Regardless of the type of business you do on the Web, either in the B2B or B2C markets, creating a quality form for your website should be a top priority.  But what makes a form good or bad?  Some developers think that if they cram in a bunch of color, well-written text and lots of plug-ins they've got the whole thing nailed down.  In fact, if you focus on just those areas, you will only solve a small portion of the problems that most developers face with regard to form usability.

Forms are essential to increasing your business.  They help you to establish a method for contacting potential customers or clients by adding them to newsletter mailing lists, shopping cart abandonment notifications or other essential marketing tools. They also help you to know what your customers want from your website and brand. Understanding what people want is half the battle. Once you establish a clear picture of your site visitors, you can adjust your marketing tactics and increase your conversions.

What Is Usability?

Standard website usability is defined as the effectiveness and efficiency with which users are able to achieve specific goals within a Web-based environment.  There should always be a goal established for your users - either to make a sale or sign up to receive free content or information.  In order to accomplish both of these actions, your users must fill out some type of form.  The viability of your form and its ability to elicit information from your visitors is essential to the success of your online business. Forms are used to help your visitors achieve their goals – and to help YOU achieve your goals - so they must be effective and easy to use. 

There are six primary ingredients that are necessary in order to create an effective form.  I want to help you understand these ingredients and find ways to implement them effectively in order to get the best results from your forms.  Once you understand how these elements work, and why they are so important, building a productive form will be easier than ever before.

#1 - Actions

Actions are the buttons or links that help the user to perform an ‘action’ like submitting the form or continuing on to the next part of the purchasing process.

#2 - Help

A help section should always be provided to give users information on how to fill out the form and answer any questions they might have about why certain information is required.

#3 - Input Fields

These fields are where users can provide feedback and information and include fields such as check boxes, radio buttons, basic text fields, password fields, etc.

#4 - Labels

Labels are used to describe what is required from the user in each field.

#5 - Messages

Messages are used to give instant feedback directly to the user based upon the information they input into the form, such as an indication that the form was completed and submitted properly or that more information is needed in order to complete the form.

#6 - Validation

This element is used to validate that the information submitted by the user is acceptable, such as properly formatted phone number or email address.

Different Types of Forms

You will ultimately use different methods or approaches depending on the type of form you are creating. What are your goals?  Do you want to elicit feedback from your customers?  Do you want the user to establish a customer account or sign up for a marketing newsletter?  Do you want to create a point of contact for potential clients?  There are three basic types of forms that are used by a majority of businesses.  Below you will find a basic description of each to help you determine which approach would be best for you and your goals.

Appearance Forms

These forms will help you to establish a conversation and relationship with your site visitors, customers and clients just by the way they look.  Design plays an extremely important role in the development of these forms. Make sure to adhere to the guideline posted above and include those six elements in your design. When you create a well-planned, aesthetically pleasing Web form, you will get better results.  Pay attention to the alignment of your fields, labels and actions to create a form that not only looks good, but performs well too.

Conversation Forms

If your goal is to establish a dialogue between yourself and the people who visit your website, this is the type of form for you.  Remember that a conversation is a two-way street - it's not just about customers giving you information and interacting with you about their experiences on your website, it's also about you communicating back with them to answer questions, solve problems and let them know about new products or services that are available.  Don't use aggressive wording and make sure there is a natural flow of conversation to ensure that your customers feel comfortable with this type of form.

Relationship Forms

Some forms are designed to help create a relationship between your business and your customers or clients.  Because relationships are built on trust, it's important to establish trust in your form.  You can achieve this through the use of proper wording, color, imagery and a well-placed and respected logo.  Users feel much better when they know the form they are filling out comes from a trusted source.  Use this form to get to know your visitors, asking appropriate and effective questions that will help you to paint a clearer picture of what your customers want and need from your business.

Experiment and innovate – forms are a necessary evil and most customers these days must first trust your brand before divulging personal information. Polls, surveys, purchases…web forms have become a central element of our Web interactive experience. Make yours as simple, easy and painless as possible!

