How To

The buzzwords viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing...

1. Traffic – get them to your site. 2. Conversion – get them to respond Know Your Audience – speak in their jargon, write for 4th graders Keep navigation simple – allow users to easily navigate the site. Response or load time – needs to be quick. Visually highlight “Calls to Action”, ie, phone numbers, buy now, etc. Keep you pages short – try to avoid scrolling, only 10% will scroll. Avoid lots of text - break up long pages with more nav or link options. Allow for scanning – use short sentences, headlines, bullet/numbered lists. Check spelling and grammar â€...

Designing a good sales web site can be the difference between losing a visitor and making a sale. You've got ten seconds to capture a viewer's attention and convince them to stay - that's how long it takes people to decide to keep reading, or move on. Make Your Site User Friendly You need to plan your web site carefully to make it really sell your product: • Have an attention-grabbing headline that tells visitors what they'll gain by staying. It should list some clear, compelling benefits - what they'll learn and what kind of information you'll provide. • Keep your web sit...

1. Look at your competitors’ prices and get a range. According to Johnson, “Your consumer has in their mind some idea of what’s the right price to pay for your product and if your prices are going to be dramatically different, higher or lower, you’re going to have problems.” 2. Objectively compare your product to your competitors. Compare features that a consumer would notice and value. Determine if your product is better than similar products, or is it lesser? Don’t be emotional when comparing – it’s not better just because it’s yours. If you can’t clearly specify what ...

When you get your store set up and want to do some testing, here's some numbers to try for sample transactions to determine successful functionality of your processes. Test Credit Card Numbers for Testing Transactions: MasterCard: 5431111111111111 Amex: 341111111111111 Discover: 6011601160116611 American Express (15 digits) 378282246310005 American Express (15 digits) 371449635398431 American Express Corporate (15 digits) 378734493671000 Diners Club (14 digits) 30569309025904 Diners Club (14 digits) 38520000023237 Discover (16 digits) 6011111111111117 Discover (16 digits) 601100...

So, how to write a press release? That's a million dollar question. If done right, it can indeed bring you a million dollars in revenue. Let's get started by answering what a press release is. "A press release is simply a statement prepared for distribution to the news media announcing something claimed as having news value with the intent of gaining media coverage." A press release consists of following elements: Headline The headline is the first single line of text in the press release and tells what the press release is about. It can be a very effective tool to grab the attention...

There are so many ways to embed video on a website these day. You can create your video in almost any format and then...... upload to YouTube and use the embed code to place the video on your website. You must be able to work in the html wilderness for a little bit in order to do this. Upload to any one of hundreds of other online video repositories (blip.tv,flickr, google video, yahoo video, etc.) for embedding, either by a direct link or html code link. Many of these have associated advertising attached to the video player and can make your website look cheesy. Prepare the video for ...

The "Don'ts" of Ecommerce Absolutely do not use frames for navigation purposes. There are too many people out there who still use old model computers; they usually will block the frames when navigating sites, because it makes it faster. If all your navigation directions are based on frames, then these prospective customers will skip your site. And frames make for a frustrating experience when trying to navigate back through a site when you're using the back button in the browser. Don't frustrate your customers! Do not use pictures on the site that are too large in file size. They make th...