Archive for July, 2009

Can you really create a free website? Totally free? The website can really be free, however, you will incounter hosting and other fees, but, you can still find some real bargains. Have you ever gotten a good deal by taking advantage of a TV ad or an ad at a local store? Sure, most of us have and the savings were real. Realize that you can get a free website design working for you in a very short amount of time.

Does anyone really offer free websites?

How can anyone offer totally free websites, should you trust these sites? Not sure, seek answers through the site contact information until you are sure. You will need to edit your free website and editor software’s are not all equal, check out the equality of the editor. Make sure if you sign up for an offer that you are allowed to terminate at anytime you choose without paying additional fees.

Why consider a free website?

Why should you consider using a free website? Website building is confusing for most people starting out online.  You may not have the time to learn what is necessary to allow you to construct your own site. You may not have the foggiest idea of where to start or the money to hire a site constructed. Some free sites do not allow you to control all aspect of the site.

What are the advantages of a free website?

Site software requires time to learn. Time savings, low costs, taking advantage of other people’s knowledge, greatly cutting your learning curve, allowing you to make money from a site within a short period of time are your advantages. Most offers will provide some degree of free support and training to help you achieve your goals.

How can I check out these offers?

If there is something that is not clear to you, use the site contact information to ask questions. Your chances of finding a totally free prebuilt website  without any fees at all are slim at best, however, there are free websites that could be up and running, indexed, in your name, all in a short amount of time.  

Is it really worth it?

Free website template can get you off and running as a webmaster allowing you to learn as you go in an on the job training which can provide you with income to more than pay your expenses.

For any business that wants to offer products or services that are highly focused and well targeted market research is important. Business decisions that are based on good intelligence and good market research can minimise risk and pay dividends. By making market research part and parcel of the business process and conducting market research throughout the life cycle of a product or service market research will bring the following benefits:-

• Market research will help you better communicate – Your current customers experiences are a valuable information source, not only will they allow you to gauge how well you currently meet their expectations they can also tell you where you are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong. By asking the customer you not only show them that you care but you also take the guesswork out of customer services.
• Market research helps you identify opportunities – If a new service is planned and you want to know the attitudes people have then market research can help, not only by evaluating the potential for the new idea, but also by identify the areas where a marketing message needs to be fine tuned.
• Market research will minimise risk – Market research can identifying what is needed for a new service and product and ensure that the development of a product matches demand.
• Market research creates benchmarks and helps you measure your progress – Unless you measure you will not be able to properly gauge how well your business is performing. Preliminary research may be able to identify problems in the service you intend to offer or in your product, regular market research will show if progress is being made and, if positive, will help motivate a team.

Market research brings considerable benefits and it is perhaps surprising how few businesses invest sufficient resources to gather good intelligence that will help them improve business. Many may think that market research takes too much time and effort but that is just not the case anymore as through the power of the Internet online survey software is readily available and vital market research data can now be gathered in a quick, simple and cost effective manner.

Why bother?

The life blood of any business is good customer service. New customers are important but good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business is likely to win many more customers through recommendations and remember, if you are not taking care of your customers, your competition will.

Online customer satisfaction surveys will demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

Where do you start?

Objective – Before you start creating your survey clarify the objectives of the survey, in that way you will find it easier to decide what are the right questions to ask.

Analysis – Having completed the survey consider how you will analyse the answers.

Bare in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where the respondents are asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than questions that are ‘open’ (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

A lot will depend on the likely volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – As well as obtaining valuable market research data keep in mind that customer surveys are also a good way to advertise areas of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

Before you publish the survey confirm that the questions you have asked will provide you with market research data that when analyzed will help you make informed decisions.

Next, read through the survey from a marketing view point, check that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research – provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing – promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education – advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

In asking this question the store will hopefully not only receive useful feedback on the baby changing facility but they will also promote the store as being child-friendly even beyond the customers who actually require the facility.

Warts and all – to benefit most from a customer survey you need to avoid the temptation, in any way, of attempting to sugar coat the survey.

A well designed customer satisfaction survey will enable you to identify problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and give you early warning on where you might be losing out to your competitors initiatives.

What are the questions you should ask?

Each business is likely to have unique factors in relation to providing good customer services however there are common areas that are going to be relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online store or a service industry. The following are key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication – What do you do to make it easy for your customers to communicate with you?

When customers telephone are their calls answered quickly; are their enquiries about products or services handled properly? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly and fairly.

If customers reported problems that cannot be resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to check that all your employees are perceived by your customers as being helpful, courteous and knowledgeable.

Location – Do your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical bricks and mortar store, is it conveniently located with good access?

Making it pleasant, making it easy – For an online business it is important to ensure that your website is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.

Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely online web based store, is the store properly laid out and can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient detailed information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – Not only should you measure the quality of the service that you provide but you should check that the products and services that you market are what the customer wants and closely match their expectations.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is not always a good measure, value for money is.

