A good online sales profiling tool will actually provide you with a recommendation as to whether or not you should or should not hire a particular candidate and how well they are aligned with the requirements of a specific job.

Often times the most troubling aspect of a search is being hot on a candidate and believing he or she is a good fit for a specific job assignment, only to have those hopes dashed by a non-hire recommendation coming back from your profiling tool. In those circumstances what do you do? Well, the real issue is that such a tool should not be used as the only set of information on which to base a hire/no hire decision. When we get back a no hire recommendation from our sales profiling tool, often times we still may make an offer to the candidate, but we’ll do so after following up with the candidate and using the areas of concern that uncovered in by the tool as a cue for asking more probing questions, and uncovering more information.

An online sales test is not a panacea for making an effective hiring decision. What it does do is provide you with another perspective as you go through the interviewing and hiring process. Why is this important? Well, all of us as interviewers, despite our best efforts, have blind spots when it comes to things that we miss through the interviewing process. In addition we often bond with a candidate as we go through multiple interviews, and start wishing and hoping that the candidate can and will be successful for a particular job. The more we like a candidate, the more we become oblivious to the potential weaknesses or pitfalls of that candidate’s sales profile relative to the position that we’re hiring for. This is why an online sales test or online sales profiling tool is so effective. It allows us to uncover other information that we may have missed through the interviewing process. and it allows us to circle back around with the candidate to probe more deeply and to confront them with some of the weaknesses that we’ve uncovered.

As a result of our experience we’ve used a variety of different online tests, but the one that we like the most is the Express Screen from Objective Management. www.objectivemanagement.com/expressscreens

This particular tool focuses on telling us whether or not a candidate can and will sell, what are some of their attitudes and beliefs that could potentially get in the way of their ability to be successful in a specific sales role, and it provides an exhaustive matching of each candidate’s exact sales experience with the position that we’re hiring for. It also allows you to understand, what is the growth potential of the candidate? Are they trainable? Do they have any significant chinks in their armor, which would lead you away from making an offer to them?

For all of the reasons I mentioned above, no one should view an online testing tool as the only way to a clear hiring decision on sales candidates, but it certainly does add value as a part of your overall sales interviewing process. When it’s integrated properly into the other aspects of your recruiting process, it can help you to reduce the number of mis-hires and improve your overall hiring effectiveness.

We get lots of questions from clients of ours about the role of online sales testing in the overall candidate selection process for hiring sales people. Many clients ask us whether or not we use these tests and what role they play. I’ll try to give you an idea of how we view them here.

Over the last several years there’s been a proliferation of online sales aptitude profiling tools that have developed and which have been commonly adopted by many companies. We subscribe to their use as a part of our own sales recruiting process at Cube Management. Why do we do this? Because they provide us with another set of data regarding the candidate and because that extra set of data gives us a more completely rounded view of the candidates skills, abilities, and aptitudes.

What does an online sales profile or sales test typically tell you? Probably the most important thing that we find is that an online sales test gives us another set of values related to the individuals ability to sell and whether or not their sales capabilities are well aligned with a target company’s sales process. A good online sales test will tell you those three things. Can the candidate sell? Is he/she motivated to sell? And can he sell for this specific company?

There are a lot of people who use other types of personality profiling and behavioral testing to hire sales people. such as Myers Brigs Testing or others. Many people ask us why not just use those tools? The reason why we feel that an online sales profiling tool is a better choice, is because they are specifically adapted to the type of questions that really need to be uncovered and resolved in the sales hiring process. Myers Briggs tells you more about behavioral attributes and characteristics of a person – their personality – but what it doesn’t tell you is whether or not that person’s personality will fit with a specific type of sales job. We believe that certainly there are generic personality types that fit very well with selling and being successful in sales (such as extroverts), but personality testing alone doesn’t give you enough information to be able to determine whether or not a person is closely aligned with a potential job you’re considering offering him/her.

he maturation of multi-channel commerce

More and more retailers are realizing the benefits of multi-channel retailing. Leveraging brand equity in multiple touchpoints has been proven to drive loyalty and interaction among consumers. With trends clearly showing the Internet as the core component to pre-purchase research, brick and mortar brands can ill-afford to take a wait and see approach as it relates to core multi-channel offerings.

