Well, there are.

Today is Tuesday. Below are five simple things to tackle so you can start next week off ahead of the game and with a stronger Web site.

1. Focus On Your Navigation

Often overlooked, your site navigation is crucial to creating a successful Web site. Your nav is what a customer will use to get around and find the information on your site. To aid them in this journey, you want to make your navigation as intuitive and easy to use as you can. Don’t hide your navigation, don’t try and be “clever” when naming certain items – focus on giving your customers something they can use, and use quickly.

As general rule, your main navigation bar should be easy to find, look and feel consistent, have properly named tabs (“trash cans” not “garbage receptacles”) and should always let customers know where they are on your site. If you’re not sure how well your site navigation does at helping customers on their way, a service like usertesting.com can help you see, from a user perspective, what it feels like navigating around your site. It may also be time to do some keyword research to make sure the keywords and phrases you’re using in your site navigation are still relevant.

2. Create a Better About Page

If you’re like many small business owners, you do a pretty good job ignoring your About page. I mean, you created one. Mostly. You threw in some bio information, your address and you even included a nice stock image of a woman dutifully at work. It’s not like anyone really uses that page, right?
Wrong.

As an SMB, one of the worst things you can do for your Web site is to ignore your About page. This is where customers go to learn more about your business, to gain trust, to see what you’re about, and, ultimately, decide if you’re a company they want to do business with. Stock your About Page with the Must Haves like:

• Your story
• Your credentials
• Pictures
• What they can expect from you/your value
• Where they can get more info about you
• Humanizing details

It’s easy to look at your About page as a chore or something that makes you uncomfortable. Instead, think of it as your formal introduction to your audience. What do you want them to know about feel about your brand? Show it here.

3. Update Your Blog

Sometimes bringing life (and customers) back to your Web site really is that easy. Spend some time this week to update your blog. Create a new post that takes a look inside your business (and maybe highlights your new About page), answer a long-standing consumer problem, share your thoughts on where the industry is going in 2012. Just get writing and talking to your audience again.

Updating your blog not only gives your audience something to find and engage with, it gives the search engines something to find, as well. It gives them a reason to revisit your site

4. Get That Contact Form User-Ready

The goal for many service-based Web sites is to guide a customer to that all-important contact form. We need our visitor to fill it out and give us their information in order to continue a dialogue with them. If they leave our site WITHOUT making it to this point, we’ve lost them. Forever. Probably to a competitor.
What does your own contact form look like? If you’re not confident in its ability, you may want to go grab a family member, sit them in front of a computer staring at your Web site, and then ask them to navigate through your site with a specific purpose in mind. Are they able to get there and make it to the contact form or convert? Or do they get scared off along the way?

Your site’s contact form should follow a few rules:

• It should be intuitive.
• It should be simple.
• It should only ask for the information you absolutely need to take a relationship with your customers to the next level.

Where contact forms go wrong is when they either try to get too much information in one sitting or they intimidate your visitor – either due to length, scope or language. Keep it simple, only ask for the information you absolutely need, and you can be confident you have a form that will due it’s purpose.

5. Show Off Your Social Media

Another quick way to add some life to your Web site is to do a better job showcasing all of your different social media profiles. Are you on Twitter? On Facebook? Google+? Have a LinkedIn profile? Sweet. Make sure you’re including a prominent call to action for visitors to follow you on these networks. Include the icons directly on your home page and on other prominent pages of your site (like your blog, About page, or Contact Us page, for example). Not only does cross-linking these profiles increase their strength, it also gives customers another place to go engage with you. They can go to your Twitter account and ask you a question, or see what questions you’re already answering. They can head to Google+ and see the media you’re sharing. Or head to LinkedIn and hop into a discussion you’re leading. These are all great trust signals.

The more connected you can look to your customers, the more they’re going to trust that you’re a reputable SMB that will be around in the morning should something go wrong.

Those are just five small things you can do to your Web site this week to increase its strength and make it more valuable and engaging to a user. What plans do you have for your Web presence this week?

From Small Business Trends

5 Ways To Improve Your Web Site This Week

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

5 Ways To Improve Your Web Site This Week is a post from: Home Wealth Project
Special Thanks: Kissimmee Auto Repair, Kenyan Safari Package, Sell Medical Practice

This Is a Message from Your Heart

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

I had a heart scan the other day – mainly because I’m old and my spouse is convincing in the most loving way.

a4gpa via Flickr CC

If you’ve never done it, it’s a pretty incredible experience to get to watch the awesome mechanical miracle that is you heart spray blood in and out through a series of valves, tubes, chambers, levers and doors that any engineer would be challenged to recreate.

More often than not the heart is the subject of poems and songs about romance and love but in addition to being a physical masterpiece I believe it is a formidable business tool.