Lately we've seen a lot of trending data that focuses on the online behaviors of low- to mid-range income Internet users, but what are the affluents up to when they surf the 'Net? A recent study that focused on Internet users who had an annual household income of $100,000 or more revealed that digital ads are just as appealing to the haves as they are to the have-nots.

Ipsos Mendelsohn conducted a study in February 2011 for the Interactive Advertising Bureau which measured the interaction of affluent consumers with digital advertising. It revealed a couple of interesting statistics, such as a partiality to video and paid search advertising, as well as a tendency of a majority of affluent consumers - 60% to be exact – to take some type of action based on digital advertising. Affluents were also slightly more likely to want to take an action with digital advertising versus consumers who lived in households that made less than $100,000 a year.

Compared to the under $100,000/year group, the $100,000+/year group was more likely to become aware of new products (55%) and new companies (51%) compared to lower-income households, who came in at just 49% in both product and company awareness categories. 17% of the higher-income participants stated that after viewing the digital ad online they went to their local retail outlet to see the product or purchase it, with another 16% stating that they purchased the item online. Figures were only slightly lower for the lower-income participants, with 16% stating that they went to a local retail outlet and 15% stating that they purchased the product online after viewing the digital ad online.

The higher-income participants responded the most to digital ads via video and paid search advertising, with 41% starting that they had taken an action after they saw one of these types of ads. The next most popular type of digital advertising was banner ads and e-mail advertising, with 37% claiming to have taken action after seeing one of these types of ads.

Another interesting twist was a greater understanding by affluent users of the need to provide marketers with more information about themselves in order to view advertising that is more targeted and tailored to their needs. One statement on the questionnaire that said, "I am usually willing to share some information about myself online so that I can get a more customized online experience," resulted in 32% of the affluent respondents to state that they agreed, and only 23% of the lower-income respondents responding the same.

When it comes to behavioral targeting, affluent users seem to be much more accepting of this technique than other users. This could be a reflection of their understanding of the need to divulge more personal information to advertisers and marketing programs. As many as 37% of these users stated that they are most likely to pay attention to advertisements that are relevant to the activities that they are involved in or are thinking about regardless of the content or theme of the website they are visiting. Only 32% of lower-income users agreed with that idea.

There is a marked difference between the digital ad behaviors of higher-income users and lower-income users. How will you use this information to increase your bottom line?

We hear so much about social media these days that sometimes it can get a little overwhelming.  But it is important to understand that while these tools can yield amazing results, the successes that businesses have seen from using social networking media have only come from using them effectively.  Anyone can create a Facebook account or start "tweeting" on Twitter, but to use these programs effectively takes know-how, ingenuity and a willingness to sort out "what works" from "what doesn't."

A study was conducted earlier this year by the folks at Worldcom PR Group and the Transworld Ad Agency Network, which surveyed 25 different ad agencies and 25 different PR agencies to see how effectively social media tools were being used by these groups. While all the numbers were different according to the industries that the various groups worked with, all agencies reported that their fees from social media networking had increased, yielding a much greater percentage of their revenues in 2011 than they had the year before.  16% of the ad agencies surveyed revealed that their revenues from social media were 15% or greater in 2010, with numbers increasing in 2011 to 20%. 

So what is causing the increase as the influence of social media evolves within the world of e-commerce?  Is it simply more users taking part in interactive advertising and media via Facebook and Twitter?  Is it because more ad and PR agencies are expanding their marketing campaigns to social media - or is there another reason?  In fact several reasons were revealed through this study as to why these agencies believe their social media revenues had increased in the past year.

As many as 84% of the PR agencies surveyed and 67% of the ad agencies surveyed reported that their PR efforts through social media resources have "kept pace" within the market.  However as many as 68% of PR agencies surveyed and 52% of ad agencies surveyed reported that their efforts within the traditional advertising industry were also "keeping pace" within the market.  What this reveals is the same thing that we saw in the earlier numbers which showed that PR agencies were much more effective in communication with customers and were better adept at dialoguing with their target demographic than the ad agencies were. 

This ability to communicate and dialogue makes the PR agency much more able to yield positive results than the traditional ad agency.  So while both types of agencies were able to yield growth and positive results from their social media efforts, the PR agencies did the best.  So what's the solution?  In order to "cover all bases" with traditional marketing and the evolving Internet-based, fast-paced social media marketing, firms would be smart to hire an agency that excelled in both PR and traditional advertising skills. 

