Today's Feature Article

10 Tips for making your site more useful
Carole Pivarnik

People rely heavily on sites that are most useful to them. They go to Dictionary.com to look up or translate words. They go to BankRate.com to use financial calculators. They go to SmallBusiness.com to get and give business advice. They go to Coupons.com to save money. They go to 1800flowers.com to quickly and easily order gifts for loved ones. They go to HomeDepot.com to learn how to install a ceiling fan.

All of these sites and others with a large, loyal visitor base have one thing in common: they provide a useful service or product to their visitors. Usefulness is one of the key factors in attracting repeat traffic. Here are some tips for making your site more useful and more competitive:

1.Teach something. There is a huge demand for concise, wellwritten how-to information. If you have a business Web site, you have an area of expertise. What can you teach your visitors?

2.Simplify a complex task. Many tasks are so complex that people have difficulty figuring out where to start and what to do. Some examples are buying a home, changing careers, or starting a business. By providing checklists, online wizards, or other tools to organize and automate complex tasks, you can make those tasks significantly easier for your visitors.

3.Offer extraordinary value. People calculate value by comparing what they get to how much it costs. Value exists for them when they perceive that they're getting more than they pay for. If you offer an expensive product or service, create value by showing how the benefits of purchase exceed the cost. If market conditions make it difficult for you to compete on price, increase the value of your offer by packaging it with "free" add-ons or companion products.

4.Provide superior quality. In today's competitive market, people simply expect high quality. To wow them, your site must provide that extra feature, service, or customer care that puts you in a different league than your competitors.

5.Offer unparalleled convenience. People take the path of least resistance. Make it a snap to find and use your Web site. Make it easy to remember. Design it for easy access. Make it clear what visitors can get from you and where they can get related material that you don't offer.

6.Assist with decision-making. People often have trouble sorting out the details that go into complex decision- making. Provide them with an organized, easy way to do that and they'll love you for it. For instance, a small business portal might offer a checklist or worksheet that helps entrepreneurs figure out what paperwork they must submit to local and state government to incorporate their business.

7.Invite participation. Allowing your visitors to participate in forums, share advice, publish articles, or otherwise interact with other visitors creates a sense of community. Since we all like to belong, sites that provide valuable communities for visitors tend to foster great loyalty among them.

8.Give something for nothing. People respond to getting good stuff free. Can you offer something free for which your competitors charge? Can you offer more or better free stuff than your competitors?

9.Differentiate. Take a close look at your competitors' sites. What do they lack? Set your site apart from theirs by offering a different mix, more content, better quality-- whatever it takes to rise above the din. And then make sure you tell visitors why your site should be their first choice.

10.Diversify. Offer your audience as many different reasons as possible to find your site useful. Offer content, tools, and services for different levels of expertise, areas of interest, or professional focus.

Conclusion

By providing a more useful site, you encourage your visitors to not only return frequently, but linger. This can greatly increase the chance that they'll become paying customers. Take the time to carefully assess your site and make changes that enhance its usefulness. Doing so is one of the best investments you can make in your Web site and your business.

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Carole Pivarnik manages audience development and affiliate programs for SureCode Technologies, Inc., which offers fullfeatured, customizable Web databases that plug right into any site with no programming. http://www.surecode.com

Today's Motivational Reading

Want to be more successful?
Develop an attitude of service
Chuck Frey

According to the late self-help expert Earl Nightingale, our success in life is directly proportional to the number of people we serve and the quality of that service. While this life principle may seem to be so simple as to be-self- evident, it's surprising the number of people who don't seem to be unaware that it applies to them. But, like any natural law, it does apply, to everyone.

Let's take a closer look at the relationship between your service and your compensation in life, and then explore some creative ways that you can enrich others -- and yourself -- by increasing your service to them.

Measuring your service

Earl Nightingale was a fan of visual metaphors as a tool for communicating important principles and concepts. To illustrate the relationship between service and compensation, he used the image of an apothecary scale -- the type of measuring device once used in pharmacies in the early part of the 20th century. It consisted of two bowls, hung from a horizontal arm. In one bowl, the pharmacist placed the medicine to be weighed. In the other bowl, he or she placed precisely calibrated metal weights, until the two sides of the scale were in balance -- in other words, until the arm was perfectly horizontal.

What does an old pharmacy scale have to do with our comparison of success and service? Imagine that one of the bowls is marked "compensation" and the other is marked " service." According to Nightingale, we only need to focus on the quality of the service we provide and the number of the people whom we serve -- the service side of the scale. The compensation will follow, in proportion to the service we offer to others. As you sow, so shall you reap.

Focus on service, not compensation

Many people, Nightingale complained, are too focused on increasing their compensation, without providing a commensurate increase in their service. Many people fall prey to an attitude of, "My employer isn't paying me enough, so I won't do any more for them." Others may feel stuck on the same job, year after year, but never make a personal commitment to learn more about their job or profession, and therefore increase their ability to serve their employer, and therefore their value.