The idea of love as it relates to business is a tricky one. People talk about loving or not loving a business or the products and services of a particular business, but rarely is love looked at as a strategic way to run a business or lead a team.

The heart is seen as weak and squishy and emotions like love have no place in cold hard world of commerce.

But, here’s what I think. It takes incredible courage and strength to lead with your heart, but it’s actually the most natural and freeing way to do so. The heart isn’t all sappy and bending at all, it’s a ridiculously appropriate and intuitive decision-making tool.

May I suggest that you lead with your heart.

Heeding the mind body connection that comes with following your heart is how you fill your business with passion and purpose. It’s how you make the decisions in every instant that are right for you and most likely right for others involved.

Try this – get up and walk across the room and focus on leading with your heart – literally taking steps with the mind to push your heart out in front with every step. As physical as this action seems you’ll find that it also creates an immediate emotional sense of confidence and well-being.

Running coaches and yoga instructors alike frequently urge their students to lead with their heart as they perfect their form and move gracefully from pose to pose.

When it comes to building your business, tapping your passion, brining a sense of higher purpose to your work, making decisions that determine the outcome of a situation that impacts your life and the lives of others – lead with your heart.

Your heart – or at least that sensations that you receive as you ponder a decision – will instantly tell you the right choice to make, if you only pay attention.

But let me warn you, lest you think this is simple pop nonsense – making a decision out of love is much more difficult than making one out of fear.

Have you ever made a decision or taken an action in the heat of the moment, maybe in a moment of doubt or fear, only to regret it or overturn it when you regained some sense of calm and you thought more about it? That was your heart regaining the wheel.

Have you ever experienced that “something about this doesn’t feel right” kind of moment and then learned later that you’re instincts were dead on? That was you listening to your heart.

The heart is good for business because it cherishes

• Love over hate
• Faith over doubt
• Hope over despair
• Light over darkness
• Joy over sadness
• Passion over indifference

Leading with the heart is good for business because it prefers

• Giving over receiving
• Lifting up over tearing down
• Teaching over dictating
• Abundance over scarcity
• Understanding over telling

People frequently advise that you must find something you are passionate about in order to succeed and, while I believe there is merit in that advice, I further believe you can fall in love with whatever you do if you choose to lead with the heart.

The opportunity to lead with your heart is the absolute best part about doing what you love.

View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

This Is a Message from Your Heart is a post from: Home Wealth Project
Special Thanks: Kissimmee Auto Repair, Kenyan Safari Package, Sell Medical Practice

I like charts, graphs, and diagrams because they make sense. Sure, your can skew them all sorts of ways, and sometimes they can get a bit out of hand, but they make sense.

Arrow going up? Great! Series of bars getting shorter? Not so good. Easy.

But I have to admit that Venn diagrams don’t do a lot for me. You’ve got one thing, and another thing, and then in the middle you get this football shaped combination of things that have things.

Yep.

Still, Venns offer a certain graphic advantage that a line or bar graph can’t, like this cartoon that’s some sort of cutesy bear or mouse. Let’s see a pie chart do that!

From Small Business Trends

A Pie Chart Can’t Do This

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

A Pie Chart Can’t Do This is a post from: Home Wealth Project
Special Thanks: Kissimmee Auto Repair, Kenyan Safari Package, Sell Medical Practice

Top Converting Djing Videos. Djs Love This Dj Mixing Training is a post from: Home Wealth Project
Special Thanks: Kissimmee Auto Repair, Kenyan Safari Package, Sell Medical Practice

Opportunities

So you think your business is unique? Better reserve judgement until you check out some of these. We all know that part of branding is that initial impact your business makes on customers. And, of course, on creating that one unique product or service no one else has. Yahoo! News

How not to handle business reputations. When looking at the way celebrities and gurus handle their small businesses, we are sometimes treated to a view of how we hope our businesses someday might be. Not in this case. Here’s a look at what can go completely wrong when managing your reputation.  David Leonhardt’s SEO and Social Media Marketing

Marketing

Video tips you should ignore. There are so many tips abounding on managing your small business, including your business online, that you’d be surprised hearing someone advocate ignoring them. Work At Home Woman

What separates great entrepreneurs from all the rest? David Siteman Garland shares this simple thought after time spent interviewing some of the most successful small business leaders on the Web. There is no secret formula for success and no substitute for paying your dues. The Rise to the Top

Sales

Steps to better e-commerce success. It’s called the empty shopping cart syndrome. What happens when you set up that online store only to have nothing happen? Nothing at all! Don’t loose hope. As with any problem there is a solution. Learn more about how to turn e-commerce failure to success. Buzz Small Business Magazine

So you want to do business with China. Small businesses have better odds than ever before, even as exporters. Certainly the Web and other technology will help you if you have the products, services and marketing to be a success. But hold it! This infographic suggests some obstacles. High Street Partners

