The other day I walked into a national grocery store in my hometown of Canton, MI. I picked up a few grocery items and decided to treat myself to real service and go through the check out lane and have my order rung up by a live person – the cashier. Quite frankly, I was a little disappointed. Here’s why. After he rung up my purchase and I gave him the correct change, I thanked him. His response: “No problem”. Excuse me, I didn’t know my purchase was potentially classified as a problem.

A few weeks later I was making a purchase at one of the local discount stores that sells everything for a dollar. This time the clerk’s response after I thanked him was simply the word “yeah.”

Here is where a small business owner can set him or herself apart from the rest of the competition at the point of sale and can clean up big time. What they must do is train all employees to consistently use the magic words “please” and “thank you.”

By having employees look the customers squarely in the eye and sincerely thank them for doing business with them, they will sell subconsciously to that customer’s built in expectations of being appreciated and valued. Charles Lamb, the great English essayist said it best when he was quoted, “Damn it, I like to be liked.” Your customers like to be liked, so why not teach and expect your employees to treat them with care and respect. It will help your business become more profitable.

Of course it cannot be forced.  For example, there is another very well-known retail chain that has a small printed sign by the cash register that reminds the cashier what to say to the customer when the sale is completed. At one time, this retail chain even had a campaign giving the customer five dollars if the cashier didn’t say “thank you.” Unfortunately, it didn’t work. The result was a cashier who sounded like a robot and avoided making sincere eye contact with the customer at the close of the sale. What the management of this retail chain did not understand was that it was not possible to force its’ cashiers to be sincerely courteous to the customer.

Since you can’t force your staff, co-workers and managers to treat the customer courteously in person or on the telephone, what do you do to get that kind of consistent behavior from them? One way to make this hope a reality is to hire people who have three important qualities:

1. They like themselves.
2. They like other people.
3. They have a sincere desire to help and serve other people.

You have to hire people who have some of the above qualities. From there you educate, train, and reinforce them positively for consistently demonstrating sincere courtesy to the customers.

What we are talking about is helping staff, co-workers and management learn how to be more authentic; helping them develop their self-confidence to the level where it is easy for them to treat others with courtesy and respect. The example you set is the most important aspect. The way you treat your staff, co-employees and managers lays the groundwork for how they will treat the customer.

Therefore, in summary, hire the right people, teach them how to be consistently courteous and watch your customer retention and purchase rate go up. You will be glad you did, and so will your customers.

About the Author:
Tom Borg is president of Tom Borg Consulting Development & Training. He is a small business consultant, trainer, and author.

Over the past 27 years, he has worked with his clients and helped them to change their business paradigms. Tom shows small business owners how to “think outside the box,” tap the potential of their managers and employees, and take action to help make their businesses more profitable and successful.

He is author of two books, Making Service Count – Leveraging Customer Satisfaction to Make Your Small Business More Profitable and his second book, How to Keep a Positive Attitude in a Sometimes Negative World. His business articles have been published in over 47 countries and have appeared in local publications such as Crain’s Business, the Detroit Free Press.

You can contact him at 734-812-0526 or visit his website at http://www.tomborgconsulting.com.

I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs who want to sell online. E-commerce is an easy cash cow, they say. They usually have a story of a friend who made lots of money selling online. I once even followed up the story of their friend. Turns out all his online sales were his existing customers he’d told (by personally calling them) to buy online, 100% cannibalization of his retail channel. Turns out he’d spent several thousand setting up the site, but had zero incremental sales. Not so good.

Imagine talking to someone running a successful e-commerce business. They said to you “I want a bit of incremental revenue, I think I’ll just go and set up a retail shop.” You’d probably laugh, or maybe step back slowly in case you caught something dangerous. There’s still this perception that online is somehow easy – “build it and they will come”.

As much as that would be wonderful, it’s not true. What you will do is make a few e-commerce developers a bit richer, but are unlikely to pad your own pockets.

If you have an existing business and want to generate incremental revenue through the web, what should you be doing? How do you successfully sell online?

1. Make sure you have the time and money to invest. E-commerce is an ongoing commitment, just like bricks and mortar. It will also cost money. There’s not just the setup cost – which, to do well, isn’t cheap. There’s plenty of people who can make websites out there, often very cheap. You have to ask yourself: are these the people who the experience to know how to make me a profitable shop?