As social media continues to grow and marketers integrate it more frequently into their marketing campaigns, you will need to focus on your social media skills on a day-to-day as well as long-term basis in order to keep up with and possibly surpass the efforts of your competitors.  Combining both marketing approaches together will help you to create a complete and thorough marketing campaign that will enable you to reach out to new demographics while still satisfying the needs of your current customer base. Good luck navigating the social seas and avoid turbulence!

It’s interesting to watch how SEPA has finally captured the attention of the payment community and at long last is bringing some welcome changes to the European transaction landscape. But what does the roll-out really mean for those selling to EU consumers online? What is SEPA direct debit; how does it work, what are the advantages, limitations and liabilities? How does it compare to other forms of debit? How does the Merchant offer it?

As the owner or payments director of an online site attracting European traffic, it’s vital that you know more about non-card payments – and that includes more than just placing a specific capability or platform on your sites. That strategy reminds me of the old ‘build it and they will come’ Internet website analogy – just adding a payment option to your check-out is not necessarily going to improve your sales, or find you suddenly with volume through that new method.

The European Union is a huge market, and has even less in common with the United States than you might think. The institution of the SEPA banking scheme is just one aspect of what is happening. Your online operation must still consider local language, customs, habits, currencies and education as you consider how to tap into this vast population which once completely online will be significantly larger than the US market. 

Do you know the difference between domestic direct debit and SEPA direct debit? Which would you suppose converts better? Are you considering adding non-card methods to your credit card capability? Have you added non-card join options and been disappointed in the results? Every implementation is different. Everyone has a different traffic mix. How do you present the option? How do you pay affiliates on the option? What is direct pay? What is a banking transfer and how is it different from the other two? Are they interchangeable? When can I do recurring billing, and when not? What is right for your business?

Need answers? Talk to me.  Make More Money - E-mail JoeD

Wait - don't click away! This post is for company owners, project developers and marketers - we'll leave all the technical mumbo-jumbo about how to develop a mobile app to the folks who know what they're doing. Today let’s talk about developing goals for your mobile applications, understanding the key indicators that will reveal the performance of your apps, how consumers are finding and using your apps - and the value of it all, whether your apps are engaging and retaining customers to your company brand.

As mobile apps continue to grow in use and popularity, many companies will jump into the mobile arena after developing an app for smartphones, and just cross their fingers hoping it works. Unfortunately, most of these people skip the most important part of developing a mobile market strategy - the planning and definition of their application development - and end up wondering what went wrong. It is important to know how to measure the performance of your entry into the mobile arena and if you don't have a clear strategy and objective, you will in most cases fail.

Another mistake that people commonly make is to develop mobile apps for each and every platform, throw it out into the wild and hope one of them catches on with consumers. Wasted time and wasted resources go into developing, publishing and maintaining an app only to find out that nobody is interested in what they have to offer. However, the worst thing you can do is to skip over the idea of developing an app altogether and put your focus into developing for mobile browsers. Apps aren't going anywhere - they're just getting started!

Measuring for Success

The first thing you need to understand before developing and publishing an app is what influences the purchasing decisions and other behaviors of your target audience as well as the typical mobile app user. All of this information is essential to developing a solid mobile marketing strategy. So before you even start developing that app, make sure you take the time to think about how and what you will use to measure the success of your mobile marketing campaign. Your research can be broken down into four main categories:

• DISCOVERY PHASE - Investigate how people are finding your current mobile properties and how they are using them.
• LOYALTY PHASE - Find out just how engaged and loyal your users are to your mobile properties, and how often they return.
• ENGAGEMENT PHASE - Find out what your users are engaged in on your mobile properties, what activities they are completing and how many are becoming customers.
• RETAINING PHASE - Find out the best methods to use to encourage customers to continue using your mobile properties and retain them for your brand.

Once you are able to determine the questions asked in the above phases of early development, you will be able to better understand what needs to be accomplished in order to turn users into customers. You will also be able to develop a solid plan for retaining those customers and improving the success of your mobile properties and marketing campaigns.

