Now We're Really Into the Holiday Season

Now we're really into the holiday season. Tomorrow is Halloween and then that's it. People start going crazy buying, shopping, buying some more. You know you're one of them, but wouldn't it be nice to be on the side of the companies making all that holiday money? That's one of the reasons I became a salesperson. I mean, I don't sell, sell, as in a door to door saleswoman, or a commission based sales person. I just wait for customers to come to my online stores and buy.

Yes, yes, customers do tend to call more at this time of year, mostly, because like me, they want to actually talk to the person who will be taking their hard earned money and then getting that special gift to the person they love. From cufflinks to marriage boxes, from socks to .... well, you know where I'm going. I am absolutely certain that participating as a consumer is good, but having a store where people will be coming in to buy the things you sell, is very nice...like icing on a cake, if you will.

Have you been working on your online store? Now's the time to see the benefits of all that hard work. If you haven't been working on one, don't worry, it's not too too late. Get started now and try to have things in order by the day after Thanksgiving. You'll see what I mean.

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I Just Love my Recliner!

I just love my recliner! After a long day on the computer sitting in a relatively comfortable office chair, I can just fall asleep on my favorite recliner. It takes up a lot of space, but I think it's worth it. Do you have a favorite spot in your home that you just love to be in when you need to unwind? One of the nice things about working from home is that you can go and reset your battery whenever you want. You can turn off the phone, kick back and relax or you can handle family matters. I enjoy the flexibility of working from home for many reasons, but especially for the ones I just mentioned. So what do you do to unwind?

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Focus on Keywords

I've spoken about this topic before, but this is a topic that bears repeating simply because of the pure success you can have if you just apply this technique to your e-commerce website. What am I talking about? I am talking about focusing on keywords and keyword phrases. More specifically, I'm talking about the most popular phrases that will bring customers to your pages.

When you sell hundreds of items, how do you become specific? Simple, each item should have its own set of keywords and phrases. What I have done is created a page that can list my products, in specific groupings or categories and then pages within those categories for each of my products to stand on their own. I still use the popular keyword suggestion tool from Overture, because I think it's a good gauge of the market's interest in a particular item. Using the keywords and phrases that I come up with, I build that information into my website.

For example, let's say that you sell knives or, more specifically, Swiss Army knives. What you can do is go to the Keyword Selector Tool mentioned and punch in "swiss army" and enter. Voila! You will see an entire list of searches related to "swiss army." These are some of the popular keywords and phrases that I came up with:

17063 swiss army watch
15550 swiss army
12799 swiss army knife
2444 swiss army luggage
1128 swiss army backpack
852 swiss army pocket knife
788 victorinox swiss army
707 victorinox swiss army knife
650 swiss army bag
601 swiss army watch band
575 wenger swiss army
556 man swiss army watch
535 womens swiss army watch
499 swiss army cologne
433 victorinox swiss army watch
428 discount swiss army watch
423 wenger swiss army watch
359 lady swiss army watch
345 swiss army romance
344 swiss army laptop backpack
326 swiss army pocket watch
314 wenger swiss army knife
249 swiss army watch woman
241 swiss army brand

So, you see that this is a popular brand. The numbers next to the words show how many people searched those particular phrases in Yahoo. You can then multiply that number by, at least, three since Yahoo searches are said to represent only approximately 30% of the market. Now you know that you should use the phrase "swiss army knife" not only in your text, description and title, but in your meta tags too. Yes, I know meta tags are becoming less and less popular, but it wouldn't hurt.

O.K. that's just a little sampling of what you can do to help search engines find your website when someone is looking for a specific product. The more focussed you can be, the better.

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Understand Customers and Win Sales

Here we are almost at the end of the Halloween season and closing in on the Thanksgiving/Christmas shopping season. It's been a whirlwind of a month for my companies. I love this time of year, because the expectation of getting sales is ever present and comes to fruition more times than not. I wanted to talk a briefly about advertising and testing on your website.

I have heard time and time again, by internet money making savvy gurus, how important split testing is, how important constant changing and reviewing is to the success of your online business. In fact, I have experienced the truth of this. I sell lots of products and some just sell better than others. For the ones that sell better, I try to put them in more prominent places so that I can sell more. For the ones that don't sell so well, I try my best to feature them and even work on the meta tags and seo techniques for their particular web page.

It's a constant battle that online and offline businesses have to work on. In fact, one way to do this is by performing customer surveys. This is something I believe I will be looking into in the near future, most likely next year, after this fourth quarter rush is over. Web Surveys are excellent ways to find out how your customers feel about their experience shopping at your stores. There are numerous Online survey software solutions to choose from. You just have to review them and pick the one that provides the right feedback for your company's needs.

Well, I hope these suggestions help your business grow. I'm looking forward to seeing how well they work with mine. For a free survey software review opportunity, please visit http://www.vovici.com/ to explore Vovici's award-winning solution, EFM Feedback.

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Bad Credit Consumers on the Rise

Using credit cards is the most popular way to make a purchase in this day and age. It is so popular that bad credit consumers are on the rise. What is a bad credit consumer? It's a silly question, right? Well, I'll answer it anyway. It's a consumer who has bad credit, but who still buys on credit anyway. In fact, for this reason, companies have been established just to help this type of consumer turn their credit history around.

Credit repair counselors are as much on the rise as bad credit consumers. Do you wish you could buy a house or a car, but your credit is bad? There are bad credit offers still available to you. You can either choose to sink further into the bad credit mire, or you can lift yourself out of the swamp and repair your credit. You can reestablish yourself as a better credit risk to credit issuing companies. How can you do this? This can be done by starting to make payments on time. This will help you rebuild your credit and your financial future.

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Watching Movies Over the Weekend.