2. Get expert advice. Find a web development agency who can help you navigate the minefields. Make sure you take reference checks. Many people will be ecstatic about their experiences, but make sure you ask them how successful it is from a business point of view (and wait for the “oh, we are still working on that….” excuses to come flooding in). It’s not all about the technical solution. You need people who can build a website which can sell. Most agencies are technically driven, which is okay to a point, but a great technical solution isn’t always a great business solution. They’ll often just choose whatever shopping cart software they are familiar with, not what suits your business the best.

3. Invest in online marketing. Most web developers will offer some basic online marketing services – they’ll usually talk about SEO and maybe AdWords or similar. Just as you wouldn’t get your shop fit out people to do your retail marketing, you probably shouldn’t use your web developers to do your online marketing. It’s a specialist field that requires experts. You should be exploring a range of options to see what fits best with your business. SEO, PPC, affiliates, display, Facebook, email, etc. They are all channels that may or may not work depending on your business.

4. Constant optimization. E-commerce isn’t set and forget. You need to be constantly tuning, refining, blogging, tweeting, refining checkout processes, building traffic, etc. Until you are #1 in Google for every important word, and every visitor to your shop buys, then you aren’t done. Once again, you probably need expert help, or be prepared to spend many, many hours reading and learning.

About the Author:
Mark Baartse is the founder of Shopping Cart Reviews.

This is a brief rundown of what to sell where and how much it will cost you, according to Michael Miller, author of Selling Online 2.0.

On eBay: Sellers usually pay 8.75 percent of the sales price up to $25, with a declining percentage on larger sales, plus upfront fees of 10 cents to $4 or more. This is whether or not the item sells. Some of the best items to sell on eBay: antiques, high-end bicycles, rare collectables, jewelry that is unique, modern or antique golf clubs, high-end skis, and old or collectible items including art.

Sell tickets on eBay’s StubHub: http://www.stubhub.com.

On Amazon.com: Sellers set fixed prices and usually pay a commission of 15 percent (commissions are lower on electronics and cameras), plus a 99-cent transaction fee. On Amazon, you won’t have to pay the listing fee if the item doesn’t sell. The best items to sell on Amazon include DVDs, CDs, recent electronics, video games and books. Book buyers shop at Amazon.

On Craigslist: Listing items on Craigslist is free. The listings are divided into regional Web sites. Buyers generally come to the seller’s home and pay cash. The best items to sell on Craigslist are furniture, exercise equipment, cars, boats, RVs, musical instruments, regular or low-end skis, common golf clubs and electronics. Sell items like toys, hand tools and clothing in lots.

Imagine shopping online and being able to ask other shoppers where they’ve found the best prices.

Or reading the news and instantly being able to chat with other newshounds. All that and more is now possible with a new browser add-on called Chaggle.

This free new tool automatically places users in the Chaggle chatroom for each website they visit.

“Our goal is to create a truly interactive web experience,” says Clayton Smith, Chaggle co-founder. “Whether you’re sharing laughs, opinions, links to other sites or anything else, Chaggle is the perpetual conversation of the internet.”

When a Chaggle user visits a website, they can chat on line with all other users visiting the site and see comments other users have posted as they passed by. This provides real-time third party information about any website and what visitors to the site have to say about it. It also brings users who are looking at the same site together, allowing them to interact like never before.

For companies who would like to encourage chat on their website location, they can provide a link to Chaggle for their website visitors. Companies can monitor and engage in the conversations happening at their websites, gaining valuable feedback from visitors who are already interested in their product or service.

Chaggle users can rate posts or leave “crumbs” or comments on a specific webpage. They can chat one-on-one, search posts, “Shout Out” to the entire Chaggle community, link posts into Twitter, or even “park” in their favorite chat room while continuing to surf. Users can also create Buddy Lists for their best Chaggle friends, send email messages to each other through Chaggle and send virtual Cheers.

Who uses Chaggle?
“From technical people to creative types, professionals, parents, kids and pretty much everyone in between, we’ve had all types of people sign up for Chaggle,” says Smith. “Whether they’re using it to meet new people, develop professional relationships or monitor customer opinions on their company’s websites, people are constantly telling us about new ways they’re using Chaggle. And that’s what makes it exciting. It takes the collaborative power of the internet to the next level.”

To learn more about Chaggle or to create a free account, visit http://www.chaggle.com.

ShopTab, launched in October, 2009, helps web based retailers easily, quickly and inexpensively sell more products by creating a shop tab on their Facebook fan page that showcases products from their existing online store.

With over 350 million users and the strong desire for business owners to monetize their Facebook presence, Facebook is a great way to expand shopping interactions and allow fans to share products.