Three core enhancements must be executed flawlessly to have true multi-channel integration:

• In-store associate kiosks

Leveraging the eCommerce store within an in-store environment solves fundamental out of stock situations, provides a new channel for up/cross selling, and maximizes profitability per square foot.

• In-store pickup

Incorporating buy online and pickup in-store functionality eliminates the barrier of shipping in the online sales equation. With shipping costs being the number one driver to why shoppers choose to not purchase online - this initiative help reduce key customer based purchase inhibitors while drive incremental sales in-store traffic. The solution also provides added convenience and satisfaction to the consumer, as they no longer have to wait to receive their merchandise.

• In-store returns

Returning products that were bought online, in-store, can bring many back-end technology bottlenecks to the radar screen. Forward thinking retailers must accurately map their order processing and inventory data to empower service associates with the data they need to reconcile and close the transaction efficiently at the POS.

Slow processing and a poor return experience will virtually erode a consumer relationship that was costly to start and maintain.

Getting your organization on board with change

Convincing company executives that these initiatives deliver ROI may be challenging, but that challenge pales in comparison to what is faced in your store network. The perspective change within the rank and file employees in your organization will prove to be your most daunting task as it relates to these initiatives.

Within all three of the solutions above, the web transaction integrates with the physical store. The store is the final piece of the puzzle in all three scenarios, making it the most crucial element to deliver a proper transaction. If your employees do not execute properly on this level, the result will be an un-utilized solution, or even worse, a customer perspective that your employees are incompetent.

The key is getting your employees aligned with multi-channel change. This happens by driving two key operational strategies in conjunction with a multi-channel technology solution.

• Training

Store managers must take the lead in understanding multi-channel solutions, while leading efforts to replicate this knowledge among customer-facing employees.

Prior to solution launch, be sure to communicate the internal and external value among the manager base, create a solution handbook for employee questions, and bring managers in to the home office for a ½ day workshop to become experts right before the solution goes live.

• Incentives

Employees must feel that the web-generated order still has some benefit to them. To drive accountability, some type of carrot must be given to ensure that employees have reason to treat the web-driven transaction seriously.

Because in-store employees receive bonuses for comp sales, create some type of awards program for efficiency as it relates to in-store multi-channel solutions. Or provide a piece of all web sales, distributed on a regional basis.

With the rise in the growing economy there has been increase in the development of the infrastructure. For this construction work has been on rise, which have led to the demand of construction equipment. Construction equipments are of various types and serve different purposes.

Heavy construction equipment include bulldozers & track loaders, rubber tire loaders, cable cranes, hydraulic cranes, stationary cranes, graders scrapers & rollers, paving equipment, rock crushers, screeners & washers, trenching equipment, etc. There has been technical advancement also in the attachments and part required for the construction equipment. Three are various types of buckets, blades, couplers cutters, forks, grips, hammers and shovels.

There has been a growth in companies opting for rental construction equipment or leasing them. The main reason behind this is lower capital investment and lower maintenance. Moreover, good construction equipment is available at great bargain prices. This construction equipment give good productivity paralleled to new equipment. Also the smaller fleet ar able to squeeze out construction equipment.

Apart from purchase, leasing and rental of the construction equipment, there are also security issues attached to them. These days companies and constructors are much worried about securing their construction equipment. Since construction equipment do not have any tracking number on them thus recovery of any stolen construction equipment is very difficult. Most of the time the construction equipment is recovered several kilometers away from the construction site. But recovery of equipment is very difficult. Thus a new system of putting the tracking number has been put into effect. Earlier, for security purposes companies used to tie up the construction equipment with chains and padlocks but of late these have been proved to be inefficient.

Now-a-days construction companies are asking the manufacturers to instill laser-cut identification labels with key identification numbers. These key numbers would prove to be the tracking number just like engine number and chassis numbers in automobiles. A proposition of seventeen-digit global numbering system has been put forward in the construction industry to prevent stealing of construction equipment. This would ensure recapturing of stolen construction as well prevention of shipment of stolen construction equipment to other neighboring countries.