Raising Awareness

If people aren't finding your mobile sites and apps - you need to know about it. It is important to raise awareness within the industry, community and to raise interest with your target demographic. You can do this both from within and outside the traditional app markets. There are many different ways that you can promote your apps and mobile properties - what methods are you currently using now? Are you promoting them via your website, via social networking programs, via email and text messaging, via a specially-designed mobile site or through the use of advertising campaigns? Whichever method you decide to use to promote your mobile apps, make sure to monitor the following areas of your project carefully:

• DOWNLOADS - You will want to stay hyper-aware of the number of times your app is downloaded. What this will do is show you the volume of interest surrounding your application and it also helps you to get a clear picture of how many people have downloaded and used your app.
• USERS - This is an important test of the usability of your mobile app. You need to know how many unique users of your app there are over a period of time. More will download your app than will actually use it, so this is an essential metric to keep track of as you fine-tune your app development.
• ACTIVE USER RATIO - This is one of those quick-look stats that will instantly show you the ratio of the number of actually users compared to the number of total downloads. By looking at this figure you will be able to understand whether you are gaining or losing users over a period of time.
• NEW USERS - Another great statistic that you need to know is the number of users that first used your app during a specific period of time. This will help you to understand whether your downloads mostly occurred immediately following your launch, or if you are continuing to get new users downloading your app over time.
• VISITORS - You should also keep track of how many unique visitors accessed your mobile website over a period of time. This will help you to see if people are using your mobile site - or not.
• NEW VISITORS - Just like with users, it is also important to know how many visitors are accessing your website for the first time over a specific period of time. You need to know if you are just seeing the same group of visitors over and over, or if your marketing campaign is bringing you new visitors and customers to the site.

Next time I’ll talk about engagement and those vitally important concepts of conversion and retention!

A 2011 study of the online gaming market has revealed that more than 50% of all consumers have now spent money on online or mobile games throughout Europe and the US. The data for this analysis comes from GlobalCollect, an online payment processing company based in the Netherlands, and Newzoo, an international research firm. 

The study separates the online games industry into two separate and distinct markets - an emerging market which is comprised of Russia, Mexico and Brazil, as well as the well-established Western market which includes the US, UK and several EU countries. The emerging markets throughout Russia and Brazil are relatively low due to a limited Internet penetration in these areas, however with only 46 million online users in Russia and Brazil as many as 75% of those consumers play games online. In fact, studies show that Internet-users in these countries spend more time playing games than they do watching television - as much as 11 hours per week!

Despite their low overall numbers, 53% of Russian gamers and 47% of Brazilian gamers who play games online have spent money to play. Over two-thirds of those who pay to play spent money on add-ons for mobile and online games that are free to play. While these figures may not sound impressive, it is important to note that GlobalCollect has noticed a 103% increase in the last year of gamers who pay to play in Russia and an astounding 228% increase in Brazil since 2010. The increase has been determined to be as a result of the use of local payment options, such as WebMoney in Russia and Boletos Bancario in Brazil.

A study that was conducted in 2011 by National Gamers Surveys also revealed that growth is being seen in all three of these emerging markets.  Approximately 16 million are actively playing online or mobile games in Mexico, 35 million are active players in Brazil and another 38 million are active in Russia.  These figures are expected to grow as Internet penetration increases and knowledge of local payment options becomes more well-known and trusted in these markets.

Western markets are more established in the online and mobile gaming verticals, and there are as many as 145 million active players in the US. However, only 43% of 63 million of those players actively pay to play or purchase add-ons for free to play games. The percentages are much higher in other countries, helping to create the over 50% average in the Western market, with Germany boasting 36 million active players and 66% or 24 million of those players actively paying to play those games. 52% of the 31 million players throughout the UK, or 16 million, are actively paying to play online or mobile games.

