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Technology is always changing and as more and more people start using tablets to go online and search for information, it is important to know how to make your website more tablet-friendly so that your website could be easily accessed. I’ve listed here a couple of points to keep in mind when you design your site to help you achieve that goal. These tips are easy to follow and will help you retain visitors for any tablet users that happen to come across your site.

Avoid Using Flash on Your Site

Flash portals are not usually supported by tablets such as the iPad. Even Androids that do support Flash have very poor performance, so it’s better to avoid using Flash altogether and stick with either HTML5 and JavaScript.

Touch Interaction vs Mouse Interaction

Since tablet users are usually using fingers to navigate instead of a mouse, designers need to keep in mind the size difference between a fingertip and a cursor. You can try creating buttons a bit larger for easier touching, and make sure that links are not placed too closely together. Also, when designing a page, keep in mind that a mouse’s clicking and scrolling motions are instead replaced by touching and swiping motions.

Colours, Textures, and Fonts

The colour and texture of your site can have significant impact on the appearance of your site on a tablet. Using bright colours and patterns will help reduce any smudges and glares on an iPad or Blackberry Playbook. Avoid using solid blacks since that will be distracting for tablet users. Make sure to make the font easily readable for tablet users, as fonts that are too small or too large will make it hard for users to read your site.

Design Your Forms Accordingly

Forms are often necessary tools to get information and obtain inquiries from any visitor that lands on your site. By keeping your forms short and simple without too much to fill out, you’ll help reduce a lot of hassle for tablet users. In reality, you will most likely only need to know their email address in order to follow up, and by making the form short and simple, users will have a higher chance to use it to contact you or leave information.

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On more than one occasion, one of my readers has suggested to me that I publish two versions of my e-newsletter.

The first would be the regular edition I offer now—a monthly online newsletter with pure content, supplemented by additional e-mails mixing content and product offers.

The second would be an “advertising-free” edition. You’d get the monthly content e-newsletter, but none of the e-mail marketing messages between monthly issues.

Well, I’m never going to offer an option to get the e-zine only—advertising-free and without the supplemental e-mail marketing messages.

And if you’re an Internet marketer, neither should you.

Why not?

Think of it this way…

As an online information marketer—a “micro publisher”—you spend time and energy creating your e-zine.

Your time, ideas, and information are valuable to others. Or at least they should be. If your content isn’t valuable, why would you bother creating it…and why would your subscribers read it?

As with everyone else who works for a living, you—a content creator—need to earn money by charging for what you produce.

Electricians get paid to splice wires together. Plumbers bill you for fixing leaky pipes.

Why does the world seem to think content creators and owners of intellectual property should give away their creations for free?

As for me, I charge for my e-zine. Not money, mind you. But I do charge a fee.

And the “fee” I charge is that the subscribers agree to receive my e-mails. All my e-mails. Not necessarily to open or read them. But just to receive them.

Usually I send a 50/50 mix of sales messages and content messages.

But even the sales messages offer ideas, solutions, and resources I believe my readers will benefit from.

No one is forced to buy the information products I am recommending. You can go years without spending a dime with me…and still get my e-zine at no cost.

No one is forced to open or read the e-mails. If you are a subscriber to my e-zine, you can simply delete any or all of them.

No one is forced to receive my e-zine. I am not abusing anyone by sending it against their will.

The right to send my subscribers e-mail marketing messages is simply the price I charge for my publication.

If you wish to stop paying the subscription fee, you can unsubscribe with a single mouse click in about 3 seconds. No need to make a phone call or waste a stamp on a letter.

When you unsubscribe, you will no longer receive the e-mails.

But you won’t get my free e-zine either. You take all or none. That’s the deal—non-negotiable.

Amazingly, online subscribers argue with us Internet marketers about this issue from time to time—something they rarely do with a traditional publisher.

After all, if you called Newsweek and told them, “Send me the magazine, but take out the ads first,” what do you think they would do?

Yes, I could offer an “advertising-free” edition of my e-newsletter, but what would be the point? Or as we copywriters say, “What’s in it for me?”

Yes, as an Internet marketer, you can send too many e-mails or have a disproportionately high ratio of sales to content.

But your subscribers will tell you what they consider too much or just right.

For instance, I recently signed up for the e-list of an entertainer I like.

After I got 3 e-mails the first day, I decided his arrangement was not for me, and I opted out with a single click.

But I did not send him an e-mail with obscenities in it.

I did not petition him to put me on a special e-list…or change his publishing model.