The ShopTab premise is simple – monetize a web-based retailer’s presence on Facebook by uploading products or services to a “shop” tab on a Facebook Page. ShopTab pulls product information much the same as any other eCommerce shopping feed would — and much like a shopping feed, the transaction still happens on the eCommerce website. There’s no need to worry about payment delays, inventory discrepancies, refund issues or other procedural differences.

Rather than taking a percentage of each sale, the ShopTab application charges a flat $10 per month fee, without a contract. They also offer a 7-day free trial.

Small business owners like Tamara Johnson, owner of The Spoiled Mama has found the ShopTab application to be an invaluable tool. “As a small business owner, I’m always looking for ways to increase sales and better compete with the big guys. ShopTab is one of those ways. ShopTab has taken Facebook, one of my favorite customer communication tools, and turned it into a powerful sales tool as well,” said Tamara.

ShopTab eCommerce Business App on Facebook continually evolves and as of December 2009 ShopTab includes the ability to showcase up to 3,000 products or services on a Facebook Page shop tab, upload product categories to allow customers to browse more easily and business customers can upload a data feed that has already been created for other shopping feeds such as Google Product Search through Google Base (Google Merchant Center). In addition, ShopTab business customers can choose from 4 currency options which are currently US $, Canada CDN $, Euro €, and Pound £. To create a custom look and feel, ShopTab business owners can upload a custom Facebook Page shop tab header image to match their business brand.

Facebook prospective customers will find ShopTab very easy to use because a Facebook Fan can search by Keyword, Price or Product Category within Fan Page Shop Tab and be able to easily share a product with their Facebook friends through Facebook Share to Wall feature.

The best way to experience ShopTab is to actually use it – that’s why ShopTab offers a free 7-day trial period for all accounts. During that time, a retailer can upload actual products and learn how ShopTab fits in with sales efforts already have in place. To get started visit ShopTab Application on Facebook, or their website.

Search marketers in growing numbers are improving their landing pages and increasing conversions by using Engine Ready’s free online landing page analysis tool, ConversionCritic.

Worldwide over 1,000 eCommerce and lead generation companies have now signed up for the free app which both analyzes and makes recommendations on how search marketers can improve the conversion potential of their landing pages.

ConversionCritic is a perfect resource for search marketers to see exactly which on-page factors can contribute to higher conversions and what improvements are needed to further increase their online ROI.

ConversionCritic scores a marketer’s landing page effectiveness based on 37 criteria, providing vital feedback on suggested modifications for increasing conversion. Marketers receive both summary and detailed reports on the 4 primary components that impact how well a landing page will convert: Marketing effectiveness, Offer clarity, Readability, and Engagement (MORE).

“With the intense focus on ROI (return on investment), marketers understand that optimizing pages for conversion has become a top priority”, reports Engine Ready’s CEO Jamie Smith. “ConversionCritic is a perfect resource for search marketers to see exactly which on-page factors can contribute to higher conversions and what improvements are needed to further increase their online ROI.”

For a limited time Engine Ready will be making this tool available to the public at no charge. To access ConversionCritic, visit http://www.conversioncritic.com.

Bold Software has announced new enhancements to BoldChat Basic, a live chat offering designed with small businesses in mind.

New features of the product include the ability to send proactive invitations, a summary report that’s automatically emailed to the customer and a set of live chat benchmarks that help business owners understand what they should be getting from their product – with recommendations to help get them there.

BoldChat Basic Provides More Value to Small Businesses
Cost effective and easy-to-deploy, BoldChat Basic was designed to make it easy for small businesses to reap the benefits of live chat at their websites. By offering a set of new and enhanced features to BoldChat Basic, Bold Software is adding value to the live chat implementation and helping small businesses maximize their online connection with website visitors.

BoldChat Basic’s new and enhanced features include:

• Website owners can, with the simple click of a button, target a website visitor and send them a proactive invitation to chat.
• Customers can choose from a gallery of more than 70 such invitation designs.
• A new summary report including critical data is automatically generated and emailed each week.
• The report also compares their site’s activity against BoldChat-recommended benchmarks, and provides guidance for live chat optimization
• Basic includes the ability to encrypt chats to ensure the confidentiality of chat sessions with e-tailers
• Website owners also have the ability to search complete chat and visit histories

BoldChat Basic Special Pricing
Customers who are on board by February 28, 2010, will receive the first two licenses for $29, which is typically the price for each license. For as long as they are a BoldChat Basic customer, they will continue to receive this special pricing. This promotional offer was designed for the business owner who experiences a busy holiday season and would benefit from an additional BoldChat Basic license. For more information about Bold Software, go to www.BoldSoft.com or call 1-866-753-9933.