We can learn much from observing the spending and playing habits of consumers in the Western markets and apply those statistics to the emerging markets to determine how some of the growth in those countries will evolve. The study also reveals that major changes have occurred in recent months with regard to the amount of time that consumers in Europe are spending playing games. These figures have caught up to the usage seen in the US, where spending for online, mobile and downloaded games now represents as much as 50% of the consumers' spending for online game playing. MMO games make up approximately 10% of their total monthly budget spending with as much as 80% representing spending on virtual currency. As many as 15% of Western consumers have now purchased Facebook credits to use for online games purposes, and this figure is expected to grow dramatically.

You’ve got the traffic, and everyone is playing games online - are you motivated to start working with some game developers yet?

In August Google launched a brand new way for site owners to submit a request for specific pages within their website to be crawled by the Googlebot. What you need to know right away is that use of this new tool will be limited, so it is important that you only use it when you need a specific page to be crawled immediately.  However, it should be noted that Google does not guarantee that every page submitted via this new tool will be indexed within their popular search engine - the new crawl request feature - known simply as "Fetch as Googlebot" - will at least in some way improve the amount of time required to have your page crawled.

How Google Works

Google lists websites and Web pages within its ever-expanding index by crawling a Web page and then processing that page through a series of algorithmic processes to determine whether the page should be stored within the index - or not.  Google initially finds out about various Web pages in a number of different ways and then adds those pages to its scheduling system to be crawled.  The list of pages-to-be-crawled is sorted via yet another algorithm which prioritizes the pages based upon specific factors.

Those factors include: the frequency of content updates, the importance of the content (i.e. news, etc.) and the value of the page, which is based upon the ranking system used for Google's PageRank. The bottom line is that Google does not send the Googlebot to crawl every page it becomes aware of, and it doesn't add every page it crawls into the index.

How Google Finds You

There are a couple of different ways that Google can find your Web pages - aside from the new Fetch as Googlebot tool. Google mainly discovers Web pages by following links.  Most Web developers know the importance of linking to every single page on their website with internal links, but few know why it's so important. Google also uses RSS feeds as a method of discovery.  If your website is well-linked internally and externally on other relative websites, chances are Google already knows you exist.

Here are some other ways that Google can discover your Web pages:

• Add URL - You've probably noticed that "Add URL" link on the Google home page. Google invites anyone to request that a URL get added into their search engine index. Initially it was added for people who were looking for a specific link but were unable to find it so that it could be found easily by the next person, but as you might imagine it was soon used and abused by over-eager Web developers vying for a good listing. As a result, the requests made via this tool are ranked much lower than other discovery methods.
• XML Sitemaps - You can submit an entire list of URLs to Google - and to Bing - using this tool. While the engines won't guarantee that they will crawl each and every URL that gets submitted, they do add the URLs to their crawl to-do list to be ranked with the other discoveries.
• Fetch As Googlebot - The latest submission tool from Google. Despite the public launch in early August, this tool has actually been around much longer - it's just now "official" and out of beta. Fetch as Googlebot allows you to direct Google to crawl a specific URL that you have verified to be your own so you can see what Googlebot "sees" via the server. This data can then be used to help you de-bug any issues that you might not notice otherwise when you view the site in a browser window. Once you ask Googlebot to crawl your page and make the necessary changes to fix any issues you discover, all you need to do is hit the "Submit" button to have it added to the index.

Fetch As Googlebot: The Advantages

While some of the other methods are much more advantageous at getting your Web pages into the queue, there are some advantages associated with using this new feature. First of all, it is an ideal tool to use when you add new pages to your site. It is also helpful to use when you do a major structural update. Google states in the description that you can use the Fetch as Googlebot tool to increase the time it takes to remove URLs from the index or to update cached pages in your listings.

You now have the ability to add as many as 50 URLs a week, but you can also submit all of the crawled URLs and pages that are linked from that URL. Linked page submissions are limited to just 10 a month, so make sure to utilize this tool wisely. It is also very important that you have a solid link structure for your internal and external links if you are going to use this tool. Again, it would be a good idea to utilize this tool when you make a major update or add a new section to your website. Because you must be a verified site owner to use the Submit All URLs tool, this is a much better choice than the public Add URL or Crawl URL tool. However, it is important to note that Google's basic rules still apply: just because you submit it, doesn't mean that it will be listed in the index - it just means you will jump ahead in the crawling process.