Advancement in the construction industry has led to development of operator comfort--air-conditioned cabs, steering wheels that can be tilted and devices to prevent noise pollution. Producers are featuring global positioning satellite technology for improved surveying and for use in driver-less trucks operating on a fixed route.

Increase or decrease in the construction sector directly affects the sale or purchase of the construction equipment. If the economy of the country is growing at a healthy pace, it leads to development of new projects as well as upgrading the older ones. All this requires construction equipment either to be purchased or leased by the construction companies. Further, an association for the inspection and certification of used construction equipment has been formed. This has been done to promote online sales of used heavy construction equipment. This is required by the companies taking up projects at various locations in the foreign land.

Selling is the number one skill you MUST learn if you are going to be in business whether online or offline. If you do not know how to sell, you and your business will struggle financially and success will take much longer to realise.

This truth is very simple and hard to deny: if you do not know how to sell or HATE selling, you cannot make money. Period.

On the other hand, the Internet marketplace is jam-packed with plenty of fantastic opportunities and wonderful products. I you want to learn how to sell chances are that you have:

A great idea that you think you can make money from,
A product that solves a specific problem, and/or
An income opportunity to provide to people online.

But the fact is this: if you do not know how to sell, you cannot turn your idea or product into a money-producing asset, no matter how great or high in quality they actually are.

What You Need

You have probably already got a great idea or a product, now you will need to have the following in order to churn out a sales letter that kills:

1. Good writing skills.

Since you will probably write your own sales copy, you will need to have good writing skills and a good command of English, at least. There are plenty of online copywriting courses and membership sites where you can learn from more experienced writers.

2. Personality.

Yes, you must need personality. You will be writing somewhat a personal letter from you to your prospects so be friendly and approachable in your letter. Don’t write a stiff letter, because not only is it boring to read, you turn people away from your web page faster than Speedy Gonzalez!

Mix your writing skills with personality, and you will make most of a perfect sales letter that kills!

And last but not least, you need…

3. To take action!

There is wealth of information on how you can write your own successful sales copy staring at you online – don’t waste them by not doing anything with the information! The next step after developing your sales copy skills will be to setup a web page to sell your products online. The WebmasterFX.com website provides a range of internet marketing tools to help you build a successful sales pulling, profit producing website.

What is an affiliate program? I’ve been bombarded with this question from Internet business newbies since I got myself involved in this very interesting but challenging
online business.

Many years ago, ever since we started manufacturing products for sale in the offline physical world, we had been having sales agents representing different manufacturers to help the latter to expand their markets. The agents conclude sales without carrying inventory, handling payments, signing contracts, sorting, packing and shipping of the products. Their main focus had been to make the sale by getting the orders from the prospects and existing customers, which were then processed by the manufacturers or merchants.

In the Internet online world we have affiliates instead of agents. Affiliates are highly targeted pay-for-performance sales agents.

There are also some forms of Internet advertising that rewards the affiliates for driving traffic to the advertiser i.e. the manufacturers or the affiliate program owners. The advertiser pays the affiliates to place a link on their website, and the affiliate sends traffic to the advertiser in return. In other words, it's about the affiliates receiving commissions for helping in making the sales.

The most common reward is pay-for-sale, where the merchant pays the affiliates who referred the paying customers.

Affiliates are being considered as a complementary but very important sales channel although the merchants themselves continue to get their own direct traffic in making their own sales.

The affiliates do not have to suffer from the occasional sleepless nights worrying about the processing of orders, packing and shipping etc because this are being taken care of by the merchants who usually have an effective tracking system to determine which affiliates drive which orders to them starting with the so-called affiliate links. These are
the links that the affiliates put on their websites, newsletters, ezines or emails.

How does an affiliate link look like? You may ask. The most common affiliate link is embedded in the linking URL. For example, if you see a link like "http://www.abcmerchant.com/?xxxx=3456", you can be quite sure that the affiliate with the ID (identification) 3456 will receive money from ABC Merchant when someone places his order after clicking that link.

Other affiliate links are more complex and encrypted with some sites having their links masked so that the prospects won’t be able to detect that the URL they’re clicking is an affiliate link.

