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Don’t just sit around on the Internet, put your web site to work.

Guest post by: Liz Walker

Article Overview: So your business has a web site. Great! As we’ve said before, “It’s a credibility issue—these days a business is expected to have a web site.” But wait a minute, what’s the site doing for you? Sure, your web site is helping your customers get to know, like and trust you by building awareness, providing information and shortening the selling cycle, but could it be doing more? YES!

Don’t just sit around on the Internet, put your web site to work.

Things change rapidly in the web world. It's easier than ever to put your web site to work: collecting names and email addresses, providing visual product demos, and transacting online. If your web site is not doing some, or all, of these things, you're missing the boat! By now you realize the importance of building a database of customers and potential customers so that you can stay in touch with them by providing valuable information, incentives and specials. This can be done easily by offering a free, downloadable "whitepaper" or report on a key issue or frustration in your industry, with (of course) your hints and tips on how to solve the issue. If you don't fancy yourself as a writer, look for writing services you can find on the web and have a professional do it for surprisingly little cost.

Offer a download that can be retrieved after the prospect enters his or her name and email on a pop-up form. Presto! They have your free report and you have their name and email, and what's more important, permission to market to them in future.

You can do something similar by asking prospects to sign on for your periodic newsletter or blog.

Some businesses sell products or services that can be demonstrated using an online video demo. Video production is cheap and easy with all of the cameras and software available now. An online demo can clarify the benefits your product or service provides, but not only that, it can help your prospect to get to know you if you appear in the video.

An added benefit is that your video can greatly increase the traffic to your site. Post the video on YouTube, and other video posting sites, with a link to your site. Google actually can search just for video content. This means adding a video makes you a lot more likely to be found among the millions and millions of sites on the web.

Finally, what are you doing about online transactions? With services like PayPal.ca and others, it's really easy to set up a shopping cart so you can actually sell on line! No need for anyone to come to your store or business-you're open 27/7 and the payments flow to your bank account for a small transaction fee. You get a notice of what was sold to whom and all you need to do is ship it out!

And should we add, you also have a new name and email to add to that all-important database.

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Article Tags: added benefit, cameras, email addresses, frustration, google, incentives, missing the boat, periodic newsletter, product demos, prospects, providing valuable information, site google, video content, video demo, video posting sites, video production, web world, whitepaper, writing services, youtube
Referred by: http://www.makingprofitspour.com



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Re: Workaholism May Be Killing You - Hi Evan, Thanks for this post, I found the article very interesting and I do regularly work 12 hours or more but that is a total of my day job then Internet work when I get home, I must say that I agree with Michelle that I only feel that I work at my day job and my Internet work I really enjoy although some nights I go to bed absolutely shattered. There is an old saying that I think I may have used here before but it is something like “If you enjoy what you do then you never do a days work in your life”. If I ever get to the stage when I work form home full time then this would be the case for me because I love this work and would do it full time from home tomorrow if I could. regards, Mal.
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