Many organizations offer credit for continuing education as part of their compensation packages, yet these benefits are often chronically underutilized by workers. In short, the vast majority of people who complain about the lack of pay, fulfillment and opportunity in their careers are victims not of their jobs, but of the attitudes they hold about their jobs. In other words, these people are focusing their attention on the wrong side of the scale.

In order to increase our compensation, you must develop creative ways to increase your service -- and in so doing, set in motion a positive "boomerang effect" of increasing returns to yourself. For those who understand this principle, life is a grand adventure. These unique souls focus on the service side of the scale, and superior compensation follows in turn, in proportion to their service.

Strategies for improving your service

So how can you increase your service, and therefore your compensation? There are many creative ways to do this. One of the best strategies is to engage in continuous, ongoing learning in your field of study as well as other areas of interest to you. By developing a mindset of continuous learning, you are constantly feeding the raw material pile of your mind, which it can then draw upon when you're brainstorming.

For example, one of my "occupational hobbies" has been business creativity and innovation. I read every book and article I can get my hands on, I subscribe to creativity newsletters and I purchase and use tools designed to help me develop more and better innovative ideas. The results in my career have been outstanding, and my expanded ability to think creatively has had a very positive influence on all areas of my life. It is also resulted in a launch of the InnovationTools Web site you are visiting right now!

People who engage in continuous learning naturally tend to outgrow their jobs over a period of time, often resulting in promotions or better job offers. Most often, people are promoted because they have outgrown their current position, not because they have repeated the same level of experience year after year.

Another way to increase your service is to cultivate what's called an "insight outlook." In other words, learn from your experiences and your ongoing education, but always with an eye toward how you can apply it or adapt it to your current situation. Companies are always in need of fresh ideas, insights and outlooks, and they will pay the people who provide them and who can solve problems creatively.

Align yourself with opportunity

In addition, Earl Nightingale believed (and I agree) that people who concentrate on the service side of the scale find themselves profiting from all sorts of unique opportunities that others dismiss as "luck."

To use another metaphor, opportunities and ideas don't come into your life dressed as shiny gems or diamonds. Rather, they tend to appear like diamonds in the rough, or as opportunities dressed in work clothes. In other words, it's easy to look right at a situation that contains a potential opportunity, and overlook it. On the other hand, if you know what you're looking for, you can uncover these opportunities, often right under your own nose. You must then use your creative thinking and problem solving skills to hone them and shape them into the successes they will one day become.

Conclusion

As you can see, your success in life depends, in large part, on cultivating an attitude of service, and by providing value to others. If you want to be more successful, stop focusing on how much you're being compensated today. Instead, using the strategies you've read about in this article, spend some time brainstorming new ways to increase your service to your employer, your family and the other people whom you serve in your life. I think you'll be delighted by the results. After all, as you sow, so shall you reap!

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InnovationTools is a new Web site designed to help busy executives to be more innovative in their businesses. In today's fast-moving world, the need for fresh ideas and innovative solutions has never been greater.

This Web site is the brainchild of Chuck Frey, a creative thinker with 20+ years of experience in PR, marketing, business strategy and information services. http://www.innovationtools.com/

Today's Subscriber Article

Who are you mixing it with?
Julie Plenty

I talk and write a lot about Life Design – creating and sculpting a life that is fulfilling for you. It is about shaping your personal landscape and environment.

Part of that environment involves being conscious of who you mix with and their effect on you. Beware of mixing with people who are consistently negative and critical, not only of themselves, but of others and their ideas.

It’s okay to vent and get things off your chest occasionally, but the Value Vampires have turned this into a fine art! They planted seeds of doubt in your mind and then you started to water them! Don’t tell them your hopes, aims, ambitions or goals too early, before they’ve had time to develop; they could kill it in infancy!

The Value Vampires are constantly whining and holding pity parties with anyone who is not aware enough to decline the invitation! They put you and your ideas down and typically ask questions like: “why do you want to do that for?” (which is really a negative judgement in disguise). Understand that when they do they often have a hidden, often unconscious agenda or a low opinion of themselves and their abilities.

Value Vampires drain you – a night out with them leaves you with a nasty taste in your mouth and normally feeling much worse about things. As you begin to make changes in your life, then you’ll probably find yourself attracted to different kinds of people and will not want to conduct your relationships, friendships with them anymore – and they’ll either change or leave your life.

How can you start to change this?

(i) Focus on building a positive support network – rather than seeking to avoid the Value Vampires. You’ll start from a more productive mindset and begin to think about who you want to be with and why.

(ii) You are what you attract. If you’re constantly surrounded by and mixing with those who have a consistently negative approach to life, then it’s very easy to discover who the biggest Value Vampire is – look in the mirror!

Develop a more positive and proactive approach within yourself and you’ll find that you are cultivating more positive and attractive relationships.

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Julie Plenty is a Personal and Business Coach who coaches self employed creative professionals to live more creative, fulfilled lives and increase the success of their business. To sign up for the Life Design newsletter and register for a special offer on her forthcoming ebook on Kicking the Procrastination Habit! Visit:
http://www.self-help-personal-development.com

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