3 posts from August 2007

Profit from your product(s)- Ship for free! 

It's sad but true. I get excited about new Apple products these days. Although I will not own an iPhone until the price is right, the new iMacs look very promising. The new upgrades allow them to be real options for the professional office environment.

Many businesses that I consult with are looking to move into online video, blogging and podcasting. Traditionally these have been time consuming and complex to create and maintain on a regular schedule. The new iMac combined with a completely re-written iMovie and updates to Garage Band is simplifying these things.

Leveraging these capabilities you can work to increase site conversions and sales by adding video information on products and weekly podcasts containing product reviews. This is something that can be accomplished in an hour each week on a Mac. This is, unfortunately, not exactly the case on Windows machines.

Introducing iLife ’08. The official home of your life’s events. Get upgrades to iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, and GarageBand. Just $79.

Make prices readily available and easy to find

Many people are using the web for price comparison and research. This means that, unless you have a single unique product, your customers are going to judge you as much on price as anything else at your store. In today's world people hit a web page and make a decision on where and what to click next within 4-15 seconds. Do you want the conversion?

Case in point: The worse usability idea ever was seen during the Christmas shopping season last year. The day after Thanksgiving (the single busiest shopping day in the US) Circuit City decided to force all visitors to add items to their shopping cart prior to seeing the "deal" price. This meant you had to register before you could find out how much an XBOX costs. It took almost 5-8 clicks to actually see a price. By the time you completed this asinine process you were to tired to buy.