Are the products you sell or the services you provide considered by your customers to be value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Customers want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything you can to avoid any delay?

Customers like to be treated as individuals, how do you treat your customers? Attention is appreciated but it needs to be followed up with a quick and satisfactory resolution to the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example their gender, age group and where they live?

The better you understand your customers the more you will be able to properly target your business.

Allow customers to state any concerns that they may have and the opportunity to provide their contact details so that any problems that are raised can be followed up.

What next?

Once the survey has been completed analyse the results.

Trends – Identify specific and common areas where the service is found wanting.

Ask yourself if any criticism is valid, be honest to yourself, is there anything that can be done to properly resolve, or at the very least, minimise the problem?

Training – Are the staff properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

If customer service training programs have been implemented have they improved the customer experience?

Follow-up – If a customer has raised a specific issue through completing a survey ensure that they are contacted and that their complaint is properly addressed.

Do not lose a customer by squandering an opportunity to resolve a problem.

Continuously Monitor – Based on the survey results make changes and then re-measure by issuing further surveys.

If you are interested in tracking customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the following example that can be used as a customer satisfaction survey template.

No matter what you do for a living, there’s always an incentive to make more money. Maybe you’re trying to pay off credit card bills, save up for something special, or have a little cushion should something unexpected happen in your life.

It used to be that if you needed to make a bit of extra cash, you needed to pick up a second job, like bussing tables a few weekends a month or showing up early at the bakery to help with the ovens.

Now, thanks to the doors opened by the internet, and the ease of starting your own business, it’s gotten easier than ever to bring in some extra money without working yourself to death in the process.

Here are five ways you can make some extra cash in a pinch:

1. Sell your unused items. Look in your closet for old books you can sell? Is your closet full of outgrown or embarrassing clothes? Are your old computers taking up too much space? Sell them!

* Have a yard sale.?
* Sell your things to specialty shops like second hand clothing shops, used bookstores, used furniture stores, or even repair shops that need parts from what you have.?
* Use eBay. Lots of things without local markets have a national or global market, and there are people who’ll buy the oddest things on eBay.

eBay is a great way to earn extra money selling nik-naks, books, electronics and other fun stuff people might buy. Chances are someone wants it and is willing to pay a premium for it.

2. Ask for a raise at your current job. If you think you are invaluable, ask for more money and don’t be affraid. Most people are too scared to ask for a raise, so you can use this to your advantage.

State your case by assembling a list of accomplishments from the last 10 months.?

* Another way you may be able to make more cash at your job is to ask your boss if there’s extra work you can do to gain more hours or get paid more for increased responsibilities.

3. Trade skills for cash. Are you a skilled seamstress, writer, or graphic designer? Earning extra money is possible online at certain websites if you have specific skills.

Don’t know how to get started? Do an internet search. Resources abound on the ‘net that can help you find buyers for your skills.

4. Get a work from home job. Many companies are looking for work at home telephone customer service agents. Some of them pay remarkably well and all of them have relaxed dress codes to boot!

5. Start your own part-time business. A second business can come from your skills and hobbies. There’s nothing quite as exhilarating as turning your love for something into a business and making it profitable.

Many of these money-making ideas will work fairly quickly with little effort. You can significantly increase your income working from home with your own business. Take action and you can make more money!

An easy to use web site builder is a life saver for beginners or those looking to create a website. You can purchase reasonably priced software to build your site with or use the free builder that comes with many hosting packages. With the free web hosting builders you will not have as many features as with a standalone program.

Creating a website really can be a fairly simple process when using these types of programs. Website builders have many general features. It is these features that allow you to build the website and make changes to the site. The first of these is the selection of templates.

When deciding on a web site builder, find out if the templates can be modified easily – this is always best so you can make it unique. You will usually be able to choose from niche specific templates and general purpose templates.

It is usually not that complicated to add the content to your webpages once you have selected the template. This is a big time saver for beginners who don’t want to spend a lot of time learning software.

Website that are easy to use that look professional can be built in as little as a few hours. Website builders also make it easy to make changes and add new content to your website. Adding new content can be as easy as copy and paste, selecting your fonts and uploading.

Uploading new pages or changes to the internet is a simple task too – just click a button. Adding new pages is a breeze too. If you can use a word processor you should be able to handle a easy to use website builder as they don’t have a big learning curve.

There are some website builders that offer advanced features too. Most people want a website builder that is easy to use but offers more complex features. If you are in that group take a look at Xsite Pro 2, it’s easy to use but offers tons of features that you can grow into.

An example of a advanced feature is the ability to edit the HTML code of the website through the software program. You do not want to mess up your website so if you are going to edit the code make sure you know what you are doing first.

The use of the more advanced features are not a requirement for most home businesses. Today building a website is a simple task with the right software. So what are you waiting for?