How Vistors Rate Your Site

Another item on the credibility front — this article goes over the basics of visitor preference and what visitors really look at.

Their conclusions? That most visitors immediately judge the site on it’s design — professionality and applicability to purpose — and trust a site that “looks good” more than a site that doesn’t.

Once that test is passed, however, visitors then rate a site on its contents and how well it meets their needs.

The upshot is that having both a good design and solid in-depth content are key. If yoru design turns them off, they won’t be staying to view your content, but if they can’t find what they need, they’ll be gone anyway.

How Credible is Your Site?

Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab’s Web Credibility Research project has compiled a list of 10 Credibility Guidelines for web sites.

This list was compiled over a period of three years, and reflects interviews with over 4500 people.

While most of the guidelines are common sense (make sure your site is easy to use, accurate, and recently updated), some of the items may surprise you — or at least their order of importance may surpise you.

You can find the current list of guidelines here

Blogs Go Pro - Using Weblogs On Commercial Sites

Unless you’ve been living in a cave somewhere, you’ve probably come across the “blog” (short for “web log”) phenomenon — sites, usually run by an individual, with a “dear diary” approach, and typically including commentary on a specific topic or event of the day.

The mushrooming popularity of blogs has lead to a barrage of supporting technology, some of which is easily re-purposed for professional and commercial sites.
One of the frustratiosn of many site owners is how to keep the site “fresh”, put out important news or product info, and not either find themselves hiring or becoming a fulltime webmaster or going into the poorhouse hiring contracters for frequent updates.

[Read more]

How Google’s PageRank Works

If you’ve ever used the superb Google Toolbar, you’ve probably noticed the PageRank “thermometer” that changes when you move from page to page.

This same PageRank is used to weight a page’s placement in Google’s search engine listings.

Since Google is one of the best sources of qualified traffic on the net, it is important to understand how your site is ranked via pagerank. The gory details are explained in this article, along with at least an approximation of the forumla used to calculate the rank.

[Read more]

Whatever happened to customer service?

Have you ever been fortunate enough to experience this seemingly extinct concept called “customer care?” If so, you’re one of the few that has yet to experience true customer service online. More often than not, we get terrible service, discourteous service, or a complete and total lack of service. Sound familiar yet?
Have you ever sent questions to a company you were thinking of buying from, but only got half of those questions answered? And, the ones that were answered were only HALF ANSWERED themselves? If so, did you follow through to buy from them? Probably not.

[Read more]

‘Hit the Road, Jack!’ Giving Difficult Customers THE BOOT!

Have you ever heard the adage, “the customer is always right?” Yes? Well, it doesn’t apply to home business owners and entrepreneurs. No, I haven’t lost my marbles. It’s true. This CAN NOT apply for home-based businesses, and you’d better believe I’m going to tell you why.
NOTE: Before you go and get “boot happy,” realize that this article is NOT to be followed as standard customer service procedure. It should be used with care, VERY rarely, and hardly at all. Knowing how to deal with difficult customers is imperative for quality customer service.
A small business owner simply can not afford to treat all of his or her prospective customers with the same level of service. Why? It’s simple. Home business owners need to be selective, to a degree, in order to keep business running smoothly, and to satisfy the prospects that DESERVE satisfaction.

[Read more]

Leo Laporte’s Technology Almanac

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

INTERVIEW: Power-Marketing Tactics to BOOST Your Online Business

Harmony Major got started in online business in 1998, as an affiliate of a company called OutSource2000. Her first Web page started out as a single gateway page for the company, to make it possible to list her site in search engines and directories.

As Harmony kept adding the new affiliate programs she joined and the resources she used to PROMOTE those programs, that gateway page soon developed into her first, full-fledged website, which is now .

[Read more]

Create Your Own Ezine Traffic Machine

How would you like to reach a couple of million people with your products and services…for FREE?

That is exactly what occurs when you start writing articles and submitting them to hundreds of ezines. Currently there are tens of thousands of ezine publishers online and almost all of them have one thing in common. They are all looking for good content to publish in their newsletter.
That is exactly what occurs when you start writing articles and submitting them to hundreds of ezines. Currently there are tens of thousands of ezine publishers online and almost all of them have one thing in common. They are all looking for good content to publish in their newsletter.

[Read more]

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