Management

What a city in Spain can teach the world about branding. Plenty. Let us tell you! Check out this post on how one city has promoted itself to incredible heights and how these techniques are things you should already be trying in your business. Bloggertone

Bring your employees into the game. You know that your employees are the key to your businesses success. So it shouldn’t come as a shock that giving them a stake in the outcome is far more likely to lead to success. But when looking at compensation, how can you find the equation that works the best? You’re the Boss

Leadership

Your mantras for success. A mantra is meant to be a short phrase repeated over and over again to reinforce an idea. This list of suggestions is clearly worth recitation by any entrepreneur wishing to find success and take it to the next level. Inc.com

How not to lead. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is just another anti-Washington rant or one more critique of SOPA and the potential damage it could have done to the world as we know it. Oh no. It is much more! It is an object lesson about the kind of leadership we desperately need…now! Seth Godin’s Blog

From Small Business Trends

Do This, Don’t Do That: A Strategy for Unique Business Building

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

Do This, Don’t Do That: A Strategy for Unique Business Building is a post from: Home Wealth Project
Special Thanks: Kissimmee Auto Repair, Kenyan Safari Package, Sell Medical Practice

Navigating the new normal: With the current economic situation showing few signs of major change, JWT says companies in developed nations will start introducing new products and services at lower price points. “Stripped-down offerings and smaller sizes” are one way to take advantage of this trend, JWT notes.

Takeaway: Consider introducing different versions of your products or services. For instance, if you own a spa, you could offer a “quickie” version of popular treatments that takes less time and costs less. One sales tactic that works well is creating three levels of a product or service—value, midrange and premium—and marketing them accordingly.

Bonus: Studies have shown when you have three price choices, more people are likely to pick the mid-priced option—which could boost your sales considerably compared to having just one option.

Live a little: After years of navigating through a tough economy, people are tired of cutting back and, while they can’t afford to really let lose, they’re eager for little treats or luxuries that make them feel better.

Takeaway: These little luxuries can be different things for different people—from a gourmet cupcake to a fine whiskey or a manicure. Think of a way your business can offer customers a moment of respite and a quick escape from reality for an affordable price.

Marriage optional: More and more women are opting to delay marriage or skip it altogether. This could mean they are living with a significant other, living with roommates, living alone or even becoming single moms.

Takeaway: I’ve written in the past about how weddings are a huge market for entrepreneurs, and while that’s still true, you should also consider how to reach this new market. The delay of marriage means even women who are not planning weddings are going through many of the same transitions that newlyweds do—such as buying and furnishing first homes or apartments, buying products and services for children, and planning celebrations such as birthday parties and girls’ getaways.

Celebrating aging: JWT says people are taking an increasingly positive view of aging. I personally am a bit skeptical on this front—in America, at least, I think we still have a long way to go. Regardless, America is aging, and the baby boomers, in particular, have money to spend, so ignoring or patronizing this group is a big mistake.

Takeaway: As Americans over 55 become a bigger proportion of the population, you’ll need to attract them or lose market share. Keep in mind that boomers buy products and services not just for themselves, but also for their aging parents, their kids and their grandkids. And remember, the best way to lose a boomer customer is to treat him or her like a “senior”—so make accommodations if needed, but don’t make a big deal about them.

Objectifying objects: As the world increasingly goes digital, an interesting trend is occurring: New premiums are being placed on actual objects, since they’re becoming increasingly rare.

The takeaway: If you offer products or services digitally, think about tactile “extras” you could sell along with them, or ways your customers can use digital tools to create physical goods. For instance, the report mentions Postagram, an app that lets users turn digital photos into physical postcards. I’ve seen online cartoonists who sell physical greeting cards of their work and musicians who offer T-shirts or lyric booklets to accompany digital downloads. How can you make this work for your business?

There are five more trends to take a look at in the full JWT 10 Trends for 2012 report.

Now Photo via Shutterstock

From Small Business Trends

5 Trends to Shape Your Business This Year

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

5 Trends to Shape Your Business This Year is a post from: Home Wealth Project
Special Thanks: Kissimmee Auto Repair, Kenyan Safari Package, Sell Medical Practice

The only standard is impermanence.

It’s very easy to believe that the world we live in has always been this way.

Your ethnic group has always had a similar standing.

Technology has always permitted certain kinds of interactions and is always improving.

Real estate values always rise from decade to decade. (Until it didn’t).

A job has always been the standard way to make a living.

Your chosen religion has always been practiced the way you practice it.

People in positions of authority and leverage have always had degrees from famous colleges.

Information has always been widely available.

As soon as you accept that just about everything in our created world is only a few generations old, it makes it a lot easier to deal with the fact that the assumptions we make about the future are generally wrong, and that the stress we have over change is completely wasted.’