Runa has announced its launch into the emerging e-commerce arena called “Conversion Marketing” – taking over where SEO and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) stops.

Runa’s service focuses on converting web traffic into sales while shoppers are still on the website. With its new service, Runa is addressing a real opportunity for e-businesses to increase sales from their existing traffic and marketing spend by dynamically presenting optimized sale prices and incentives.

Over the past several years, online marketing has focused on driving traffic to websites through SEO/SEM. Last year alone, e-tailers spent $21 billion, or 15% of their revenues, in online marketing to drive traffic to their websites. However, the average conversion rate of actual visitors that resulted in sales transactions was a dismal 2-3 percent. Runa solves this costly business problem by helping e-tailers rescue lost sales, optimize their SEO/SEM investments, and protect profits through its new conversion marketing service.

“From the outset, we set out to address this opportunity in online marketing with a new approach; one that works within the conversion optimization funnel — not outside of it. Runa focuses on “the last inch” with a new approach to convert traffic into sales for our customers,” said Ashok Narasimhan, Co-founder and CEO. “We’re very pleased to formally announce the launch of our conversion marketing service so we can help new customers improve their conversions of shoppers to buyers and their bottom-line profits.”

Price is the New Black
Due to the ongoing economic downturn, most purchasers have changed their shopping behavior and become real value- and deal-seeking shoppers. This current behavior is expected to last well after the recession concludes. Therefore, focusing on delivering the right price to the right shopper at the right time is more important than ever. Runa is leading the new breed of providers that are focused on helping e-tailers use ‘price’ as a sales lever to both increase conversion and maximize profits.

Conversion Marketing
Most pricing strategies are rule-based where there is one price for all shoppers. Conversion marketing-focused solutions, on the other hand, use real-time shopper insights and merchant business rules to deliver dynamic sale prices and incentives to individual shoppers. Rather than simply setting a price and establishing a corresponding markdown and promotion strategy, the latest tools are intelligent and get better over time. Conversion marketing is a new market category that will be the next wave in online marketing. It is defined by several key factors:

• Real-time shopper segmentation: Understand the context of shoppers by using pre-click and post-click information.
• Prediction of purchase intent: Dynamically determine the purchase intent for the items a shopper is currently looking at.
• Profit-optimized sale pricing: Use e-tailer’s business rules and analytics to determine the best sale price for each shopper.
• Real-time delivery of profit-optimized sale pricing: Dynamically delivering profit-optimized sale prices to individual shoppers while they are still on an e-tailer’s site. Additionally, the presentation and offer acceptance must be seamless on the e-tailer’s site.

Runa Service
Runa is the only service in the market that is able to identify and deliver the best real-time, individualized sale prices to shoppers, while they are still on an e-tailer’s website, and based on the e-tailer’s campaign, business rules and goals.

• Pricing is optimized based on the consumer’s behavior and context, along with real-time analytics, Runa’s algorithms, and business rules set by the merchants.
• Individualized pricing offered may include discounts, free shipping, buy one and get one free specials, no tax, etc.
• Runa’s real-time analytics manage price and profit optimization.
• The service implements seamlessly on existing e-commerce sites and is low-touch SaaS solution.
• Runa’s service is offered on a pay-for-performance basis, presenting e-tailers with a very low risk option that requires no up-front costs to them.

For more information, interested parties may visit www.runa.com.

Network security vendor Astaro has announced the launch of the Essential Firewall edition of its flagship security solution Astaro Security Gateway, available for free to all organizations worldwide.

The Essential Firewall edition includes all the necessary functionality that all organizations need to secure their networks and operate a successful business.

Two developments currently shape the IT landscape. One is virtualization, the other is the trend towards the use of consumer solutions in business environments. Both trends have one common purpose: the imperative to reduce costs. Also, both bear one common danger: they significantly lower the security level of an organization’s network. There are only a few security solutions available that run in a virtual environment, and those tend to be expensive and often complicated to manage. Deploying such solutions requires organizations to cut security requirements – making their network more vulnerable. The same is true for the deployment of consumer products in a business environment.

“Small and medium sized businesses are the backbone of the world economy. They act more cautious, they maintain a stable business and they are not subject to the high demands of investors”, says Jan Hichert, CEO at Astaro. “But nevertheless, SMBs are affected by the current economic climate even more so than larger businesses. This is why we see more and more businesses fall back to consumer products to secure their IT environment – in order to reduce costs, they lower their level of security. This is a dangerous compromise. By launching the Essential Firewall edition we aim to provide those companies a professional alternative.”

