6 Steps to a Brand New Website

In this article I'll show you how to design your own website in an hour. Though it is simple, most people don't do it. I want you to change that and go ahead and set up your own website that you can be proud of and show it to your friends.

1. Buy a domain name and hosting

The first step is to buy a domain name. Usually when you buy hosting, you get a free domain name for as long as you host with the provider. My favorite hosting service is Dreamhost. You might want to buy with them. Go ahead and buy some space and register a domain name.

2. Install WordPress

WordPress was built as a blogging platform but it can be used to hold regular websites also. Whether it is for your blog or for your business/portfolio, WordPress will be good. Login to the control panel of your domain hosting service and install WordPress. If you are using an application like cPanel, WordPress will be present under Fantastico heading.

3. Choose a theme

WordPress has thousands of theme designs, each one designed for a particular situation. Whether it's a portfolio, or a pet blog, or a journalist website, WordPress is sure to have a theme design that will come close to your taste. Choose the theme, download it to your hard drive, unzip it, upload it to the server using an FTP program, and you are set. Now login to the WordPress admin panel and activate the bloody theme! Your site is almost ready now, isn't it? We'll just add some content and we'll be rockin'.

4. Add content

Now's the time to add those valuable words that the world is waiting to read. Go to the admin panel and keep adding pages (if it's your business website/portfolio) till it sounds enough. If it's your blog, add your first blog article. Don't forget to add more content at least once a week. If it's your business site, add content about your products, services, about yourself, and never forget to add put down your email and address. Make it easy to contact you.

5. Publicize the site

Yay! We did it. I mean, you did. That's an effort for the world to see and appreciate. Go ahead grab that address book in your email and dash a quick note to all of your friends, bro, sis, mom and dad. Don't forget to add your website address in your signature in your email. You can do this from your settings page in your email client.

6. Get some sweet tea and look at the beauty you've created

Have you grabbed your tea, coffee, beer, whatever you like. What you just did is truly an amazing thing. You thought of having your own website and there you have it. Under one hour or not, that's not important. You did it, I couldn't do it in my first attempt. I am proud of you child ;-). Seriously, I mean it.

CRM: A Method That is Helping Business Owners Reduce Their Customer Acquisition Cost

Business owners spend a lot of money to get new customers. In some cases, only in the second of third visit of a customer does a business make profit. Hence more money is spent on marketing (advertising, promotional mails, free samples and more) to bring in more customers constantly to keep up with the ad spends. This is the reality of most businesses.

A new tool is being built to solve the fundamental problems of customer acquisition, which in turn reduces the expenditure on customer acquisition. The domain is called customer relationship management and the tool is called customer relationship management system.

CRM software can help businesses learn which customers produce the most profit, not just the most revenue

Business owners have at hand during every interaction with the customer not just the revenue, but the profit per customer (calculated based on the amount spent on sales calls and other interactions). This helps the business owner (customer care executive) decide which customer to spend the most time with. Working this way, the business owner will realize that 80 percent of the revenue is coming from 20 percent of his customers. This gives key intelligence about who comes back to do business. Targeting the marketing only at those people will be more profitable and less expensive.

CRM helps analyze buying patterns, which in turn identify potential high-value customers

Technology lets us compile all sorts of customer information, which when sorted thoughtfully, give us deeper insight For example, you begin identifying why customers buy certain products and services. It could be because of a special offer, a sales, geographic location or the time. After compiling this data and merging it with customer details will help us segment customer types and buying patterns. Making the pattern happen again might result in more sales. It might look like banging the hammer at the same place, but looking deeper, what the CRM does is nothing very different. The CRM tool let us analyze customer behavior from several points that lets us take better decisions. CRM is a valuable tool to reduce customer acquisition costs. I will write more articles on how to use this tool effectively in future articles.

Essential Features in an E-Commerce store

When you are prospecting to design an e-commerce store, you get thousands of vendors with gazillion features. You don't need clutter. You just need those features that are work tightly with each other to get more sales than ever. We think the following features help you do just that.

Search engine optimization

The products you want to sell need to be found. Any good e-commerce store backend will have provisions to enter meta tags that make it easy on the search engines. The software should easily integrate with an analytics software like Google Analytics. The provision should come out of the box. If you are having an old store, redirecting it to the new store should be made simple through 301 redirects.

Shared customer intelligence

The store should collect and display customer reviews and ratings. Have Amazon type buying recommendations after the user buys each product (Upselling).

Design customization

The design and layout should be modifiable at the store operator's discretion.

Inventory management

The inventory manager should make it possible to easily manage the inventory. Categories and subcategories should be created easily and assigned products in as few clicks as possible.

Promotions

The ecommerce should make it easy to add promotions and offers (fixed-price or percentage-based).

Shipping

Provisions for calculating shipping either by flat fee, or by destination-based or by distance-based should, or by using a rate table should be provided. Choice of shipper should also be provided.

Reports

Search orders by date and generate reports in multiple formats. An integrated report generating tool (multiple options) is desirable in an e-commerce store. Monitor the performance including sales, refunds and feedback. Provisions to download a inventory report (and to be automatically sent to an email) are all basic to an e-commerce store.

Contextual help

An e-commerce backend can be puzzling at the start. The user should be guided with enough formal training and contextual help when no one's around to help.

Why Seacrh Engine Optimization is Really Really Important For Your Business

Introduction

Hello, chiefs out there! This article is for you. To appreciate the fact it's great that you have a website for yourself or your company. But having a website is not enough anymore. Your website has got to be found when somebody is searching for the product / service you are selling. That is the primary purpose of having a website online, and you got to realize this and start doing those things that make you be found on the web. We'll explore one such method that helps you be found - 'search engine optimization'.

What is search engine optimization?

Search engine optimization is process of making a website be found on the search results for particular words. That's all. The majority of the web traffic is driven by search engines, that is, most activities on the internet are initiated by search engines. Search engines compare the word the user is searching and sees if it is present in your web page; if it is, your web page has a chance of coming in the search result.

When people look for your product or service that you sell, it's very rare that they type in your website directly into the browser and make the purchase. For example, if someone from Chennai needs a teakwood chair, it's highly likely he types in furniture shops in Chennai. If you are selling furniture and have a website, you should make sure your website has the words the user will search for, in this case, furniture shops in chennai. If your website doesn't contain what the user searched for, he's not going to find you. We just missed a business that was possible. More relevant words you include in your website, more businesses you do. Well, more money should I say!