5 Universal Principles For Successful eCommerce-Sites | How-To Advertisement When was the last time you called customer support because you were having problems checking out online? Probably never! Cart abandonment rate is at around 60%, and most of it happens before the user even begins the checkout process. Sometimes, convincing your customers to trust you is your biggest challenge. There is no “Consumer Trust for Dummies,” but as eCommerce designers, we need to focus on some fundamentals. 1. If your core demographic is women between the ages 35 and 65 who have an annual income of $60,000+, you would treat them different than the 18- to 25-year-old male demographic. Years ago, I had an SVP of DotCom tell my team, “You can go home if you want to paint pictures.” 2. Build brand loyalty to gain patient, forgiving customers for a lifetime. How do you make your customers trust you this much? Like the perfect score to a film, a good user experience is unobtrusive and transparent to the consumer because “it just works.” 3. eCommerce UX Pitfalls To Avoid
How to Start a Startup March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard Computer Society.) You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. And that's kind of exciting, when you think about it, because all three are doable. If there is one message I'd like to get across about startups, that's it. The Idea In particular, you don't need a brilliant idea to start a startup around. Google's plan, for example, was simply to create a search site that didn't suck. There are plenty of other areas that are just as backward as search was before Google. For example, dating sites currently suck far worse than search did before Google. An idea for a startup, however, is only a beginning. Another sign of how little the initial idea is worth is the number of startups that change their plan en route. People What Customers Want Should You?
270+ Tools for Running a Business Online Last August we featured a post with more than 230 online apps for running your business. Since there are hundreds of new apps coming on the market every year, we figured it was time for an update. This year we came up with more than 270 additional apps. Some are completely new since last year, others might have been overlooked, and still others made significant improvements that gained them a spot on the list. Accounting, Billing, Invoicing, Estimating & Contracts LiteAccounting - Invoice and track payment from your customers without a bunch of extra, useless features. Invoice Journal - Free invoicing program. endeve - Issue invoices, manage clients and check revenues all in one place. ContractPal - Take your contracts and forms paperless and have them completed, validated, signed and processed online. Bootstrap - Online bookkeeping software that lets you track sales and expenses, organize your records for tax time, and more. Mumboe - Online contract and business agreement management app.
The Cheap Revolution: 15 Do-It-Yourself PR Ideas It’s hard to allocate where your money should be spent when you’re a startup and you sometimes have to stretch every dollar. Bootstrapping doesn’t have to be hard though. If you decide to promote your own company, read on for nearly free fifteen do-it-yourself tactics and get ahead of your competition! 1. Write an interesting article. Talking about the social benefits of your service.Providing advice on pitfalls you fell into when starting your business with examples on how you overcame them.Creating a case study on a client. After you put it together, submit it to online article submission sites such as ezinearticles.com. Other important aspects to take into account are to make sure your headline is thought-provoking and to include a byline at the end of article. Finally, your byline should give readers a brief background of yourself and your company. 2. When writing your posts, take considerable time in writing your headline. I would also set up a Technorati account. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
10 Types of Businesses You Can Start Today For $100 Or Less | Startup Launchr Tough to read? Click here and view the presentation in full-size So you’ve read through the 6 rules to follow when starting your online business, and you’re itching to launch something. You understand that your business must, first and foremost, solve a problem for a certain group of people. You’ve taken it to heart that you must be able to get your business up and running quickly. With that said, I’m going to share you with 10 types of businesses you can work on today. Hopefully, this should generate some buzz for the launch of Startup Launchr’s sister site (name TBD — help us name the new blog, will you?). Coaching and Consulting Everybody is an expert on something. Maybe your passion for something has lead you to be more educated than most when it comes to the topic. Scaling the business could mean developing a program to deliver to your clients either through email or a membership website. The key here is to realize that “expert” is merely a frame of mind on how to label yourself. Books
My Own Business - Free course on starting a business! Alert iconNEW MOBI Curriculum! Because the most important step in starting a business is the first one, we have updated the introductory session to our popular Starting a Business course. Choosing the Right Business provides 5 steps to help you choose the right business for you, and take your first step toward entrepreneurship in the right direction. Back-to-School = #BackToBusiness with MOBI! It's that time of the year again! Learn how to start your own business with MOBI's Starting a Business course, accelerate your learning with our Quick Start Entrepreneur course, or learn advanced skills in our Business Expansion course. With My Own Business Institute: Courses are always free.Enroll and start anytime.Learn according to YOUR schedule.Complete a course in just 20 hours.Earn a Certificate of Completion and/or Digital Badge.Download MOBI's Free Business Plan Template and other helpful resources. Visit these links to see how to create an account and how to enroll on YouTube. #BackToBusiness
International Virtual Assistants Association FREE Virtual Assistant Service Price Quotes - quality, expert online virtual assistants to hire and purchasing advice with Resou Why You Should Hire a Virtual Assistant One of the latest trends in business today is the outsourcing of office related tasks to a Virtual Assistant (VA). A VA can be extremely cost-effective and can improve the efficiency of your business, which saves you time and money. Imagine being able to off-load all those daily tasks that you just never seem to find the time for. Imagine not having to go through the hiring process and not having to pay the fees associated with hiring an employee. Imagine having a dedicated VA that you can count on to complete the assigned tasks, thus allowing you more freedom to concentrate on growing your business. Hiring a VA allows you to cut down on employee costs; you can double your resources without hiring an employee; you can get a better quality of work since the VA runs their own business; you have no liability for common expenses like social security, medicare, and worker's compensation.