I simply unsubscribed.

How do you know when you are sending too many e-mail marketing messages to your e-list?

Just pay attention to the opt-out rate, which is the percentage of subscribers who opt-out after you distribute an e-mail message to your list.

Each time you distribute your e-newsletter or an e-mail message to your subscriber list, a few will opt out. That’s okay.

But if too many are unsubscribing per e-mail—say, more than 2 out of every 1,000 subscribers on the list—you may be selling to your list too much, too hard, and too often.

Solution: cut back on frequency…make the content more educational, less hard-sell…add more content and do less selling…until the opt-out rate drops to below 0.2%.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

“Tis the season” doesn’t have quite the same ring when you’re going on no sleep and trying to deal with stressed-out employees and/or customers. The holidays are a time to step up, not a time to slump to the ground at the end of each workday.

So what do you need to think about now to avoid this scenario? Two major things: little helpers and your workshops. We’ll start with the hard one.

Little Helpers, i.e. employees. If you have none, you might need some. And if you already have some, you might need more. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you determine if you need another body or bodies to help you handle the season.

Are you ready for more calls?

If you take calls, have your employees keep track of the number of calls per day and duration of each for a week or two. Then ask yourself if your current employees can handle double that volume?

If the answer is either no or “but that’s all they will have time to do”, you want to think about getting help or set up with a call center for the season.

You do not have to continue using them once your business returns to normal volume if you don’t want.

If you currently use a call center…give them a call! Ask for more operators if you need them. Be sure to do this before things start to get busy. If you wait, the service center may not have as many operators available.

Do you run extended holiday hours?

I would recommend that you do!

Remember, this is a stressful time of year for shoppers. No one wants to be the one person whose present is still in the mail, and they typically get less friendly with each voice mail or e-mail they send that doesn’t get answered until the next day.

Angry customers around this time of year exponentially add to your stress levels. Offering more opportunities for them to contact you, gives you happier customers and employees.

If you can talk your current staff into extended hours, awesome. If not, getting another person or a call center to handle the extra time. Even if the call operators cannot answer specific order questions, your customers will be happier that they are leaving a message with a human rather than an automated message system.

Will you be open weekends?

As with extended hours, I recommend weekend hours during the holidays. If a customer has a product question on Saturday do you think they’ll patiently wait until Monday for an answer? No, they’ll go to whichever competitor can answer them first.

Rules change during this season. Whoever provides the best service not only wins the holiday sale, they will also have a higher chance of winning any repeat business that comes from that customer.

It is important to have someone who is knowledgeable enough about your products to be able to answer questions. So in this case I recommend having an actual employee working on the weekend, and not just a call center. Your need to available to your employees in case they get a question beyond their ability to answer.

After answering these you should have a good idea whether or not you need a new hire.

What should your new temp be able to do?

Your new temp needs to be able to do more than answer the phone and take orders; you can get a call center operator to do that for much less. Your temp should take more of the burden off your regular staff.

I require a basic knowledge of what my stores sell, the ability to quickly navigate the sites to find information, and a flexible schedule to work nights and/or weekends.

This is stuff I expect them to pick up and be fairly competent at within one week. They need to learn the basic skills it takes to service customers, my current employees can handle all the brainy stuff.

What about your workshop?

In other words, making sure your vendors are set to service you the best way they can. That means you need to get on the phone and talk to them.

Ask what products they have the better stock on and what stock is going to look like in the coming months. Add the products with a lot of stock to your gift and holiday pages and promote them. As long as you know it to be true, you can advertise “In stock and ready to ship!” Also find out what products have low or no stock. Don’t spend time advertising these since there is a good chance they won’t be available.

You could also pre-order extra quantities of your bestsellers. Every year I get a list of my top 5 to 10 bestsellers and buy them in bulk before the season hits. This way I can keep advertising them as in stock after my competitors use up the vendors’ stock. An added benefit to this is that buying bulk is cheaper than dropshipping single items so you’re making extra pro?t, which is always welcome. Before you do this, make sure it fits your budget.

If it comes down to buying stock or doing more paid advertising, go for the ads. You also have to think about storing the products. Some vendors may hold and ship the products, bulk orders. Not all vendors will do this and some will do it only for customers who bring them a certain amount of business.

Increased holiday business is awesome. Just make sure you have the people and resources in place to handle it…otherwise it can turn the best season of the year into a nightmare of stress and frustration. Luckily, some simple analysis and a few calls can keep the holiday ‘jolly’.

