Starkr

By Erwin Pope

 Building a web site often can lead to interesting deviations caused by practicalities and changes in perspective. This is okay so long as you keep things simple for prospects.

Many business owners unintentionally erect barriers between themselves and their customers when it comes to the site sales process. Simple mechanisms can be put in place to remove these barriers. A business owner that is always looking for new ways to connect with potential customers often finds his or her efforts paying off many times over. Some of the most common web sales barriers are lack of contact methods, payment methods, and delivery methods. To bridge these potential barriers, a business owner can provide more options to crossing each of these barriers.

Contact Barriers

Simply adding contact options can be a great way to create more sales. Some web sites only offer email or even just a contact form as a means of contact. Yet there are many people that prefer to conduct transactions over the phone, by mail or by fax. Retail sites discover this fact the first time they go through a hot sales period such as Christmas. Some people just like to call. No, I don’t know why. They just do.

Providing a broad range of contact options also builds credibility. Having an office address, fax and phone number in addition to an email address shows the prospective client that the business does in fact exist and has made themselves transparent and easy to contact. Providing such information gives people the impression they aren’t dealing with some Nigerian scam.

Using an 800 number is also an excellent way to build credibility and remove a sales barrier. Picking up the tab on calls from potential clients is a polite gesture and may encourage a potential buyer one more reason to call. Toll-free numbers are easy to obtain these days and can cost around 6 cents per minute - a small price to pay for building confidence in your audience.

Payment Barriers

Many web sites provide only one way to pay for merchandise - credit card. There are many reasons to offer more payment methods. For one, not everyone has a credit card. Although in the United States, it seems like almost everyone does, this is not true in over-seas markets where there is resistance to credit. Furthermore, some people just don’t feel safe providing credit card information over the web. Regardless of how safe or unsafe Internet transactions may or may not be, it is usually the job of the business owner to provide what the consumer wants.

It is a simple matter to provide an address and a printable order form for most web sites where a check can be mailed. If you are running a home business, a PO box is a simple solution to keep your business separate from your home. Some mail box services allow for your address to be a suite number instead of a box number, which can further improve the image of your business.

Providing a phone number by which orders can be placed is also a way to remove a barrier between you and your potential customers. Of course this means there must also be someone there to answer the phone. Simply answering the phone can be the difference between a sale and a lost sale.

Delivery Methods

For businesses providing products, providing a variety of delivery methods is yet another way to cater to the desires of your customers and potential customers. Many people have a preference for delivery and meeting this preference could be a deciding factor when deciding whether or not to place an order. For those businesses providing services, providing a delivery pickup service for a deposit and/or contract can be a perfect sale closer.

Conclusion

By removing barriers between you and your potential customers you can increase the chances of making sales. Other options are also available, like instant messaging support, mapped out directions, video conferencing and more. Be careful to not confuse your audience with too many options. It is often a good idea to direct your audience to default options for contact, payment and delivery so as not to confuse people. Other options can be shown as small links or drop down options. By working to connect more with your audience, your sales and customer satisfaction can be increased dramatically.

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Why You Need Shopping Cart Software

By Erwin Pope

 A shopping cart is essential to every business for a lot of reasons. Knowing the benefits will help you appreciate its role in providing company success.

Why do you need a shopping cart? A lot of people would try to break in to the world of e-commerce, hoping to expand their market, increase their profit, and develop a worldwide brand. However, they lack the necessary tools, especially a shopping cart.

Though it can cost you something, the returns that you will reap are more than what you’ve invested. To give you an idea of how it contributes greatly to business success, here are the 6 huge benefits from a shopping cart:

1. There are hundreds of templates that you can choose from. It does not really matter if you do not have any background on HTML. A lot of shopping cart software already has hundreds of templates included in the package, and all you need to do is to choose. Nevertheless, for a little bit of customisation, you can always opt to modify the codes using an HTML editor, which is still found in the shopping cart program.