I was watching a movie the other day that I thought was absolutely out there. It was a movie called "Bugs" with Ashley Judd. The main character in this movie was a complete psychopath and by the end of the movie he had convinced Ashley's character, Agnes, to the point where she believed his mental ramblings.

It's a scary thought to know that we are all that close to tipping over the edge, you know. I mean, say you had these favorite silver cufflinks and your significant other hid them just to see how you would react. Then say you approach your significant other with total trust and the belief that she would tell you where they were if she knew. So, you ask her and she says that she has no clue. You go on believing her until you find them in her jewelry box. Then you approach her again and she says that you must've put them there. It's a mind game, right?

I know this sort of thing happens all the time. It happened to me. Once I was in this relationship where I thought I was the one going crazy. I'm not there anymore, thank God, but like I said, we are all just a little crazy and can be tipped over the edge by the strangest thing. Ashley Judd's character was convinced that there were bugs in her home and that these bugs were planted there by the government. I won't tell you how it ends, but suffice it to say, she went seriously over the edge.

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Reviewing Related Websites

I own a website that sells toys and collectibles. How do I know what is hot and what is not? How do you know what to sell on your site? You review other websites related to your site to see what they are selling. You don't just go about this any old way. I'd recommend you go to Google and type in a few of the keywords or phrases that you would want searchers to use to find your site and then see what comes up.

For example, if I sold slot cars or even remote control airplanes, I'd use either of those phrases and see what Google shows in their number one, two and three slots. I'd then review those websites to see what they are doing differently than me. I'd imitate what I find, slowly making changes to my site to see what works. How do you know your changes are working? Well, check your sales! Check your visitor to sale ratios. Continue this on a weekly or even monthly basis. Don't stop testing. The market is constantly changing and so should your website. Always keep your website at the heart and pulse of the market.

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Rating Your Employees

I was searching the web today and noticed an employee performance evaluator that I thought I'd bring to the table for your review. It's a 360 degree evaluation of all your employees. I am personally my only employee. Technically, my husband works with me, but I don't think he'd stand up the this evaluation. It looks pretty interesting and even provides feedback on ways to enhance your employees' performance. You remember when you use to get a happy face or a star for doing well on a task at school. I guess even as adults we need that type of encouragement. What do you think about employee performance evaluators?

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Micro SD Cards

So, as you may have read, I was on vacation for the better part of last week and this week. I took so many pictures and just need to share. What did we do without digital cameras? What did we do without micro sd cards? I mean, maybe you pay a little more for an sd card than you would pay for film, but not that much more. On top of that, you get a return on your investment that is a hundred times better than having film. For someone who hated waiting for film to be developed at the local film development shop, I am in love with my digital camera! I mean, it's instant gratification, isn't it! I've already seen all of my pictures. I saw them before I came back from vacation. I saw them during and was able to share them with the family we were leaving behind. Oh Yeah!

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Heading Back Home!

Well, vacation is almost officially over and I'm heading back to the home base. I'm actually looking forward to being home. It's been a whirlwind these last few days. I'm ready for drug rehab. Not really, but I'm sure over the next few days, the quiet of being home is going to feel like I'm in withdrawal. I'm looking forward to it though. My husband's family is going through a lot of health issues right now and it was a little overwhelming. I just pray everything improves on their end. Anyway, I'll get back to blogging tomorrow. Until then...:-)

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Having an Online Business and Vacation

I think this is the first time I've been on a long vacation while having a home business. Yes, I've been in business for over a year, but can you believe it? I haven't taken a long vacation in about two years. I'm really excited to finally be at the airport waiting for the plane. While waiting I was surfing the web and came across these beautiful Hublot watches. Have you ever seen these? This is the kind of stuff you only see when you take the time out to peruse through a magazine at the airport. They are so nice. The perfect gift for a man.

But, I digress. One of the most trying situations I came across while preparing my business for this trip was making sure I had all my passwords and phone numbers for the companies I deal with. I also wanted to be sure to have my pricelists in order. It's crazy, but I actually had to make myself carry less paperwork so that I wouldn't break my back. I have to remember I'm suppose to be on vacation. In reality, the stores are online, so they are open 24-7. They are working for me even when I'm sleeping.

I love that about having an online business. Don't you!

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Sell Everything Including Your Bathroom Sink

E-commerce websites are very popular at this time of year especially. That's not to say that people aren't going to their local Target or Walmart or even the Malls, but online shopping is becoming so popular. I read one company mention the dot come era to the point of asking if online businesses are headed for that balloon pop that was experienced when the early dot com popularity came about.

As you know, people are practically selling everything from their body parts to their bathroom sinks online. I personally don't think we're headed for a bust. Online businesses are thriving because of the nature of technology today. They are thriving because people enjoy convenience. They are thriving because people are more educated about online shopping than they were in the past.

What do you think about the future of e-commerce?

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Follow Up On Abandoned Orders!

Once visitors start to come to your website on a regular basis and you start picking up customers, you might notice that you have some abandoned orders. Do you ignore these abandoned orders or do you attempt to turn them into paying customers?

What I have found is that there are many reasons to abandon cart. Someone may be looking for an easy way to pay for expedited shipping which you might only offer if they contact you by phone. Another person might be interested in the product, but maybe it's just too expensive so they decide to forget about it. Then again, a person might have abandoned their order because they just couldn't get their credit card to work.

These are some of the many reasons why you should not ignore your abandoned cart customers. There are ways to resolve issues like these over the phone. In my case, at least 10-15% of my sales come from not ignoring a customer who abandoned cart. Now that you know that very important information, here's something completely off topic. Did you know that there's a website that sells Tennessee football pictures. I tell you, there's a site for everything!

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)