An excellent example of an affiliate program is that of Amazon.com who happens to have one of the oldest affiliate programs in the Internet. Other possible affiliate programs are as follows:

1) "Pay per click" - the merchant pays the affiliates for the driving the traffic and the resulted orders to them.

2) "Pay per lead" - the merchant pays the affiliates for directing the prospects to register their interest with a possibility of making the sales later.

3) "Pay per subscription" – if the merchant has a recurring revenue from the customer’s repeated orders, the affiliates will benefit accordingly.

Why bother about Affiliate Marketing at all then?

The following are some of the reasons why Internet marketers the world over swear by the affiliate marketing as a form of their Internet advertisement and strategy:

1. Low budget
Many are hesitant to venture into any home based businesses because of the lack of fund or the unwillingness to part with money due to uncertainties. In affiliate marketing, you don't have to invest a lot financially to start pulling in profits.

2. No inventories
There is no need to keep and manage an inventory as this would be taken care of by the merchant.

3. Passive income through leverage
One could copy what the truly wealthy people are doing (or rather not doing). They earn their income through various leverage strategies which allow them to make money while they’re sleeping, meddling with hobbies, or having vacation in far away places such as the beautiful beaches in Hawaii or Malaysia.

Unlike a paid job, affiliates could just drive traffic to the merchants’ websites without having to sweat after having provided them your ad copy and links.

4. Minimal risk
The main reason for most successful Internet marketer's extensive use of affiliate marketing is the low-risk nature of the program. This is especially attractive to those with low budget for advertising

5. Globalisation
With affiliate marketing, you are dealing with an unending global market place. All you have to do is study, research and select a niche product or service and prepare all the necessary marketing tools for your affiliates to direct traffic from just about anywhere around the world to your website.

6. Getting paid while you sleep
This system allows you to “recruit” thousands of “salesmen” who are willing to work for you 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. The best part is the fact that they’re willing to do so for nothing! This is a system that allows you to switch your business to “Autopilot” mode so that you could continue to earn money whether you’re awake, asleep or holidaying in Bangkok or Penang. It is a system that allows you to work from home or some places 10,000 km or more away from home.

Having said this, it must be stated that not all affiliate programs are successful. Many affiliate program owners fail because of their lack of the necessary investment, for instance, the merchant needs to invest in an effective tracking system, which is usually an outsourced affiliate network or an in-house affiliate software system. Another factor to consider is having sufficient human resources to recruit, manage, and motivate the affiliates with the right technical support and remuneration. Without a good support system in place, the affiliates will not stay long enough to produce the desired results.

Most online businesses use affiliate marketing strategy to sell their products which could include physical products, software or e-books. Service industry can also benefit from an affiliate program via a pay-per-lead program.

Before a merchant could establish an affiliate strategy, he should consider many factors among them are the answers to the following questions:

1) What are the benefits to the affiliates? What commission rate should be offered to affiliates to attract them and motivate them?

2) What are the competitors doing? Are there any innovative strategies that could produce product differentiation?

3) What pay-for-performance model should be adopted?

4) How to manage the affiliates and motivate them?

5) How are the affiliates paid using the latest technology without affecting their moral due, for instance, to delayed payment of their commission?

6) What affiliate software tracking systems are available and which is the best for the purpose?

A well designed affiliate program could bring very explosive positive results to the affiliate program owners’ business and the stream of income for the affiliates themselves.

An affiliate strategy done right can increase online sales tremendously. There are well over 30 affiliate software packages to choose from. There are also more than 200 features in affiliate software and network offerings.

With all these possibilities, no wonder many success stories of the Internet businesses today are the results of suitable application of affiliate programs. Indeed, most online businesses could not survive today without effective affiliate programs.

There are many ways of accepting payments online, some are easier, some more expensive, and some which offer ways to take online payments, and pay affiliates without tracking them yourself.

Accepting payments online can be a minefield and as the amount of online payment processors grows, the choice becomes more difficult as to which online payment processor to use. Here we weigh up the pros and cons of 3 of the top online payment processors.

One of the biggest and most widely accepted ways of accepting payment online is to use Paypal. Anyone who has used Ebay is likely to have already come accross Paypal even if they haven't signed up for an account. Paypal allows the online merchant to accept instant payments from customers either directly from the customers Paypal funds or from a credit card. This combined with its high profile, and use by Ebay makes it a useful payment processor to the new marketer online.

