• Tips to Make Your Online Holiday Shopping Safer
• Marketing Magic
• The Itsy Bitsy Spiders

Archived Issues

Tips to Make Your Online Holiday Shopping Safer

Nobody wants to see “How the Grinch Stole My Credit Card Numbers” or “Frosty the Scam Artist”, right? Well this holiday season, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is helping consumers find a happier ending to the problems of online identity theft, internet fraud, and other deceptive online practices that can creep into your online shopping experience, especially this time of year.

The FTC has launched a new web site, http://OnGuardOnline.gov that provides consumers with practical tips to help protect against internet fraud and guard personal information when shopping online. The information is presented by the federal governement, as well as other sources within the tech industry.

By following the OnGuardOnline guidelines, consumers can improve their chances of staying safe while shopping online. Some of the tips include:

• Know who you are dealing with and make sure the company is genuine. Almost anyone can put up a web site that sells things, and the site name can sound quite legitimate. Confirm the company’s physical address and phone number before you buy anything, just in case you need to contact them later.

• Don’t click on any pop-up windows or messages that ask for financial information; legitimate companies don’t ask for this type of information in a pop-up message.

• Be sure you are buying quality products. Words like “refurbished,” “vintage,” or “closeout” could mean the product is not new, or is not in good condition. Also watch out for name-brand products with prices that are too good to be true; this could indicate they are conterfeits.

• Comparison shop at other web sites, and be sure to add in the costs for shipping and handling. Sometimes, unscrupulous merchants will offer a super-low price on a product, but then make up for it in higher shipping charges. This can be a pretty common practice on online auction sites, too.

• Use your credit card for online purchases. Credit card purchases are protected under the Fair Credit Billing Act, giving you the right to dispute certain charges or withhold payment while a creditor investigates your complaint. Some credit cards offer extra protection against online fraud, and may even provide supplementary warranties or purchase protection benefits.

• Keep a paper trail. Print out all of your receipts and transactions when you make purchases, and save any email correspondence with merchants. You may also want to print out a picture of the product, its description, and the price of the item as published on the web site. Check your credit card statements carefully, and watch out for unauthorized or fraudulent charges.

• NEVER send your financial information in an email. Email is not a secure method of sending information, so don’t offer up any credit card numbers, checking account numbers, or social security numbers in an email – ever.

You can find more tips on safe shopping, spyware, phishing (email scams), anti-virus software, and lots of other useful security information on the http://OnGuardOnline.gov website.

Marketing Magic

When it comes to marketing your small business, it sometimes feels like you need a marketing wizard to determine what will really work the best for you. But with a little planning and creativity, you can identify the marketing ideas that are worth trying, and which ones are a waste of time and money for your business.
To help you find a marketing mix that will work for your business, here are four ideas you can use to create your own “marketing magic.”

Start With Some Research
First, you need to gather some information about your customers. You really should know everything possible about the types of people who buy your products and services. Write down the characteristics of your customers; such as how old they are, their income and education levels, marital status, where they work, the problems they face, where they live, their technology usage, where they shop…you get the idea.

Then think about your competition. Why do customers buy their products and services? What is unique about what they offer? Where are they located? Do you compete with other businesses only, or is there a do-it-yourself component that influences your customers? (For instance, if you cater gourmet Thanksgiving dinners, you may be competing with people who prefer to cook this meal themselves at home.) And don’t forget that “doing nothing” is also your competitor – people often do nothing when they don't feel compelled to make a decision or when they feel overwhelmed.

When you understand who your customers are and the alternatives offered by your competitors, you can begin to focus your marketing strategy on the customers who matter the most to your bottom line.

Meet Their Needs
If you did a good job of researching your customers (above), then you probably already know what their problems are. Think about the ways in which your products and services fit with your customers’ needs, and how you do this better than your competitors.

Who are the customers that need your products and services the most? Can your typical customer afford to buy from you? How will things be better for your customers if they purchase your products? Really take some time to think about the benefits that you provide to customers. Remember, benefits are very different from product features. You may be thrilled with the latest bells and whistles in your product, but your customer really cares about how your product will improve his or her situation.

Make a List of Current Marketing Strategies
Make a list of all of the marketing activities you’ve tried this year. Did you publish your business listing in the Yellow Pages? Offer any coupons? What types of advertising did you try? Also consider things like:

1. Web Sites & Blogs – are yours up to date? Do they have fresh content? Correct info?
2. Newsletters – do you currently send out an e-newsletter to your customers? Do you send out a printed newsletter? How often?
3. Search Engines – how are your search engine rankings? Has your site gone up or down over the past year? Do you know how to check this?
4. Printed Collateral – is your corporate brochure up to date? Did you send out flyers, postcards, or other direct mail pieces over the last 12 months?
5. Press Releases – when is the last time you sent out a press release?

Once you have your marketing activities listed, cross off the ones that did not drive any business your way. One common mistake that small companies often make is that they keep doing what they’ve always done, even if it’s not working for them anymore!

Create a New and Improved Marketing Plan
Take the marketing activities that did work for you and repeat them. Then, use the information you discovered about your customers to really target your marketing to reach customers where they live, work, shop, etc. Examine your competitors, and take note of the areas in which your company is superior or different. Focus on the benefits, not the features, that your product offers to customers. Think of creative ways to get your message out, and don’t be afraid to try new marketing activities!

Once you have determined the best marketing ideas for your business, implement them on a regular basis, and make sure that you track the results of each activity. That way, it will be easy to identify the activities that aren’t working (so you can drop them), and focus your time, budget, and attention on the ones that are getting the best results.

Remember the phrase “Build it, and they will come…” ? Well, that may be true for baseball fields in the movies, but it’s certainly not the case for web sites! In order to bring traffic to your web site, you are going to need the help of the web’s most used resource – Search Engines – and their "itsy bitsy spiders."

There are many search engines on the web, and they all use different methods of gathering and indexing web site information. The most important search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask, account for about 75% of all internet searches, while a handful of smaller search engines are responsible for the remaining 25%. The biggest obstacle to getting your site into a #1 position, though, is the sheer number of competing web sites out there. Think about it, of all the millions of web sites on the internet, how can you make your site come up first in the list? Or in some cases, the question may be how can you make your site show up at all?

Well, it’s not an exact science, but by understanding more about how search engines work, and understanding the importance of search engine spiders, you can improve your chances of getting noticed by the search engines.

Be Nice to Spiders
Search engines send out “spiders” (also called “bots”) that look for new information on the web, and they collect as much information as possible in the shortest amount of time possible. Since they are in such a hurry, your web site needs to be friendly and inviting, providing the spider with exactly what it is looking for, which is web site text (content), lots of links, and clean HTML code.

The search engine then takes all of the information the spider gathered and analyzes it to determine how “important” your web site is (in their opinion, of course). Then, when a visitor types in a search term, the search engine displays results in order of importance, based on the information gathered by the spider. Depending on how important the search engine thinks your site is, your web site may or may not be displayed in the search results.

Food for Thought - and Spiders
So you can see how important it is that your web site be spider-friendly in order to have any chance of showing up in the search engine results. To be successful, you must feed the spiders what they want the most – good content, abundant links, and clean code. The words people use when they search – often called keywords – ultimately determine which web sites are displayed when a search engine finds sites that match those keywords, and all of it is based on what those little spiders said about your web site!

So be very careful with what you “feed” the spiders, it could mean the difference between good search engine positions, and not showing up in the search results at all.

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