2. It offers excellent security of data. It is highly essential that financial transactions, particularly payment of customers, are well-protected. Otherwise, hackers can simply steal their confidential information like credit card numbers. Shopping cart software makes use of security technologies that makes it reliable to process payments 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

3. You can conveniently process credit cards. Credit cards provide a win-win situation for both customers and businesspersons. For the former, they can purchase items anytime they want to. For the latter, meanwhile, payments are instantly credited into their account. A shopping cart application can speed up the process. All you need to do is to identify the different kinds of credit cards you want to carry on your online shop and allow it to make the payment process.

4. You are guaranteed of a 24/7 customer support. With shopping cart software, you’re backed by hundreds of customer service representatives who are more than willing to answer your questions and entertain your complaints. You can just give them a call-no matter where you are in the world.

5. You can easily keep track of your shipped goods. One of the reasons why customers complain is because the goods have not yet arrived at the expected date. With the help of the shopping cart software, though, you can monitor every shipment. You can also calculate the estimated shopping charges, which could be shouldered by the buyer or you.

6. Generating reports is as easy as 1-2-3. You can conveniently monitor your sales and costs depending on your chosen interval-whether daily, monthly, quarterly, or even yearly. You can also determine how many visitors you get on your online shop so you can evaluate if your online marketing strategies are working.

With your shopping cart software, you can manage your business with more comfort and sense of expertise. So who says you need to count on the initial investment? What’s really important is what you’re going to get in the next years to come.

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An Introduction to 3

By Erwin Pope

 3, the UK’s leading mobile media company, is shaking up the mobile market yet again with the launch of a revolutionary service that, for the first time, pays customers to receive calls and texts.

The new pay-as-you-go price service from 3 - called ‘WePay’ - will see customers rewarded with a cash credit for calls and texts they receive. So with 5p per minute for calls received and 2p per text received, it really does pay to be popular on 3.

Customers claim their cash credit each time they purchase a new WePay Top-up voucher - the credit can then be used to purchase any 3 services, from texts and calls to buying music tracks and watching TV on their mobiles.

For example, when a customer receives a five-minute call, they earn enough credit to send two texts, or send a picture message or watch the highlights from two episodes of Coronation Street.

Graeme Oxby, 3’s Marketing Director, explains: “It pays to be popular. Anyone who regularly receives calls and texts could end up much better off by moving to 3. You pick up, we pay up; it’s as simple as that.”

“The introduction of WePay means we’ve raised the bar on rewarding loyal PAYG customers and at the same time created a way for everyone to enjoy music and TV on their mobile.”

WePay is the next development in 3’s mission to bring better value to UK mobile users. The pre-pay market is notoriously complicated with a plethora of tariffs and special offers.

In response, consumers have had to adopt increasingly sophisticated strategies to find the best value, from only using their mobiles off-peak to owning several different handsets on a variety of networks and tariffs. Continental Research’s Autumn 2005 Mobile Report suggests that as many as 5.9 million consumers in the UK now carry more than one phone.

3 devised WePay, in combination with low outbound call and text rates and the largest range of 3G handsets available on pay-as-you-go, to create a compelling reason for consumers who make and receive a lot of calls and messages to move to 3, port their number and use 3 as their only network.

It currently takes at least seven days to port your number in the UK, whereas in other countries such as Ireland and Pakistan, it takes just a couple of hours.

Marketing Director Graeme Oxby continued: “Because the process can be slow, only a fraction of people on PAYG port their number when they get a new phone. Our new reward for picking up calls and texts makes it worthwhile for consumers to move their number.”

As part of its new Pay-as-you-go service, 3 will also launch a range of stylish new handsets designed by fashion designer Roberto Cavalli for its PAYG customers.

The WePay tariff is available from 1 February 2006.

How it works…

A customer on WePay who receives 100 minutes of calls and 50 texts a month will earn 6.00 credit. He or she can claim their cash credit when they purchase a new WePay Top-up, and the credit can then be used to purchase any 3 services.

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