Paypal also gives you easy ways to create buttons and sales links to sell your products, and in the case of digital or downloadable products can be set to send a customer straight to the download page so your delivery work is done automatically. The thing to bear in mind is the fees associated with Paypal, as they take a percentage of every sale paid through them. The fees can soon add up and knock a hole in your profits.

Another favourite payment processor with online marketers is ClickBank.com who also accept credit cards on your behalf.

Clickbank is preferred to Paypal by some vendors due to its built in affiliate program which also has many affiliates searching for products to sell for commissions.

Clickbank makes it easy to setup an affiliate program and pays your affiliates for you directly, and can also offer the instant downloads the same as Paypal. As it already has a huge army of affiliates and people making search scripts to find products in the Clickbank marketplace it seems to be the answer to all your online sales needs, but unfortunately Clickbank have made it difficult to sell more than one product, so you need another account each time you want to sell something, or all your products on one page for affiliates to send their potential clients to.

Another thing in Clickbanks favour is that they have recently started allowing payment from Paypal, so that makes the payment options more varied for your customers, and affiliate customers.

Clickbanks one drawback is that you can only sell digital products through its system, so if you want to sell physical products such as books etc. then you need to look elsewhere.

Another option is to use an online credit card processor such as 2 Checkout (AKA 2CO) which offers the user the ability to accept all kinds of credit cards, and is able to be "plugged into" many shopping cart scripts for use on websites. Although it offers no affiliate program itself, 2Checkout doesn't stop you using multi level affiliate scripts, unlike Paypal, and Clickbank which are limited in this respect. Where 2Checkout doesn't compare so favourably is in the fees charged for each transaction, but you do only pay a one off fee to get an account unlike most credit card processors which charge fees and a monthly or yearly membership fee.

These are just some of the choices available to the online marketer who wants to accept payments online, all have pros and cons, but you need to look at what you want to do, and choose one or two of these services to start selling your products online. Use the one which best fits your business model, and budget, you can always look at other ways to accept payment later, but these will get you started.

In a way, the Internet may be compared to the Wild Wild West. (Where do you think the acronym 'WWW' came from?) There is no real central authority that is in charge and many scam artists take full advantage of this. Especially as a small business owner with no large company name behind yours, building credibility in the prospect’s mind becomes crucial.

Here are seven ways to build your online credibility.

1. You may find it beneficial to place your picture (even a smugshot) on your website.

Brick and mortar stores have the advantage since the clerk has a direct face-to-face conversation with the customer. It is therefore easier to ‘connect’ and form a relationship.

I recently read an interesting thread on a marketing forum message board with several people giving their opinions on the pros and cons of placing your picture on your site. Most of the fears expressed were that people might be turned off by the owner’s ethnicity. Even though this is a real fear I think that the best reaction I read on this point came from an Italian-American small business owner. She said that she would not want to do business with someone who was prejudiced against her anyway – I thought to myself – “Problem solved!”

Your photo helps your visitor to reach across the great chasm of the Internet and touch your customer -– right from their monitors. Why do you think cellular phone customers are trading in their ‘old phones’ for the new ‘talk-to-me-and-see-me-at-the-same-time’ models?

2. Provide an audio message in your own voice.

This is closely tied to the former tip. It all has to do with feeling connected and human. We are not computers – we just use them. We have emotions and use them to communicate. There is nothing that can communicate emotions like the human voice.

I can still fondly remember those days before my family could afford a television. As children we often listened to those radio dramas. You were there in the center of the action. ‘The Loooooonee RRRRanger!” the gallop of the horses, the crackle of gunfire … trust me, you were there. You smelled the gunpowder and rode those horses!

What can you use your voice to do? At least it can say, “There is a REAL person behind this website”. In this our automated age REAL counts.

3. Place your PHYSICAL address and contact information on every page.

Here again you are being transparent and in the open about your identity and how you may be contacted. You have nothing to hide, and you do not intend to take their money and close down your website the next day.

Your address also adds a sense of structure to the very fluid environment of the Internet. It is much like the sign on a brick and mortar store – this is where I’m located. That is why just a post office box number would not suffice.