Click for information and details, visit Google's Answer Page on Fetch as Googlebot:  https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=158587"

A lot of webmasters and site developers underestimate the power of choosing the right keywords and key phrases to use on their website. While it pays to be both relevant and honest, it involves much more than simply plucking five keywords out of the air and using them over and over again on your site. Let’s take a quick look at how to take advantage of online tools that will help you to tap into consumer trends -- and how to optimize your website for your specific market.

It is important to have an understanding of keywords and key phrases - and how they are used by site developers and consumers alike. When you visit your favorite search engine - like Google or Bing - or you visit your favorite social media networking site - like Twitter, Facebook or Four Square - you search for the things you are interested in reading about using keywords or key phrases. The words and phrases that you choose to type into the search bar will determine what type of websites or pages you receive as a result. The more fine-tuned your search, the more relevant your results will be.

It is important for website owners to design a site that features the keywords and key phrases that are relevant to the searches that will be conducted by their target audience base. The better your ranking in the top keywords and key phrases used by your customers and potential customers, the more likely your site will be found among all your competitors! Can you see why keyword strategies and site optimization are so important to today's website owner?

Choosing the Right Words and Phrases

The process of choosing the proper keywords and key phrases to associate with your website is an on-going process that will need to be tweaked and updated over time. It can be tough to know which keywords and key phrases you should start off using, but as you check your statistics and measure your website's progress in the search engines and social sites, you will be able to fine-tune the words you use and improve your ranking and results.

As demonstrated in this article, it is important to ensure that the right people are finding your website so you can improve your sales conversion ratios and spend your time and efforts selling to visitors that are interested in what you have to offer. Some developers think that the goal is to get a bunch of traffic to the website, but the real key is to get a bunch of targeted traffic to the website. Targeted traffic increases your chances of making a sale and of winning long-lasting customers for your business.

Taking the time to choose the best keywords and key phrases will not only help to boost your website in the search engines, but it will help you to get the most out of your advertising campaigns. When working with pay-per-click (PPC) programs like Google's AdWords, a basic understanding of which keywords and key phrases perform the best for your site will boost your results. Additionally, knowing the demand for your product or service and having a grasp on current industry trends will help you to go even further.

Developing a Solid Keyword Strategy

Here is a simple 3-step guide to developing your own keyword strategy. Remember that it is important to review your choices on a regular basis to determine whether your selections need tweaking or changing in response to the results you are receiving via the search engines, social networks or your PPC advertising program.

First Step - Choose 3-5 Relevant Keywords

You have to start somewhere - right?  Think about your business and what you have to offer. Then think about your customers and what they might type into the search bar to find your website. What are you selling? What do you offer? What market or industry are you in? What does your business have that no other business has? It is important to understand that your keywords should not be your brand name - unless you are a very large major corporation that is already well-branded within the market. Choose words and short phrases that really define the heart of what it is that you sell.

Second Step - Focus on Relevance and Difficulty

You want to avoid choosing very general words and phrases such as "marketing," "consulting" or even "Web design" - at least on their own. Because general keywords like these are so saturated in the market, it makes it near to impossible to get a good ranking within the search engines using them. Instead, you should focus on less competitive keywords and key phrases that are more specific to the type of business that you do; the services you provide. Longer phrases that contain identifying markers are referred to in the SEO world as "long tail keywords" and can be a huge asset in helping you to reach your customer base.

To help you expand upon your keyword and key phrase prowess, use these free online tools:

Google's Keyword Tool - https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Hub Spot's Keyword Grader Tool - http://www.hubspot.com/products/keyword-grader/

Wordtracker's Free Keyword Tool - https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

SEO Book's Keyword List Generator - http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-list/generator.php

Third Step - Optimize Your Website

Once you select the primary keywords and key phrases that you are going to be using to market your website, be sure to incorporate them into your website using basic search engine optimization techniques!

Even the savviest online marketer can get caught in the pitfalls of email marketing. With so many opportunities for failure in this particular medium, it is important to have a firm grasp on what it takes to create messages that are both linguistically and aesthetically pleasing by paying attention to design, layout and other essential elements that work in harmony to complement your targeted marketing text. Think hard when creating these vital tools for customer interaction to better engage your customers and prospective customers, increase your ratio for opened emails, clicked links and ultimately, conversions, sales and revenue improvement.

