I really hate getting nickel and dimed, especially when I believe that two items should come packaged together at no additional cost. For example, every time I go to McDonalds and order Chicken McNuggets, I get really annoyed. Back in the old days, McDonalds used to offer as many packets of sauce as you wanted for free whenever you ordered their Chicken McNuggets. But sometime within the last several years or so, they started charging you for extra sauce that exceeded their recommended quota.

Photo By Fr1zz

Now if you order 20 nuggets, you are only allocated 3 packages of sauce. For a 10 piece, you get 2 and for a 6 piece, you only get 1. For me when I order a 20 piece nuggets, I need at least 5 packets of sauce. No doubt someone at McDonalds calculated the sauce usage for the average …

With just about any business these days, how well you handle customers is crucial in defining your reputation and how fast your business spreads via word of mouth. One of the early problems that my wife and I faced with our online store was how to deal with incoming calls from customers. After all, it was just the two of us and we weren’t equipped to handle large volumes of calls nor did we have an easy way to manage the calls that we did receive.

Photo By Dan Brady

Especially if you have small customer support team or even just a single person manning the phone lines, it is important to have some sort of virtual phone system in place. By handling your phone calls via the web or through a computer virtually, you can make it appear as though you have a large customer support team even …

Every now and then, an angry or dissatisfied customer will call us on our customer support line and it’s not a pleasant situation to deal with. No matter how good your products are or how good your quality control is, inevitably some customer won’t be happy with some part of your business. And the worst part is that the customer may not always be reasonable. No business is immune to this. If you run your business long enough, getting an angry or unreasonable customer will eventually happen. It’s inevitable.

Don’t Let Customers Leave Angry

Photo By Josh Janssen

Due to the rise of social media, blogging, twitter and other lightning fast means of communication, it’s crucial that you pacify angry customers quickly and efficiently. All it takes is just one tweet, blog post or facebook entry and your reputation could be permanently marred. The …

How many of you check your Google Analytics stats religiously at least once a day? How many of you check your stats live using Woopra or some other real time stat tracking software? If you run an online store or sell goods online, do you actually go to your website as a customer on a regular basis to look around?

Photo By Gerlos

Informally, I asked a handful of my webmaster friends these exact questions and most of them said “yes” to the first two questions and “no” to the last. In fact, the webmasters I spoke to rarely visit their site at all unless they need to make a change. They rely mostly on analytics data to observe the health of their website.
There’s Just Too Much Data
Have you looked at your analytics data recently? Of course you have. The fact is, there’s just too …

I received a question from a reader the other day in regards to whether product liability insurance is necessary for a business even if one is protected by limited liability via an LLC or corporation. Specifically, he wanted to know whether it was worth paying for insurance for a pass through entity like an LLC or S Corp which carries no profits within the business. Whenever someone asks me this question, I always say yes no matter the nature of the business but it largely depends on your risk tolerance.

Photo By IXQUICK

Especially if you are running a business in the United States, the chances of getting sued are higher than you think and it really doesn’t take much for someone to take you to court.

There’s also a common misconception when it comes to limited liability with an LLC or corporation that most people may not be aware of. …

Marketing your online business and attracting customers to your ecommerce store or sales page is much harder than marketing a blog or any other type of website. Why? It’s because no one really cares about your business. Nobody really wants to know what you have to sell and no one likes being led to a sales page. Even if you think you’re offering the most magnificent products ever, by default people are going to ignore you unless they know who you are.

Photo by RBarney.com

People Hate Sales Pages On Social Media
Marketing your business on social media is all the rage right now but simply posting your online store URL on Twitter or Facebook is not going to get you customers. For one thing, most people are extremely suspicious of any type of sales page they encounter. Anything that even resembles a …

This is a guest post by Alban who is a personal finance writer. He offers information on how to effectively use a credit card and helps people to compare credit cards online.

Owning a small business is a big responsibility as you have to take care of your clients, provide them with the best service and manage your business success for the sake of your employees as well. However, having a small business credit card is an even bigger responsibility because business credit card spending can quickly get out of control, and instead of making your bookkeeping easier to manage, your business credit card could turn your business dream into a nightmare.