Can you be reached by fax, landline phone, email, and mobile phone? This information adds to your credibility, not to mention your perceived availability.

4. Do not use a free email or hosting service as your main site.

Tied closely to credibility are the perceptions that you create of your business. Some say that in business image is everything. That may be taking it a little too far but you are NOT who you think you are but what the customer perceives you to be!

If you use a free email service such as hotmail.com what does this say about you? You are so successful but you cannot even afford a paid email service? Most spammers use these free email accounts anyway – that’s another count against you. It may be best to use the account associated with your paid website’s domain. I think that almost all web hosting services provide POP email accounts.

5. Have an ‘About’ page.

When a surfer appears at your site for the first time it is like going on a blind date. The visitor may have heard a little about you and know where to find you but she is practically just window-shopping. The ‘About’ page gives her a good chance to get a quick background check on you. She can then know if you are the one she really wants to build a relationship with.

Information you should place on this page includes:
- a personal and professional biography,
- maybe a photograph of yourself,
- name, address and telephone number,
- your company objectives,
- a comprehensive description of you and your company.

Just knowing this ‘outline’ of who you are places the visitor at ease and most of the nervous jitter hopefully disappears. Why? She sees you are not afraid to be checked out.

6. Include a ‘Privacy Statement’.

Internet users are becoming more and more sensitive to how their personal information is being used. This makes it almost imperative for you to provide a page with your privacy policy.

General concerns that would have to be addressed are:
*How you use the information that is collected.
*Is the information shared with a third party?
*Let them know how they can opt out of any mailing list they sign up for.
*Why you track their IP address.

For a more detailed discussion on website privacy you may check: http://www.truste.org/

7. Use your customers’ unsolicited testimonials and product reviews.

What you say about your product or service is not really taken seriously. I mean what are you expected to say anyway? It’s your product ... duh. What carry the greater weight are the opinions of other experts in your field. But what carries the greatest weight is what the customers themselves say.

This means that you can get instant credibility if you present the unsolicited testimonials of your satisfied customers. These testimonials should be accompanied with the email address or website and full name of the customer. The less information you give about the customer who is providing the testimonial the less believable it is. I have had visitors who actually contacted these customers to confirm that the testimonials were real.

Have you heard stories about legendary online entrepreneurs who hit it big after getting a #1 rank in several popular search engines? You probably wondered what it would take for you to achieve that elusive #1 spot in the search engine result pages (SERPs). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a vital role in ensuring that your business gets the best possible search engine ranking, which can lead to increased sales for your online company.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search engine optimization is the process of modifying web page content and meta-information to improve the search engine ranking of the page. Meta-information includes certain HTML tags (title, heading, emphasized text, keyword and description meta-tags), as well as the internal (links between pages on the same site) and external (links between pages on different sites) link structure of a web site.

Impact of High Search Engine Rank on Sales

Internet market research estimates that between 70% and 90% of online shoppers use search engines to find a specific product or service. Let's examine factors that influence sales to see how effective search engine optimization can boost your revenues.

Three metrics are required to forecast online sales: the average ticket, the conversion rate, and the amount of web site traffic:

* The average ticket is the amount of money spent by a customer on a typical transaction. Computer and electronics stores have high average tickets (hundreds or thousands of dollars), while bookstores have low average tickets (tens of dollars).

* Web Site traffic is measured by the number of site visitors, typically expressed as the number of page views per month.

* Conversion rate is the number of sales divided by the number of page views per month, expressed as a percentage.

Let's look at an example. The Ultimate Taupe Widget (UTW) store has an average ticket of $25, a conversion rate of 2%, and gets 5,000 page views per month. The estimated monthly sales are $2,500 ($25 average ticket * 0.02 conversion rate expressed as a decimal * 5,000 page views per month). Achieving a high search engine rank will increase the number of page views, and therefore increase sales. In this example, if traffic doubles to 10,000 page views a month, UTW's monthly sales should (approximately) double as well (to $5,000).

Keep in mind that a high search engine rank will produce a measurable increase in traffic only if there is significant marketplace interest in taupe widgets and your web site appears in the first thirty search engine results.

