Internet Marketing, Web Technologies & News – Best Web Ezy

Whether you’ve worked in your field for ten months, ten years, or longer than you’d care to remember, chances are you rely on trade magazines to keep you up to speed with trends, opportunities, and new developments in your industry. And like most of us, you’ve probably found yourself hunting at some point for a case study, white paper, best practices guide, or other source of information to steer you toward the best possible decision about one of the many projects on your plate.

BestWebEzy can help. Through our partnership with TradePub.com, we are pleased to offer you FREE subscriptions to popular business magazines across more than 30 industry sectors, plus complimentary white papers, webinars, ebooks, podcasts, software, and more. We know your time is in short supply, so we’ve made it as easy as possible:

1. Go to http://bestwebezy.tradepub.com/
2. Browse by industry to find the titles of interest to you
3. Sign up for as many as you like! There’s no limit – publications are entirely free to those who qualify. Simply complete a brief online form indicating your job title, industry, and other basic information.

That’s it! No coupons, credit cards, or secret promo codes to slow you down. If you request a white paper, digital magazine subscription, webinar, or other downloadable item, it will be available immediately in most cases. Print magazines typically start to arrive in several weeks, depending on the individual publisher’s circulation and publication cycle.

If you are in the midst of a job hunt (or starting to think about one), beginning to evaluate vendors for a software implementation, or just taking a hard-earned break from the madness in your cubicle or corner office, the business publications and technical documents on TradePub.com offer the valuable information you need.

Get the scoop on upcoming conferences and events; impress your boss with a side-by-side comparison of the leading solution providers for your issue of the day; catch a live or on-demand webinar on your lunch break. The resources on TradePub.com make it easy to do all this and much, much more – all absolutely free.

Visit http://bestwebezy.tradepub.com/ to find the offers of interest to you. More than 400 free titles are waiting. Sign up today!

(Brought to you by TradePub & Best Web Ezy – our latest sign up.)

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When a shopping cart is developed, the main purpose of it is to generate sales. Hence, it is very important that the design would convert the users to buy from it. Internet users do not have patience. If they reached the site but feel lost, or feel that the site is not giving them a sense of security, they will leave straight away.

Usability

The easier the site navigation, the more chance that the user would stay on the site. Therefore, the site need to be designed with human in mind. Yes, SEO is important, but that doesn’t mean usability is not. In fact, they should both be considered when the site is designed.

In my experience, I always find that a site in this format works best:

The first component is the banner – which contains the logo (and make this the button to return to homepage) and an ad-banner of the latest offer / promotion. Then comes the horizontal menu. I usually would put informative links here, which contains information about the company, other services offered etc.

The vertical menu would contain the items of the shopping cart. It is recommended to make this a foldable menu, showing the categories only when loaded. (Remember to use unobstrusive JavaScript.)

The content occupies the most space as you do need to have a spacious layout for the content. If the design is too congested, they won’t get read – as the website does not look professional.

Apart from the layout, remember to make the ‘add to cart’ button prompt. Show clearly what is clickable and what is not. Confusion is a bad thing here. Show the discount / offer on every page – if you put them onto the homepage only, some people might not read it. They might went through the search engine and landed onto the product pages.

Persuasive Design

The next thing needed would be to make sure that the users are certainly going to buy from the website. When they have added something onto the cart, it is important not to let them go away. Hence, let’s talk about the conversion path here.

The rule of thumb is to limit the conversion path as much as possible. A general practice is three steps – add to cart, enter information, confirm. Don’t give too much options.

Another thing you can do is to remove as much links as possible during the conversion process.

The other thing is to provide as much information as possible. If they don’t understand the product, they would do the following:

1. Ask you – which takes a long time
2. Search for information on the internet – side tracked! And very likely they will find it on the competitors’ website
3. Give up

On the other hand, the more information is given the better, as this would certainly please the search engine.

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The famous free Business Cards from Vista Print. Yes, comes back again.

I think everybody knows what it is. Therefore I would focus on the usability of the process in this review.

The homepage clearly states – 250 business cards, 42 designs to choose from, and 3 easy steps. Clicking on the banner brings us to the first step – select your design.

