20 Must-Have Tools to Automate an Online Business
With all the information online about tools and techniques available to help someone effectively manage and run an online business, how do you ever decide which ones are truly useful to have in your business management toolkit? Here’s my listing of the 20 indispensable tools that I cannot live without:
1. Article Marketing: SubmitYourArticle.com automates the article submission process by allowing you to submit up to eight articles each month and then distributes the articles to hundreds of web sites, article directories and ezine publishers. Without a doubt, this has been my most effective online marketing tool that has produced tremendous results for my business.
2. Audio Recording/Podcasting: AudioAcrobat.com makes audio streaming fast and simple, whether you want to add an audio greeting, audio testimonials, podcast or videos to your website or send out an audio postcard or record a teleclass.
3. Backup: Carbonite.com offers an unlimited amount of data storage for $50 per year. Carbonite is very intuitive and went directly to my email files and Roboform files to back them up without me having to manually select the backup files. I frequently use this service to find the original version of a file that I’ve accidentally overwritten, as well.
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Conversion Rate Optimization Part 1, Google Takes the Leading Role
Within the e-commerce sphere, the “mind games” between site owners and search engine designers have focused on search engine optimization (SEO). After all, you can’t make a sale if visitors aren’t reaching your site. However, as the web marketplace grows exponentially more competitive, attention among webmasters and site owners has turned to conversion optimization — converting site visitors to buyers.
Conversion optimization has nothing to do with SEO. SEO is designed for spiders and bots. Conversion optimization is based on two factors only: the needs and motivations of human site visitors and persuasive site content and design to encourage humans to make a purchase or perform some other action. Any other considerations are sub-sets of these two factors in conversion optimization strategies.
Measuring Human Motivations and Site Effectiveness
SEO is based on the development of numbers (metrics) that are immutable. Numbers are numbers, there’s no debating that. The interpretation of site metrics, on the other hand, is a true combination of art, science and testing.
Assessing conversion rate optimization must apply a completely different approach to data gathering and the accurate, actionable assessment of the cold hard facts (percentages and such) that are the basis of SEO.
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9 Ways to Improve Bad Website Design
Introduction
You’re website reads well and you’re proud of it. But, you’ve tried and tried to create something that looks good too, and you can’t seem to get it together. You’re waiting for rave reviews but none have come your way. Your website is a flop. Not to worry. You’re not alone. You want to fix it but you don’t have the big budget you need to hire a great web developer. Check out some simple ways you can improve your website and get it into better shape, now!
1. Balance your page
When users enter a website, their focus first starts at the top left of the page, and hovers there before slowly tracking to the right. Contrary to what many think, the web user is focused more on the text of the page, rather than images or graphics. This is where balance comes into place.
Balance will not only make your page more visually appealing, but it will make your page easier to read and items easier to find. A good layout will help the objects on your page to flow.
2. Keep it simple
Less is more. Clean your website up by removing all the unnecessary visual elements. This will allow important items to stand out. Leave some white space on the page. The illusion of space is visually pleasing, as well as easier to navigate. Otherwise, your visitor will get whiplash by darting their head from left to right in an attempt to look at all the information crammed on your screen. Or worse, they’ll click on out of there in a hurry.
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