However, search engine optimization is not going to produce measurable results if there is very little demand for taupe widgets. The #1 spot in search engine result pages is not particularly impressive if only two people search for "taupe widgets" each month. Role of Keywords in Search Engine Optimization

Keywords are words or phrases users provide to search engines to locate information. Search engines examine page content to determine whether a specific page is relevant for a particular search word or phrase. Thus, effective keyword selection is one of the cornerstones of search engine optimization.

Each keyword is characterized by supply (number of search engine result pages) and demand (number of searches). The easiest way to improve search engine rank is to select keywords that have favorable supply-demand characteristics; that is, ones with a relatively high demand and a relatively low supply. It is much more difficult to improve the search engine position of a page on a high supply, competitive keyword.

Good keywords must be relevant to your product line, as well as your line of business. A #1 rank for "navy widgets" is worthless if you sell taupe widgets exclusively. A potential customer will find your page, quickly discover that you don't sell any navy widgets, and promptly go elsewhere. In effect, the conversion rate for irrelevant search engine hits is very close to zero.

Using Keywords Effectively

Choosing a set of target keywords is the first step in search engine optimization. The second step is using them in the body, title, headings, and meta-tags of a page.

Include the target keywords in the text of the page. Don't overdo it, though --- the keywords should fit smoothly into the surrounding text. Search engines use several techniques to detect excessive keyword density, or too many keywords stuffed into very little supporting text, and will reduce the rank accordingly. A page has too many keywords if they interfere with the general flow of the text on a page and appear to be glaringly out of place

The title tag should contain information that describes the page. Unless you operate a multi-national conglomerate that is already a household name, your company's name is not a descriptive title. Most search engines use the title tag as the first line of your listing in the search engine result pages. Strive to make your title tag say "click me" to a prospective customer. "Superior taupe widgets - 50% off every day" is a good page title, while "Ultimate Taupe Widgets, Inc." is not.

Incorporate keywords into the headings on the page, as well as into emphasized sections (bold or large text). Even though search engines are de-emphasizing descriptive meta-tags, include keywords in them nevertheless. The description meta-tag should have an accurate description of your page, and the keywords meta-tag should contain a set of keywords (separated by commas) that list key concepts mentioned on the page.

If you stand in front of a store on a slow Sunday afternoon, you will notice the same thing happening over and over again. People will pass by and carefully examine the wares in prominently displayed in the windows. Perhaps they will mumble something about the items on display. They will not even step into the store. These people are not customers. Rather, they are just window shoppers. On this particular Sunday they are looking, but certainly not buying.

It is even easier to "window shop" on the Internet, since you don't even need to step outside the house. People browse through many different web sites, look at the products and services on display, but do not buy.

However, if all you get are window shoppers, rather not buyers, you need to look into why at least some of your web site visitors are not buying from you. There are many reasons why someone does not become a customer of a store. They might not be interested in buying at this time and are just doing research; they might not be your target customers, or they can't find what they are looking for on your web site.

Let's look at several actions ways to improve your web site to generate more online sales:

- Get more targeted visitors to your web site. If you are selling sporting equipment, and people who come to your web site are couch potatoes, you will not get many takers.

The more targeted your web site visitors are, the higher the probability that they will buy something. Let's say you are a business coach who helps accountants get more clients. When potential customers come to your web site looking for a "generic" coach, they are not really targeted clients, since there are many different types of coaches who focus on different market niches.

If potential customers come to your web site and they are looking for a business coach, your targeting is better than in that in the example above. If potential customers find your site while searching for a business coach for accountants, congratulations! You have hit the jackpot. Your marketing campaign is as targeted as it can possibly get, since these people are a perfect match for your expertise. You should strive to achieve the highest possible level of targeting for your web site.

- Make sure that your target customers can find exactly what they came for on your web site. If you are a business coach for accountants, and you get highly targeted customers they still won't necessarily buy from you, unless they can find what they are looking for.

Some people may be interested in information about your services, while others are on a limited budget will only be able to buy just one of your products. Make sure that all the visitors who come to your web site can easily find exactly what they are looking for.

- Make it simple for your web site visitors to take action. People will go elsewhere if they can't figure out how to buy from your or how to sign up for your newsletter.