Cut the Fat!

Each and every mailer you send out should contain content that is informative and relevant, but it should also push the reader to act - inspire the reader to interact in some way either by reading, clicking, purchasing or sharing. One way to ensure that your mailers are designed for success is through the use of click heat maps. A click heat map is a tool that will help you to realize where and when your customers are clicking on the message - either on links, to scroll or to read the text. This will help you to improve your layout and increase the response to your call to action by removing all non-essential links, text and elements from the page. By removing these distractions you will keep the focus on what really counts and will improve your conversion ratio. If you really get into it, you can track what time of day your email is read and what day of the week is King, and schedule your mailing to coincide with these results – because to some degree we each serve a different demographic.

Imagine and Build a Strong Design

When you create your mailer you need to make sure to design a strong presence for your brand. A good rule of thumb is to leave an appropriate amount of white space, use color as an accent (not as a background or text color) and utilize strong borders to set the tone. This will help to keep your readers' eyeballs glued to the screen without distracting them with loud colors, designs or "too much information" crammed into a single section or area within the mailer. You want to avoid the cluttered look and you want your mailer to be organized and structured for easier reading.

Don't Forget Mobile!

It is important to ensure that your mobile subscribers will be able to read your mailer just as easily as your email subscribers. Make sure to use all the W3C (www.w3.org) compliant features for your project development including alt tags, and keep your email less than 600 pixels in width. For easier navigation, make sure to include any key messaging in the upper left-hand corner. Turn to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for self-adjusting image sizes and text that will allow you to optimize your mailings for smartphones and other mobile devices.

Navigation Must Be Easy

Further to the tips above, touch screen tablets are another issue that have created new challenges for email marketers. Thinking ahead about the placement of the hyperlinks within your mailer - making sure they aren't too close to one another for fingertip navigation - is always a good idea.  Using clickable blocks of content that are well-spaced from one another is usually a smart way to design for this demographic.

Study Proper Text-Image Ratio

Many of today's spam filters will automatically block a message that has a low text to image ratio, preventing many of your customers from receiving your mailer to see your latest promotion. There are some marketing platform programs available that can help you to score your mailer for spam - alerting you if your text to image ratio is off.  In a best case scenario you should have approximately 3200 bytes of text, giving you a text to image ratio of 30:70. Make sure to optimize your images to ensure that they are as small as possible to help you to achieve this optimum ratio.

Observe Caution with Video

Video can be a major asset, but overdoing it on video can ruin even the best planned mailer campaign. There are a lot of creative ways to highlight your video content via tutorials and demos of products.  However, many email clients block users from receiving video via email, so you need to think outside the box.  You can include a player image that will link to a video on your website and perform a traffic test to determine whether or not your readers are clicking through to watch the video. It is important to test this carefully to see if your readers are interacting with it or if it is just a wasted link.

The Pre-Header Text

If you utilize the pre-header text feature you can make sure that all users - including Smart Phone users - will see the text that you want them to see and not the default "View as Web Page" text. You can use this spot as a brief promotional area or as a header to state the purpose of your mailer to recipients. This will help someone that is receiving your mailer via their mobile device to quickly see what you are offering as a complement to your subject line text.

Add Some User-Generated Content

People love to read real reviews written by real consumers - it really helps them to make a more confident decision on a purchase than just going on the product description or sales hype. By including user-generated content that has been posted by your other customers, you will draw your readers into your social media pages, encourage them to interact with the website and products, and will increase your conversions in the process.  User-generated posts, comments and reviews will give your products - and your website - a lot more credibility. Avoid short cuts and faking this – it’s more obvious than you think and you’ll lose credibility…

Innovate Including Social Networking

Speaking of social media and user-generated content, it's a good idea to integrate your social media pages such as Facebook and Twitter into your mailer. You can do this quickly and easily just by placing a social icon into your mailer - or you can add action text such as "like us on Facebook" or "follow us on Twitter" into your promotional text. Just make sure to test the results of your social media integration in your mailers to find out if icons, text or placement of these links works better one way over another.

