The easiest and quickest budget item fora small business to cut back on is marketing. There’s no immediate affect felt, so you think it might be safe to cut, but nothing could be worse for your business. The Harvard Business Review said:

It is well documented that brands that increase (marketing) during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic times.

The best time to take advantage of your place in the market is in an economic downturn. Because other people are quick to cut marketing, you will have the perfect opportunity to reach even more prospective customers. In a downturn, aggressive PR and Communications strategy is the solution.

Building or updating your web site is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to reach those prospective customers. Now is the time to put some time into reviewing your web site. Does it say everything it needs to say about your small business? Can you add features that allow more customer involvement or at least feedback? Maybe it’s time to have a professional review your site and give you suggestions on how it can be improved.

Now is the time to spend more on advertising, not less.

SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources » Blog Archive » How to Convert More Website Traffic into More Customers & Sales by Inviting Prospects to Take Action

Here Are 3 Easy “Calls to Action” to Convert More Website Traffic into Sales on the About Us, Media and Contact Us Pages

1. On the “About Us” page, after your bio, add a powerful client testimonial praising your expertise and your measurable and specific impact on the client’s bottom line. Then add the line “Ready for these kinds of results in your organization? Click here to get started now!” (This links to the contact page).

This call to action, in fact, can be used for any page that does not have an obvious next step.

2. Your “Media” page should not just be a collage of logos. It should contain short videos of your TV appearances, audio clips of your radio interviews or featured-expert interviews on teleseminars. It should also include links to the articles where you were quoted or links to your articles that got published on the top websites. Let the world see what a sought-after, in-demand expert you really are.

With that being said, a simple, but effective call to action would be, “Sarah B. Marketer looks forward to being the featured expert on your next program. To schedule her appearance right now click here.” (This links to the Contact page.)

3. The Contact page, by definition, is a call to action. It needs to take your visitor by the hand and lead them through the next step.

It should not just be a page that displays your mailing address, phone number, and main corporate e-mail. Rather, it should lead with a paragraph that congratulates the reader for their decision to take action. Then, it should explain the process for getting in touch with you. It should also describe what someone should expect once they contact you.

Next, guide them through a simple web form that asks specific questions. This way you can do your homework and present prospects with a specific response and action plan. Make sure to keep this form as brief as possible, and only ask questions that directly inform how you and your visitor would do business together in the near future.

Having a web form, rather than just a link to your e-mail address, guides your visitor to take a specific action. This raises their level of commitment to you and increases your chances that they will buy from you.

Bottom line: Make sure that every page on your website provides a roadmap for your visitor with a specific call to action. This is the only way your prospects will reach the destination that you prepared for them. And, it’s the only way you will increase your website sales conversions.

Read the entire article at SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources » Blog Archive » How to Convert More Website Traffic into More Customers & Sales by Inviting Prospects to Take Action

They haven’t quite released WordPress 2.7 yet, so I’m still rocking the RC1 version of it. They say they will release the final version tomorrow. A few more screenshots today and it should be good to go.

Web Site Starter Kit should be released by the end of the week.

Argh! Of course, after I’ve written the directions on how to use WordPress, they come out with a new version, version 2.7, and changed the entire interface, so I have to rewrite the “how to” sections, with new screenshots, so they actually match what it really is like now.

More work for me. Better book for you. The book should be available to buy in the next few days also. I still need to run it through some reviews to make sure it’ll be as good as I think it should be.

The new admin interface is much better and easier to use. I like it a lot and I’m glad it happened now and not after I started to sell Web Site Starter Kit. I’d hate to have angry customers.

If you sign up for a free account at WordPress.com today, you’ll get to use the latest version. If you download it to use on your own “cheap” web host, then you’ll get the old version. Version 2.7 for download should be updated in the next few days.

Web Site Starter Kit First Draft is done!

As an example, I created a free site aimed at 3 keywords. Within 3 weeks of creating it, it was number 3 in the search results for those keywords in Google. That shocked even me. This SEO stuff really works.

Of course, now that I’ve written it all out, WordPress is releasing a new version and the admin interface is very different. It’s in production on wordpress.com, but the downloadable version is not available yet. It should be any day now.

When it is available, I’ll go do screenshots and the book will be ready to sell. It will be aimed at small businesses, really small ones, and in addition to background on general good web site ideas, it will have a “free” and a “cheap” method for creating web sites.

It should be all done and ready to go by next week.

You should set up addresses like support@ and sales@ and information@, just to look professional.

Set up your email application to log into that account, then use it to send and receive email.