Instead, maximize the use of your small business credit card by understanding when and when not to use it, and follow these top three tips for small business owners using credit cards in their business.
How to use …

This is part 2 of a guest post by Xurxo Vidal. Xurxo is a co-founder and search marketing strategist at Bloom Search Marketing – an agency specialized in paid search campaigns, SEO, Google Analytics and conversion improvement. We are lucky to have him here today to talk about optimizing Adwords campaigns. You can find more of Xurxo’s writings on his company’s blog.

This article is part 2 of a 2 part article on adwords reports that can increase conversions and save you money. If you haven’t done so already, please check out part 1 here

In part 1 , we covered the keyword performance report, the ad performance report and the geographic performance report.

The remaining reports I’ll cover in this post are:

Search Query Performance Report
Placement Performance Report

Search Query Report
The search query report can be your best friend in finding those pesky unrelated keywords that you’re paying for – especially if …

This is a guest post by Xurxo Vidal. Xurxo is a co-founder and search marketing strategist at Bloom Search Marketing – an agency specialized in paid search campaigns, SEO, Google Analytics and conversion improvement. We are lucky to have him here today to talk about optimizing Adwords campaigns. You can find more of Xurxo’s writings on his company’s blog.

This is part 1 of a 2 part post on adwords reports that can increase conversions and save you money. When you are ready, you can find find part 2 here

You’re spending your hard earned cash to advertise your products and services on Google, so finding out how well your campaigns are working is critical to your success with AdWords. Today I’m going to cover some of the key reports available to you to track your campaign’s performance and identify problems and opportunities so you can maximize your ROI. You’ll …

It’s rare for me to get the exact same question in the same week but I had 2 people email me last week about how I deal with credit card chargebacks with our online business.

Photo By Squeaky Marmot

Before I begin, I just want to explain what a chargeback is. As you know, whenever you buy anything with a credit card, the credit card company protects you from any sort of fraud that a merchant might commit.

This includes incorrect amounts charged to your card, failure to deliver the goods as promised or shipping faulty or damaged products. When any of these things happen, you can call your credit card company and they will issue you a refund if certain conditions are met. This protection is one of the primary reasons why I always use my credit card to make any large purchase.

However as with everything in life, credit …

This is a short follow up post to my article on Are Coupon Code Searches Costing Our Online Store Money?. I got a lot of good responses and just wanted to summarize some of the main points. Ultimately, I decided to make a small change to our store based on one particular reader’s input and I wanted to talk about the effect this change had after just 2 days of operation. Usually, two days of testing means absolutely nothing but in this case, it firmly cemented in my head what I needed to do.

From the comments, pretty much everyone agreed that as a customer, seeing a coupon code field and not actually having a coupon code carries a negative psychological effect on the whole shopping experience.

For one thing, most of you that responded stated that seeing an empty coupon field is an instant signal to go off …

Every couple of months, I take an in depth look at the search keywords that people use to arrive at our online store. In addition, I also use keyword tools to see whether people are doing searches for our business directly.

Photo By MissMessie

Much to my surprise, I found that some amount of searches were for the term “Bumblebee Linens coupons” or “hanky coupons bumblebee” etc… I guess it’s only natural that shoppers search for coupons.

But the truth is that we rarely give out coupons yet we prominently display a coupon code field during checkout. The fact that customers are looking for coupons makes me wonder whether they are prematurely exiting the checkout process in search for nonexistant discounts.
Why We Don’t Issue Coupons Very Often
There are different schools of thought when it comes to coupons. Some companies always have coupon codes outstanding as a way to entice customers …

Adwords, like any tool, is a double edged sword. If used improperly, it can flush your money down the drain. But used correctly, it can be a very powerful driver of sales to your online store. The main problem however, is that most new users fall into the money wasting category.

One of the biggest mistakes that newbie Adwords users make is to misuse broad matching keywords with their campaigns. To illustrate my point, I’d like to tell you about some of the boneheaded mistakes that I made early on with our Adwords campaigns.