As mentioned there are 42 designs to choose from. No matter what your taste is and the industry you are in, there are different themes that should suit what you need. The details can be filled on the left hand column as illustrated.

You can even choose the color theme! But don’t be too excited yet. It is just for the text, not the design. Don’t forget to prove the design by initialing in the text box. Click next to go to step 2.

Step 2 is for you to sign in (?!). Or you can continue as a guest. Then you got to choose your preferred quantity. And here it comes – you actually have to go through 6 other pages to finish this step. A few upselling here eg. letterhead, notepad, t-shirts etc. And also a partner offer of a postage print trial use.

Step 3 would be the usual shopping cart process. Check out, enter your credit card and shipping information, and you are done.

My opinion is that the conversion path is too long. Users tend to think “Do I really need this?” on every single step that they go through. Therefore, it is likely that customers would be lost during the path. The design phase is easy to use and hence for a quick business card order, it is highly efficient. If you are fussy and wants something more delicate, you can certainly order through Vista Print with your own design.

(Brought to you by http://www.vistaprint.co.uk)

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As promised a long time ago (see my post on 18 Jan about Monetize your blog / website), here comes the first part of the series: Monetize your blog by writing.

I have been using a few of the services below to monetize this blog. Here are the links for them and also my comments towards them.

Smorty – So far I have found this service pays really fast. It probably take a few days to approve your post. Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. Once approved, money would be transferred to your Paypal account immediately.  Sometimes I got too busy that I have to let these opportunities go; and I don’t really want my blog to be full of sponsored articles anyway. But still, I would say Smorty has brought me some extra cash, fast and easy.

Pay Per Post – this is my favourite program. For a blog like this one (PR2 as of 11/3/08), there would be at least 20 offers for me to choose from every single time I log onto their panel. You just need to make sure the topics are relevant to your blog, and that you must have a non-sponsored post in between the sponsored ones. Oh, maximum 3 posts per day. Payment is prompt – usually arrives within 2 weeks. Highly recommended

Blogvertise – another sponsored blog post program. Their payment is prompt but I don’t always receive offer as often. (Probably because my blog is not having a lot of traffic). When I first started I got only $2 per post, but as time goes by, my offers are having higher and higher values. Little money adds up. If you want to monetize your blog then you surely should sign up.

Sponsored Reviews – Apart from the usual get offer – blog – get paid – blog again model, you can bid for the projects that was advertised. You can set your minimum payment threshold and then start bidding! Easy to use interface. Again, prompt payment.

ReviewMe – Apart from the usual blogging offer, you can put a badge on your website asking advertisers to purchase a blog from you.  John Chow has one that offers reviews of $500.  You set your own price – and of course, you have to know what your reviews are worth before setting, or else nobody would purchase reviews from you.

Blog for Bucks – I think this is a new service. At least I haven’t really heard anyone talking about them before. I didn’t find this service – indeed, they reached me and asked whether I want to write some reviews. Because I was served personally, I got paid really quick. I received the offer on Friday, wrote them all in one go, and they approved them on Saturday. Their payment is on every Monday, and I really got them the next Monday. They even sent me a confirmation of payment. The down side is you don’t really got the chance to choose what to write. But I expressed to them that I don’t want to write about sexual, gambling and religious contents.

Bloggerwave - I am not sure if this service still work? I used to write post for this one, but started a few months ago, I was not able to login at all. I tried to sign up for a new account but never receive any confirmation email. You may want to give it a try. When it was working, the payment was prompt and very fast.

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Do you have a camcorder / MiniDV? If you do, you can start putting on videos on your blog like John Chow. Usually Camcorder reviews would assist you in choosing the right digital camcorder for your use.

Expo Television provides video review of the popular models like:

• JVC Camcorders – HD 1440 x 1080i with 60GB Hard Disk Drive
• Sony Camcorder – Compatible with DVD-R, -RW, +RW, 800x digital zoom
• Canon Camcorder – captures true 1080 High Definition resolution video at 60i, 30F or 24F frame rates
• Panasonic Camcorder – 20x optical zoom lens, 680×000 pixel CCD
• Flip Video Camcorder – pocket sized, one touch recording and digital zoom

Sick of looking at the specifications? Well, listen to what people say about the products.

(Brought to you by ExpoTV)

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