You should also have a “catch all” account that will probably get filled with spam, but you’ll also get those emails with misspelled email addresses that you might otherwise miss.

You should set up addresses like “support@” and “sales@” and “information@”, just to look professional. You, or someone, should be able to log in and send and receive email at each of your custom addresses.

Also, don’t let any address lay dormant. Make sure that someone is logging into every account, every 10 minutes. “I sent you an email last week. Did you get it?” is not the question you want to hear.

http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html

The two that I want to point out are:

link: Find linked pages, i.e., show pages that point to the URL.

site: Search only one website or domain.

link:websitestarterkit.com

If you want to know who’s pointing at your site, where your incoming links are coming in from, search for “link:www.yourdomain.com”, without the quotes, of course. This will return all of the pages on all of the sites that have a link to your site.

If you want to know who's pointing at your site, where your incoming links are coming in from

You can ask the owners of those sites to change the text and maybe they will, if that will help you out for specific keywords. As much as you get good points for them using keywords, you also get bad points if all of the link text is identical. That make you look like you’ve automated it. There needs to be a certain organic-ness to the text so Google knows that there are real people putting them in.

site:websitestarterkit.com

The next good search is “site:” followed by your domain name. (No space after the colon, by the way.) This search will list all of the pages that Google has indexed from your site. Any URL for a page that starts with your domain name.

This is how you can be sure that Google has indexed all of the pages in your site. Check the “cache date” if they list that. You might be able to tell how often they spider your site. If you are a good blogger and post something new every day and you publish an XML site map for them, which is easy to do in WordPress, then they will probably be looking at your site often.

Stores seeking sales on Web :: PostStar.com

Locally, Paul O’Donnell, owner of Celtic Treasures in Saratoga Springs, saw an influx of orders Monday thanks to a free shipping offer.

“UPS came in with a big hand truck to carry it all out,” he said.

Online since 1996, Celtic Treasures has established an online presence and customer database that would make many small businesses drool. O’Donnell’s store appears on the first page of a Google search for “Irish gifts,” which he called “priceless” and chalked up to longevity.

Celtic Treasures in Saratoga Springs

While the Cyber Monday phenomenon is largely absent from Main Street, online stores are becoming a popular way for local merchants to reach out to their existing customer base, and sometimes beyond.

In Glens Falls, SensibiliTeas owner Donnalynn Milford said a Web site has allowed her to send teas, herbs and spices all over the world. And when gas prices exceeded $4 per gallon, she noticed that customers from Chestertown and North Creek were ordering online, too.

“It was cheaper for me to send it to them, than (for them) to drive down and get it,” Milford said.

For most small businesses, a functional Web site is as good as a second storefront, said Todd Shimkus, president and CEO of the Adirondack Regional Chambers of Commerce.

“The primary benefit for a local small business, irregardless of where you are, is it gives you a chance to compete with those larger operations who are trying to draw business away,” Shimkus said.

Merchants with a unique, specialized product often have an easier time attracting an online audience.

Read the entire article at Stores seeking sales on Web :: PostStar.com

The main cost to build a web site is the manpower to build it.

In my experience, even the building of the site is easy. The real time suck is politics. The meetings between marketing and well, marketing, seemed to drag out every decision. They needed to be sure everything was just right before we could move ahead. When you can tell a developer to “do it this way”, they can knock it out quickly. When you ask a marketing person which way they want it, have a seat and wait.

Don’t fall into this same trap. Just get the site up and out the door. When you build custom stuff, it will take a bit to make changes, but using WordPress, it’s easy. Make all of the changes you want.

Make a decision. Make it happen. Bam. You’re done.

Old Media Interview: Aron Pilhofer, interactive guru, editor at The New York Times | Old Media, New Tricks

Everything we use is free and open-source… The cost here isn’t software, or even hardware, which is relatively cheap these days… The price most … organizations (and it’s not just small ones) seem reluctant to pay is for people…

Read the entire article at Old Media Interview: Aron Pilhofer, interactive guru, editor at The New York Times | Old Media, New Tricks

Your business name, a description of what you do, where you do it, who you do it for.

1. Your business name, a description of what you do, where you do it, who you do it for. Be short and to the point. They have other pages on the site for in depth information if they want more detailed information. This is for people to know at a glance what they are looking at.

2. Your address, phone number and email address. Be sure to put all of this information in full, including the street address, city, state and zip code. Put the area code with the phone number.

3. Hours that your business is open.

4. A list of cities you serve. If someone searches for the type of business that you have plus the city name, they can find it in the search engines.