The Isolated Entrepreneur

Go to a website  Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping Software page and the first thing that happens is you hear a voice begin to describe the product.  Your heart my give a jump because it is unexpected - especially if your volume is turned up high.

Is this good business practice? In most cases, it is not.

Give visitors the control to run audio and video feeds.

Before you set audio or video to start playing upon a person entering your site, consider these situations where it might embarrass your visitor:

• Browsing during a break at work
• Browsing in a public area such as a library or wireless hot spot
• Discretely shopping at home for a family member’s gift (can be overheard)
• Parent browsing in a home with little children (the kids come running to see what is going on - the moment of peace is gone)

Finally, audio and video feeds (as well as multiple images) is not efficient for visitors using a dial-up connection, an iPhone, or some company firewalls.

This is especially of a video such as that on the Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping Software page.  Why run it if the visitor is not watching that portion of the screen?

These days, multiple web sites have similar information.

If your visitors are surprised by something unpleasant, this may deter them from coming back because they do not want to deal with turning off the sound.

Rather than going to your site to shop, they may spend time finding another more appealing site.

Are there exceptions?

Yes.  When I use iTunes, MediaPlayer, etc.

For websites, I expect video feeds at a TV broadcast site or when viewing previews of a movie.  I expect audio feeds when I go to NPR.  BUT I, the visitor, like to be in control.

It’s the first of the year.  It is time to update the copyrights on your blogs and other dynamic websites.

You have a photograph you want to put on your website or blog, however, the file is too big and you need to shrink the photograph to fit on your page.  How can you get this accomplished without spending hundreds of dollars on sophisticated software such as Adobe Photoshop?

Try GIMP, a free, open source photo editing program (go here for the Window Installer).  This software has more features than Kodak’s EasyShare program or Google’s Picasa.

You can change the ppi (pixels per inch) and scale the image.  Click on Scale Image under the Image menu to find these features.

HINT.  The standard is to use 72 ppis for website images and 300 ppi for printed material.

[Reprint from Christopher Knight’s Ezine Tips]

Recently Email Service Provider (ESP) MailerMailer released an email metrics report on the first half of this year. To save you some time from reading all 28 pages of this report, I’m going to give you the quick highlights:

• Mondays, Tuesdays and Weekends are best days to send.
• Wednesdays and Friday’s are the days your email is least likely to be read.
• Tuesday mailings typically get the highest click rates.
• Shorter Subject Lines (less than 35 characters) significantly outperform longer subject lines (greater than 35 characters) by both open rate and click through rate (CTR.)
• Subject line personalization is the single best place to add personalization if you want to improve open rate and CTR.
• Shoot for having either 5-10 links or over 20 links for best performance. Try to avoid having 6-19 links within your emails.
• Text messages show a very slight advantage in CTR over HTML, but the percentage is negligible

Read the full Ezine-Tips article: http://EmailUniverse.com/ezine-tips/?id=1367

Today there will be a live video seminar at 2 PM EST about how to get your email into the Inbox and not into the spam folder.   The seminar is free.  Click here to register.

For information about upcoming seminars, click here.

Every once in a while, I take a look at Isolated Entrepreneur’s statistics.  I thought I would share some since many subscribers are bloggers themselves.

Over the past year, the type of postings for our audience (micro business owners) that have the most hits continue to be the same.

• Case studies of successful companies (i.e. Baby Einstein)
• Economic outlook
• Marketing statistics

The periodic news tidbits are starting to take off as well, indicating an increase in RSS subscribers and repeat readers.

Writers wanted

Isolated Entrepreneur is looking for additional authors who want to blog to the micro-business communities.  Of special interest are: virtual assistants, coaches, accountants, and marketing specialists.

An author on a community blog will find the commitment level is smaller and the exposure is greater.  More authors means more contacts.

Authors at Isolated Entrepreneur have their own author profile page (just click on the author’s name at the top of a posting  or on the right side.

One of the first checks I do when I am about to meet with a prospective client is try and access the client’s website with www in front of the domain name - and without.

In most cases, it works with and without. If all or part of the site does not load, it usually involves a web-based application such as Joomla!, Wordpress, Typepad, etc.

Usually, it is an easy fix. Search “without www” in the support pages of the application or your domain registry’s website.

I have handled email lists and published e-newsletters for several clients in the past.   I always insist my clients comply with SPAM laws and grow their email lists through traditional means rather than sending it to everyone who drops a business card in their fish bowl at conventions.

Many people think of email marketing as a cheap, impersonal way to market.  It’s not.

Email is very personal to the person who receives it.  Many people think of email as an imposition - a necessary task that keeps them from getting things done.  E-newsletters should be informative and enjoyable first - a sales gimmick last.

Just like Justin at AWeber, I get offended when I get emails I did not explicitly opt to get.  Here is Justin’s take on it.  It may be worthwhile to read the comments below it as well.

Don’t depend on the forward button in your subscriber’s email software to spread the word about your e-zine.

Depending on what software the subscriber uses, the forwarded email may look garbled or just be the text version of your product.

By including a “refer a friend” and/or “forward newsletter to friend” links and webpages, you are better able to control the look-and-feel of the forwarded message.

Finally, you can get statistics on how viral your e-zine is.  =-)

If you are alike me, you mostly scan web content rather than reading it word-for-word.

Jakob Nielsen has a great newsletter article about web writing. Click on the “writing for the web” under Mea Culpa for great words of wisdom.