the things that sets us apart from the other species is that we are able to think and learn. You can do that by simply reflecting on your days work. Look at what you accomplished, what you didn’t get one and work
on improving your strategy to accomplish more.

15 – And finally….Take A Break! You can always take frequent short breaks during the day but also take time to enjoy your family, friends and hobbies.

Gaining control of your time is a subjective process. You’re the one in control and, (hopefully by now anyway) who will ultimately decide how to best tame your time bandits.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Tags: Self Help and Motivational by the silent avatar
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Happy New Year and let’s hope you don’t buy into the doom and gloom sayers and have a prosperous 2009!

So let’s get into my first post of 2009…

The silly season of 2008 is now behind us , however I wanted to share with you my observations as I went about my shopping with the throngs while paying particular attention to the marketing strategies being used amongst the retailers to win business, and how that can translate to online marketing.
Quite obviously, Christmas is a bumper time for retailers as they vie for the largest slice of the pie they can when people are willing to open their wallets and spend. The same can be said for online marketing.

Pay particular attention to these strategies for boosting revenue and customer numbers:

1. The first thing I noticed was the big, bold claims which literally jumped out at me from the shop windows. If the “offer” (like 20% to 50% off everything” was good enough shoppers would be attracted to come into the store and spend. This mirrors the strategy of capturing the site visitors attention with the view to keeping them on your site.  So what does this tell you? Make your offer compelling. Words really matter.

Learing to write good sales copy is an art, and it takes time, patience and skill to put together compelling sales copy which converts to sales. Top internet marketers will tell you that long sales copy converts better than short copy. though more and more I see video being utilised to deliver the message (and backed up with written copy).  This has a two fold effect by a) drawing in the site visitor by giving the site credibility (OMG.. there is a “real” person attached to this website”, and b) using emotive copy which has an effect on the reader.

2. Another thing I noticed was the “add ons” to lure purchases.  Offers like “buy one, get one free”, or additional products which were given free if you brought a certain product. Again this mirrors offering your site visitors your premium product for a fixed price, and then including additional products to entice them to buy your main product.

3. For customers who didn’t know what to buy as a gift, gift certificates were freely available. This is one area I felt could be utilised by Internet marketers to gain additional sales. Why not include gift certificates on your site? Those who are interested in a particular Internet marketing product could let friends and family know that your product/service you are offering is something they would appreciate as a gift and therefore sending a gift certificate to the recipient would give additional revenue.

4. One thing I found which was completely under utilised was the lack of capturing email addresses from the shoppers. At a time where there is an influx of buying customers not once did I come across an outlet which took advantage of increasing revenue by getting their staff to obtain email addresses to send promotional offers to their customers after the sale.  I find this lack of awareness by business owners and franchises quite astonishing, as in Internet marketing having a list of prospects (and your best prospect without a doubt is customers who have purchased from you before), is guaranteed money in the bank!

5. The other area I felt was extremely under utilised was “up sells”. Again, not one outlet when I purchased an item promoted additional products at the time of the sale. Maybe the staff had no incentive to sell additional items or just couldn’t be bothered, but without a doubt this is sales going begging. McDonald’s would have to be the king of up sells using their “will there be fries with that?” tag to customer orders.  Others call up sells “suggestive selling” and getting into the habit of offering (or suggesting) additional products at the time of sale will significantly increase your revenue turnover. It’s obvious that staff have be trained, or you havr to integrate this trategy into your web site, however with little effort this strategy can be implemented with great results.

One person to bring up sells to the front of Internet Marketing was Mike Filsaime. Mike launched the Butterfly Marketing Script with all the fan fare of a Royal Command Performance, setting the pace for successful Internet product launches. So impressed by the script and the ability to up sell to customers I purchased the script myself (when I purchased it it was significantly less to buy than it is today).  You can get a copy of the Butterfly Marketing script by clicking here.

6. Offering a “gift wrap service”. Again, offering a service like gift wrapping at this time goes a long way to show that you care about your customers, and this type opf service can mean the differnece between whether the customer recommends you, or returns for additional sales.  Gift wrapping can be brought quite cheaply when you are buying in bulk, and having a person whose sole job is to gift wrap and get email addresses can significantly increase customer perception of your business.

Any online business can offer this service as an “addon” either by charging a small additional fee, or using it as a selling point to increase sales.

7. Last but not least it was plainly obvious that the larger stores started planning well ahead for this time of the year and the additional revenue it would bring. It just makes plain good sense to plan your promotions well in advance to give your business every opportunity to succeed.

I’m the silent avatar… and I have spoken

Did you notice any other areas of marketing which were used (or not used) which impact sales? Let me know by posting a comment.

Tags: Advertising, Business Tips, Copywriting, Internet Marketing, Marketing and Advertising, Online Business, Promotion and Marketing, Web Development by the silent avatar
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