As a free edition of the Astaro Security Gateway, the Essential Firewall offers the same easy-to-use Graphical User Interface and is available as Software and Virtual Appliance. Additionally, the Essential Firewall edition will come with the ability to receive support through Astaro’s user forum (www.astaro.org).

Features included in the Essential Firewall edition:

• Networking: Internet Router, Bridging, DNS server & proxy, DynDNS, DHCP server & relay, NTP support, automatic QoS
• Network Security: Stateful Packet Inspection Firewall & Network Address translation (DNAT/SNAT/Masquerading)
• Remote Access: PPTP and L2TP over IPSec support (including iPhone support)
• Logging/Reporting: Full logging on local hard drive, searching, real-time reports for hardware, network usage and network security, daily executive reports
• Management: Web-based GUI in local languages, setup wizard, configuration backup & restore, administrator notifications, SNMP support, centralized management via Astaro Command Center (also free of charge)

Astaro offers the Astaro Security Gateway Essential Firewall edition as an easy-to-install download:
Software Appliance: www.astaro.com/en/essential_firewall
Virtual Appliance: www.astaro.com/en/essential_firewall_vmware

Online holiday season retail sales grew 12 percent (Forrester Research Inc.) last year and much of this was done by employees using company computers in the workplace.

Last year, 55.8 percent of workers with Internet access said they planned to shop online on Cyber Monday (National Retail Federation). This year does not look like it will be any different, with over 40 percent of online shoppers stating they shop online because of the ability to shop at any hour of the day (Shop.org). Further, some say they shop online because of the new websites and tools that are springing up to help consumers locate the bargains they want (MarketingVox).

According to a study published by ISACA, a nonprofit association of IT professionals, the most prolific shoppers are those in the 18-24 age bracket, as 40 percent of those in this bracket said they will spend up to five hours doing online shopping from their desks. Ironically, this group is also typically the least concerned about the security of their work PCs.

“The fact that so many plan to do holiday shopping from their work computers, combined with their lack of concern for how secure their computers are, points to an urgent need for employers to pay closer attention to what employees are doing online during office hours and to educate employees to be careful what sites they are visiting and what files they are downloading”, says David Kelleher at GFI Software.

According to a recent GFI survey of small-medium businesses (SMBs) only 9 percent said they are concerned about internal threats and only 36 percent monitor employee browsing activity. There are two points that merit discussion. First, companies are still ignoring the fact that employees are the weakest link in security and that their actions can cause serious problems. Second, if so much time is spent shopping online during office hours, then that business has a productivity problem.

Business should be more concerned during the holiday season because an increase in online activity and browsing of non-work related websites is both a security risk and a business problem.

The following are some tips that can help businesses to improve both security and productivity.

Monitor user’s activity 24 x 7 – If your business is concerned that people are spending too much time online and downloading non-work related material, then you need to exert some form of control. Monitoring user activity will cut down on abuse while implementing web security measures will prevent malicious code from entering your network through irresponsible browsing. With proper measures in place, there is no harm in allowing employees to shop online during the lunch break – So long as you know what’s happening.

Acceptable usage policies. In small organizations, security policies are either non-existent or never enforced. Every organization should provide new employees with an acceptable usage policy that defines how they use corporate computers, what is acceptable in terms of Internet use and what is not tolerated nor accepted. Moreover, this document should be signed by the employee the day he or she joins. This will greatly reduce the risk of an employee who is dismissed for breach of the policy fighting back by saying that he or she was never told what they could or could not do.

Education – Explain to employees why they have to be careful when browsing the Internet. The usual ‘because I say so’ approach does not work with them. It only spurs them to bypass whatever the IT manager is telling them not to do. Employees are intelligent and will understand basic concepts of security especially when they can associate actions with the result it will have on their ability to do their job. Gaining an employee’s understanding is essential if an organization wants their cooperation. Even more so during this holiday season.

Everybody is a potential security threat – SMBs need to approach security without allowing emotions and friendship to interfere. Every employee, including the CEO, is a security risk. Employees need to understand that controls are there for good reason and not because the company doesn’t trust them. The IT manager is employed to ensure the network is as secure as possible; and if that means stepping on people’s toes, so be it.

Invest in technology – Security should not be considered an expense but a cost of doing business in an online age. It is also recommended that you invest in a security awareness program too. Technology and awareness need to be managed together and not separately.