View full post on Seth’s Blog

“It’s always been this way” is a post from: Home Wealth Project
Special Thanks: Kissimmee Auto Repair, Kenyan Safari Package, Sell Medical Practice

This is a common attention-getting technique online. Throw yourself under a bus, attract spectators.

There are countless ways to reveal your embarrassments, your inner demons and your current conflicts. There are a myriad of crazy projects you can undertake, all guaranteed to attract an appreciative crowd, the same people who want to see the crazy guy jump off the bridge or the brawl break out in the parking lot.

Do it well enough and enough often and you will gain attention.

But you’ll still be under a bus.

View full post on Seth’s Blog

“WATCH THIS!” is a post from: Home Wealth Project
Special Thanks: Kissimmee Auto Repair, Kenyan Safari Package, Sell Medical Practice

If This, Then That

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

QUOI Media via Flickr CC

Reaching your goals takes hard work, drive and, more than anything, consistent action that moves you in the direction of your goals.

One of the challenges to your ability to take right action is habits – or lack of them. Our habits either take us where we want to go or hold us back perpetually. Everyone operates this way. Millionaires and drug addicts are both driven by habits, it’s just one of them has better habits.

Once you determine the actions you must take in order to move towards your dreams, you must get in the habit of taking those actions routinely.

While doing some of my habitual web surfing, digging and discovering recently I came across a web app called If This, Then That or IFTTT.com. The idea behind the service is pure genius and in my opinion a tool that you should check out.

I’ll get back to this idea of goal achievement in a moment, but first a bit more about the IFTTT concept. The service is a simple adaptation of a very commonly applied programming concept called conditional statements.

A simple example of this use is when you login to a site where you have an account. Behind the scenes the programming script uses a “trigger,” your correct login credentials, to take an “action,” show you the site. If you used the wrong password it would further take the action of telling you so.

IFTTT.com take this idea into the practical realm of recipes designed to help you automate tasks that might make your online life easier or more efficient. The idea behind a recipe is that you define a trigger – such as “If I post to Twitter” – and then define a supplemental action – such as “send a copy to Evernote.”

With this conditional statement in place (of course you have to provide access to both your Twitter and Evernote accounts) you would automatically create a note in Evernote that creates a record of every one of your Tweets.

The specific example above may or may not be something you find useful, but the creative possibilities of this type of conditional statement creation are mind-boggling once you start to think about it.

Now, remember how I started this post off talking about creating habits that move you towards your goals?

As I played around with this trigger and action thinking it dawned on me that I’ve been using this concept for years in my own habit formation and you can use it as well to help cement actions that you need to take.

If there’s an action that you know you need to take routinely, the trick to doing it more consistently and perhaps even making it a bit more fun to do is to connect a trigger to it’s achievement.

I believe you can use this for the simplest of tasks to even more time consuming, mentally and physically challenging actions. In fact, you can even use this conditional thinking to turn habit formation into a bit of a game.

Here’s a very simple example that I noticed I’ve been doing without even thinking about it.

One of the habits I try to support is water consumption. Most days my goal is to consume a gallon of water. On the days when I’m at my desk I use this conditional programming – if I need to go to the bathroom, then I need to refill my water bottle.

I know this is a pretty simple example, but I think it might help you start to see the logic behind the concept and how applying this logic to many areas could help you keep the focus on positive habit development.

Even little things take on a multiplier effect when you start accomplishing them routinely.

So, what about some other possible recipe creations?

The first step is to identify a goal and then identify an action that would help you move towards that goal. Finally, attach a trigger, something that you already do, and match it up with the action.

Let’s say you want to write 5 handwritten notes each week to people in your network, but you never seem to remember to do it.

How about this – If I get a new order confirmation, then write 1 handwritten note. (Obviously, you need to make it apply to your business situation, but I hope you get the idea.)

Or, what about some of these:

• If I hang up from a phone call, then do 10 pushups
• If I get a referral, then make a referral
• If you get a new customer, then call up an existing customer
• If you end a meeting, then find 2 blog post ideas
• If you make a sales call, then watch a how to video

I also think you can use this thinking to replace some of the habits that aren’t serving you well. Think about some of the unconscious ways you are using conditional behavior already. Most emotional eating and even smoking is linked to if this, then that behavior – you just don’t know it anymore.

What if you started to reprogram the action you took in response to the trigger?

Perhaps none of these simple examples apply to your current goal situation but I hope your starting to see how using this technique while trying establish a new habit might just remove the resistance and thought involved in taking right action – many times it’s the thinking about doing something that keeps us from actually doing it.

View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

If This, Then That is a post from: Home Wealth Project
Special Thanks: Kissimmee Auto Repair, Kenyan Safari Package, Sell Medical Practice

Internet Marketing Sucks – This Is Way Better! is a post from: Home Wealth Project
Special Thanks: Kissimmee Auto Repair, Kenyan Safari Package, Sell Medical Practice