Plan to Have Testimonials

Jan 282009
 

eventSell a service or product on your website? Having a testimonial is a good idea, and the more the better. This party planning site has taken it to the max. They have testimonials on every page.

Credibility

Having a few testimonials can do a great deal for a sites credibility. Two key locations to have testimonials are on the home page/landing page, and the final selling page. On the home page they can draw a visitor into the site more, and when closing the deal they can give the customer the feeling that they are making a wise decision.

Turn One Page Visitors Into Two or More Page Visitors

Imagine if you were planning a casino night for your fellow employees, and your search results land you here: Fun Casino Nights. Immediately you would see what you were looking for, seeing  the pictures they took of previous events, and customer testimonials telling you how great they were. Think your on the right page? At that point I would imagine you would then begin looking for way to buy, cost information, or simply more details. Three simple pictures, and a couple of customer quotes, and you have kept the visitor from closing your site, and moving on.

Making it Work All Over

This party planning site has really taken it to the max by having testimonials on every page. I don’t blame them. Most of their pages are descriptions of services, and complimenting them all the same way is a good idea.

PsPrint

Sep 242008
 

Do you do a lot of offline marketing for your site? If you do, you probably have favorite source for printing your material, a graphic artist, and a mailing company. Well you can consilidate all those to one source if you choose to use PsPrint.

Products

PsPrint is an online printing website that offers a large selection of services to handle most of your printed material marketing. In regards to their products here is a list of some of them they do:

  • Brochures
  • Business cards
  • Catalogs
  • CD/DVD sleeves
  • Envelopes
  • Letterheads
  • Postcards

All of these can be done online, and can either be shipped to your desired location, or physically picked up at one of their two locations in Oakland, California. or Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. They give you a variety of shipping options to cover speed or cost.

Service

In regards to their services, they offer: mailing services, graphic design work, specialty printing, and pre-made templates for easy to make business cards and postcards. Their mailing services allow you to select what zip code, and other additional demographics.

Review

I tested their build a business card printing, and it was very simple to use. The one thing I really like about it was that I tried seeing how much it would cost to get the order worked on the same day, their “Super Rush” package. For $19.66 I could get 50 business cards. Depending on your choice of shipping, this is a pretty good price if you are in a pinch. Their economy five day turnaround was just $9.95. Your not going to get much lower that that, even if you use one of those “Free Printing” companies like Vista Print. By the way a tried Vista Print once for business cards, and ended up throwing the entire box of cards in the recycling bin. Their online layout did match the product I received.

Looking to consolidate your off-line marketing? Looks like PsPrint may be the way to go. Let us know if you use them already!

Business Plan

Jul 282008
 

Do you have a written business plan for your website? I am guessing the answer is a big “No”. I’m constantly reviewing sites, and I constantly find sites that don’t even have a tag line. Think they have a business plan? I think not, but maybe the owner has one worked out in their head.

Keeping your business plan in your head is a poor platform at best. It’s too easy to edit. It’s good to have change and keep up with the times, but your site needs to be highly focused if you want visitors to know what your site is about. If you desire action out of your visitors, like making a purchase, it’s even more essential. Are you marketing without a business plan? That would be absolutely crazy.

Business Plans Do Things

If you have never spent the time to create a business plan know that you are missing out. Business plans do things. A common occurrence in building a plan is new realizations. Here in an example I like to use based on a road rage site I did back in 2004. I was spending my marketing budget by advertising on Google. It worked, I got visitors, but after studying my business plan I was able to recognize a weakness within that plan. It was expensive, and it didn’t produce long term visitors. It also rarely produced backlinks. I then realized that spending my marketing money on PR, and doing the occasional press release was far more beneficial. I received more targeted traffic, and I also received lots of backlinks.

A plan also helps develop realistic goals. Don’t be surprised if your expectations don’t drastically drop after doing a market analysis. Sometimes seeing that even the best sites in your niche don’t accomplish what you are dreaming of can be a major awakening.

Writing Your Business Plan

A business plan could or should take as much time as building your site. It should be a work in progress, and require regular reading if you are actively making adjustments to your site.

A simplified outline of a business plan:

  • Company summary
  • Services offered
  • Market analysis
  • Product or sites benefits, advantages
  • Marketing strategy
  • Sales strategy
  • Actual, and future target milestones
  • Financial plan
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