Holiday Preparation:

• Tally your calls and their duration; factor the holiday rush into it to determine whether you need extra hands to handle calls.
• Decide what your extended holiday hours are going to be and who is going to work those hours for you.
• Determine your weekend hours and who is going to work those.
• Hire a temp or a call center to ?ll in any holes in your holiday business plan.
• Call your vendors and talk to them about stock.
• Pre-order quantities of best sellers to make more profit.
• Enjoy the holiday rush

Extracted from StomperNet SEO Intelligence Report, October 28, 2011.

I was recently asked a question by a social network friend: “How do you start your business in a niche?”

At some earlier point in time, I could have grown envious of expert marketers who seem to be able to sell anything and everything, but the best way to get into business is to know the one area where you know you have the passion and skill set to solve its problems or fulfill a need, then expand your business into sub-niches. Of course, the other method is to do quantitative keyword research. A friend once told me another great way is to get at least 5 friends to tell you what they think you’re really good at.

It’s not so much a question about niche as it is about your forte.

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Your website is the HUB of your business. You might be “Ms. Popular” on Facebook, Twitter, or your blog, but if you send people to your site, and it falls flat, people are going to move on and look for something better.

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I recently read an online promotion from one of the big Internet marketing gurus.

In it, this gentleman—whom I consider a personal friend—stated that “Anything is possible.”

He also said he had a new Web site that would help you “find your super powers”.

That’s hype to a high degree.

And frankly, I don’t believe it.

I could never write something like that for one of my own products and still sleep at night.

Yet I don’t have a problem with this guy, what he is selling, or how he is selling it.

Why not?

Because he believes in what he is saying and selling—even if I do not.

And that’s the key to making hype work in your copy today: believing in what you say.

There are a lot of complaints today about the incredible level of hype in copy, particularly online.

As an example, take a look at: www.thecopygod.com—a humorous spoof site that pokes gentle fun at the hype style of copywriting.

A lot of copywriters and marketers see hype-filled promotions and have one of two reactions.

Either they hate it and make a deliberate decision to avoid it in their own copy…probably a good decision for them.

Or they think, “These guys wouldn’t write all this hype if it wasn’t working”—and emulate it in their own promotions, usually with disastrous results.

You see, a key to writing successful copy—copy that fills your mail box or shopping cart with orders—is enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm for the ideas…enthusiasm for the product…enthusiasm for what you are writing about…enthusiasm for the wonderful ways in which the product will improve the buyers’ lives.

The masters of hype can be genuinely sincere and enthusiastic in their hyperbolic copy, because they absolutely believe 100% in what they are saying and selling.

Therefore, if you too believe in something outrageous or seemingly impossible…and are sincerely convinced it can help others…you can write hype copy that comes across as energetic, enthusiastic, positive, and even sincere!

On the other hand, if you don’t believe the superlatives and outrageous claims you are making in your copy, the hype will backfire on you.

Your copy will have all the sincerity of a three-dollar bill—and readers will be able to sense your disingenuousness and B.S. a mile away.

Result: your copy will fall flat…and your promotion will generate minimal orders and revenues.

“How can some of these hard-sell marketers believe the hype they write, particularly about money making, business opportunities, investments, self help, and alternative medicine?” I have been asked many times.

It’s simple: each of us has different experiences and belief systems.

What sounds like baloney to you and me may be absolute gospel to our colleagues and competitors.

A year or so ago, two well-known direct mail copywriters, DH and PL, got into an argument in print about the ethics of writing for nutritional supplements.

DH called dietary supplements “snake oil”. PL countered that the pill he was promoting in his copy had worked wonders for those who had taken it.

The bottom line is: market and write about only those products, services, and ideas you think deliver an honest and fair value to the consumer.

Another copywriting friend, RS, often said he would work on any offer that wasn’t “illegal, immoral, or fattening.”

Good advice, but I also think you should avoid working on any product you don’t believe in and aren’t enthusiastic about.

After all, if you aren’t enthusiastic about the product when you write your copy, the prospect is likely to be equally unenthusiastic when he reads it.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

If your prospect says “I want to think it over,” it’s likely for one of these 4 reasons:

1) He’s not convinced he wants what you are offering.

2) The prospect has not been completely honest with you or doesn’t want to reveal the real reason he’s not buying.

3) The prospect wants to shop around first.

4) The prospect is afraid he may be overlooking something.

Source: Harry Browne, “The Secret of Selling Anything”