As I mentioned in some of my previous articles on How To Use Adwords The Right Way With Your Online Store and The Realities Of Using Adwords Effectively, finding the right keywords to use is an iterative process that requires patience and the right tools. And the only way to refine your campaigns properly …

Many personal finance and “get out of debt” blogs often advise their readers to avoid the use of credit cards at all costs. For some people, it’s all too tempting to buy more than you need and waste money on frivolous items when all you have to do is hand over a piece of plastic. By paying for everything in cash, you force yourself to correlate the cost of the items that you buy with actual dollar values which in theory helps curb your spending.

Photo By Andres Rueda

While these mind games work for the average individual, when it comes to running a small business, credit cards are an absolute must. My personal opinion is that if you lack the self control to watch your spending, then you have no business becoming an entrepreneur either. When running a small business, it’s important to watch what you …

It has been a while since I’ve done a competitive analysis of the various shipping carriers so I thought I’d do a quick update. With the United States Postal Service jacking up their rates every 4-6 months, what used to be the most economical shipping method is now priced inline or even more expensive than some of the more reliable carriers like UPS or FedEx.

Photo By Atibens

Because there are so many different shipping variables and options to choose from, it’s difficult to make an apples to apples comparison without locking down some of the basic parameters. For the purposes of this article, I am going to assume the following.

A 14in X 12in X 3in package is being shipped cross country from California to a residence on the east coast. Incidentally, this is the same size as a USPS Medium Priority Mail Flat Rate Box.
Out of the …

Every 2 or 3 months, I set aside a couple of hours to analyze the competitive landscape for our online wedding linens store and to see what our competitors are up to. And in most cases, it’s business as usual. Sometimes a new competitor pops up and a new one goes under. Sometimes I find some new products that I feel that our store should carry. But for the most part, things are pretty calm.

Photo by the Justified Sinner

This past week however, I noticed that one of our old competitors completely revamped their website and started slashing prices on similar products. When I told my wife about this, she seemed very concerned. After all, how could our little online store possibly compete against a store with such low prices? Unless they were purchasing their products at a much lower cost (unlikely), …

I was discussing the merits of using Adwords the other day with a few buddies of mine when I couldn’t help but notice the skeptical looks on their faces. In fact, both of my friends were quite shocked when I told them how much we were paying Google every month to use their Adwords service.

I must say that I was a bit surprised by their reaction. Even after explaining to them that our return on investment for Adwords was quite high, they still didn’t see the value. After all, they had both dabbled with Adwords in the past and felt as though it was a complete money pit.

So I dug a little deeper and asked to look at one of their accounts and soon everything became clear. There were several things that they were not doing correctly and they were optimizing for the wrong metrics.
A …

Embrace disaster. When things go wrong and your customer is angry, take advantage of the situation and make things right. Don’t make excuses and take responsibility! After all, the reputation of your online business is defined by how you deal with adversity and unfortunate circumstances rather than how you handle day to day operations.

Photo by Alan Clark Design

Take our online store as an example. 90% of our customers complete their purchase from our online wedding linens store without ever contacting us. And whenever this happens, it’s difficult to make a strong impression. We have not personally interacted with the customer in any way and the point of sale is just another sale. Sure, the customer might like our products and they might mention our business to a few of their friends. But most likely, their purchasing experience just blends in …

While our online wedding linens store doesn’t get a ton of inquiries, we do receive our fair share of customer calls throughout the day. And after you’ve answered the phone long enough, you begin to develop a certain sixth sense about the type of customer you’re dealing with.

My wife and I have only been running our business for 3 years but I would say that I can get a pretty accurate read of the customer within the first 30 seconds of the conversation. And within that 30 seconds, I can usually tell whether the customer will make a purchase and whether the order size will be decent.

Photo by KrystalChu

You Can’t Always Listen To The Customer!
What’s funny is that I’ve always been told that the number one rule of customer service is to always listen to the customer. But the reality is that sometimes the …

This is part 6 of a 7 part guide on how to start a small business.