Don't Forget to Add an Unsubscribe Link  ;-D

Nothing generates user frustration more than not being able to unsubscribe from an email program.  Making your "unsubscribe" link or button clear and obvious also gives your readers confidence in your business and will help to decrease the number of spam complaints that you receive. Make sure to place the link in the same spot in every mailer - preferably at the bottom of the email near your contact information.  You should also consider adding links such as "change e-mail address" for those who don't want to unsubscribe but need to change where the emails are sent, and an "update preferences" link that will allow your readers to change the frequency of the mailers they receive.

Now once again, get busy!

Today many companies and employees are considering the work-from-home experience as an alternative to the traditional workplace.  While there are clearly advantages to working from home, it is important to examine both the pros and the cons before making a decision that could impact your life - and your lifestyle.

The Pros

You will discover that there are quite a few advantages to working from home.  Perhaps the number one advantage that attracts most people to this type of work is the freedom from having to go to the office. Offices can be stressful places and many studies have been conducted with regard to the volume of work that can be accomplished in such a setting versus the volume of work that can be accomplished from a home environment.  Not everyone does well in a cubicle setting, and it has been proven to lead to workplace-related stress as well as stress from strained relationships with co-workers and supervisors.  While there will still be deadlines and other factors that contribute to stress while working from home, the home worker will at least be free from the stress of the workplace and the over-bearing boss who watches over their shoulders.

Another excellent advantage is flexibility. Many people who work from home are able to set their own hours - particularly if it is a self-run business.  While this doesn't mean that you can just take a day off whenever you want, you will usually be able to set the hours that you work.  If you find that you crank out more work during the traditional 9-5 work schedule, or if you do better working in the afternoon, say noon to 8pm - whatever works best for you and allows you to work at your best, can make working from home a major plus.

Another obvious advantage here is economics.  When you work from home you will save a lot of money on things you would normally have to invest in for the workplace.  Things like work clothes, dry cleaning bills, parking costs, transportation to-and-from the office, food costs and even childcare.  The money you will be able to save will be obvious by the end of your first month at home.

The Cons

A lot of people think that working from home is all "ups" and no "downs," but there are some pitfalls that you need to be aware of in order to make the most of your experience.  The first thing you need to learn is the ability to balance your work-life and your home-life.  When you work from home your friends, family and neighbors will think that you are now available to have long conversations, do things for them or take them places.  If you can establish some ground rules early on about respecting your work hours, your space and the job you need to do, it will be much easier in the long run.  Learning to separate the things you need to do at home - like taking the kids to school, cooking meals, cleaning and family entertainment time - from the things you need to do for work, will help you to be more productive and in the end, will give you more free time to do the things you want to do with your family.

Another issue that a lot of people face when working from home is establishing a workspace to use during business hours.  If you do not have an extra bedroom that you can use as a home office, it is important to find a space that you can use and separate off for yourself that others won't disturb.  The kitchen table is by far the worst place that you could set up your home office - it is highly trafficked and other members of your household will eventually need to use it for other purposes.  Even if you can set up a workspace in a corner of the living room, bedroom or alcove within your home, it would be better than setting up and breaking down your workspace every evening for dinner.  If you have sensitive items that you need to keep away from little hands, you should invest in a cabinet or other type of locked storage to keep those items safe and secure.

The final challenge when working from home may seem like a small issue, but it's really very important.  A lot of times friends and family members won't take a person who works from home seriously. For some reason people tend to think about working from home as more of a hobby than a serious business.  It is important to present yourself professionally - not working in your pajamas, creating professionally-looking business cards, establishing a serious website, etc.  If you are serious it will show and others will take you seriously as well.

Lessons to Learn

Learning to balance your work-life and your personal-life when you work-from-home is very important if you want to be successful.  Freeing yourself from distractions, learning to complete tasks in a timely manner and even learning the warning signs of over-working, over-stress and the work-a-holic syndrome will help to keep you on-track and allow you to make the most of your work-from-home situation.  In the end it's all about balance and knowing how to identify the most important aspects of the work-from-home experience.