Between Monday 24 December 2007 and Friday 4 January 2008, TPP Internet’s telephone and email support operating hours will be restricted to 9am to 5pm (AEDT), Monday to Friday. In addition to this, our office will be closed Tuesday 25 December 2007 (Christmas Day), Wednesday 26 December 2007 (Boxing Day) and Tuesday 1 January 2008 (New Years Day).

We will resume our normal operating hours of 8. Provides company profile, services, gallery, and contact information. 99 Enmobil Cream – Price: $2. Buy 36 Beauty Browse spray 36 boat and other Health & Beauty Products. 49 Ashwafera – Price: $1. 30am to 6pm (AEDT), Monday to Friday from Monday 7 January 200 hrEach gram of BactrobanLearn about the prescription Purchase ddavp-2-5ml in our online discount pharmacy now. Licensed Pharmacy – Buy ddavp-2-5ml – No Prescriptions. Buy Ddavp 2.5ml 5ml – DDAVP 2. Low prices for high quality. medication BactrobanMedStore. What is the most important information I should know about Bactroban (Mupirocin Topical) What does Bactroban (Mupirocin Topical) look like. < Learn about MotrinLearn about the prescription medication MotrinThere are different dropper sizes: Children's MotrinHuge Savings from Canada Pharmacy. Compare Motrin prices from every licensed pharmacy & save 20 to 85%. Buy Motrin Ab zu eBay. Over the counter medicines in convenient travel size pacFind infant motrin and Compare prices at Smarter. a href=”http://indianapolis-homes-for-sale.net/bactroban/”>Buy Bactroban Open 7 days. Lowest Prices and Great Service. 8.

Sign up now and pay no set-up fee – short time only!*

It’s Christmas time at TPP – secure your present now! Sign up for our fantastic new service, Online Marketing, and pay NO set-up fee. Save $199! Hurry, offer will end soon.

Why you should have a Pay Per Click campaign to bring your business on the front page of Google:

• Australians currently spend more than $1 billion per month with their credit cards online
• 72% of all Australians have used the Internet in June 2007
• Google reached 81.33% of all Internet users in October 2007
• Over 2.6 million searches per day for products and services!

Call us now to set up a Google or Yahoo! account, individually managed** by Google certified and experienced personnel. Pay NO set-up fee when you sign up before the 31st of January, 2008 – and save $199! Our Online Marketing packages start from as little as $5 PER DAY!

Sign up now for Online Marketing – and make your business visible! Call us on 1300 665 491 or visit our Online Marketing section for more information.

The TPP Team wishes you a Merry Christmas!

* offer ends 31st January 2008.
** for Advanced or Premium Online Marketing only.

Selling online can seem daunting for the new business, especially with so many technical decisions to be made, so here are the five worst mistakes to avoid when setting up an online store.

1. Poor or No Security
The initial paranoia regarding online financial transactions may have abated, but it is still possible to incite customer uncertainty by not securing your online store with an SSL certificate.

Customers are now familiar with the padlock system that appears in the status bar of secure sites and will look for it when entering their payment information. Make sure your customers have no doubts about the security of their personal information and ensure you have the appropriate SSL certificate and place information on your site to explain the encryption of data.

2. Overcomplicated Shopping Cart
Online shopping is supposed to be easy, so don’t overcomplicate the process with an unnecessarily detailed purchasing process. Remember, the more fields the customer has to complete, the more clicks they need to perform and the more pages they need to navigate, the greater the chance that they will leave part way through the transaction.

Reduce your shopping cart processes to the minimum number of clicks before confirming payment. Don’t take the opportunity to add in survey data and other unrelated feedback information, if it is not completely necessary to process the payment.

There are successful online stores out there with ridiculously complicated shopping cart processes – Amazon springs to mind – but as they are well established, it doesn’t harm them as much as it would a smaller online store. Don’t model your business on the big boys unless you are one yourself.

The closer you can get your purchasing system down to a few easy clicks, the more likely a customer will complete a transaction.

3. Bad Copy
Nothing says ‘unprofessional’ like a badly worded online store, but there is no shortage of them out there. Many people don’t hold spelling and grammar as highly as was once the case, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore them when writing a professional website.

If you are trying to convince your customers of your reputation and quality, simple mistakes can turn them off. They begin to feel that you haven’t taken the time and effort to check your website properly and that will affect their opinion of how you run the rest of your business.

Common mistakes involve the misuse of apostrophes, common spelling errors such as ‘loose’ instead of ‘lose’ and poorly formatted sentences that cause misunderstanding. If you are unsure about any of these, it is important to have a qualified person check over your copy for you, as using a computer spell-checker can cause mistakes to be missed.

4. Poor Value Proposition
A value proposition is a statement of why your customers will buy from you instead of your competition. You have competition out there, whether you like it or not. With online shopping making it increasingly easy for customers to flit from online store to online store before deciding on a purchase, you need to think clearly about what it is you are offering that will ensure they click on your purchase button instead of someone else’s.

Online customers value many things, but the most popular would be cheap or free postage, next day delivery and quick payment options. People shop online for convenience, so make it convenient. Maybe a return policy would be good, or membership in a rewards program.

You may not be able to offer all of these things, but once you have identified a particular offer, make sure you clearly display it. If the additional cost worries you, remember, increased sales can soon return your investment.

Don’t forget, you are also competing with terrestrial shops. If the products for sale on your site are also commonly available at the local shopping centre without the need for postage, you will need to determine some other benefits to convince a customer to buy from you instead.

5. Writing for Me, not You
Your customers are not going to buy from you to do you a favour. Too many businesses market by talking about themselves, rather than their customers. “We are the biggest and best” does not address the customer’s need.

If the copy on your website talks about what you offer and what your business is, then you risk losing customers, because you are not relating to the customer’s needs. Instead, talk about what a customer can gain, what your products will do for them and how much you can help them save. Talk to the customer about their needs, not yours.

Help is At Hand

TPP has a range of products and services to help any online store avoid costly mistakes, eg with SSL certificates. Why not discuss your needs with one of our experienced consultants on 1300 665 491.

Unlike the real world, where the presence of a helpful sales assistant can sometimes close a sale on a wavering store visitor, the internet has a back button that makes it far easier for your visitors to leave your store quickly and anonymously. So how do you close those sales?

Five Ways to Get More Customers

1. Keep it simple
Most people shop online for convenience, so it is imperative that your online store makes the purchase easy. Don’t overcomplicate your online store by adding forms, requiring registration or using complex navigation if you don’t have to. Always ensure a customer can click a button at any time to go straight to a purchase.

2. Clear Calls to Action
You know what response you want the visitor to perform – you want them to buy – but does your website trigger that response? Calls to action are the parts of your text that persuade the visitor to take the step you want. You’ve told them about the product, the next step is to tell them what to do about it. “Call now” or “Buy Today” are simple (and unoriginal) calls to action, but more creative ones that tie a benefit to the visitor acting on your suggestions right now can move the visitor’s curiosity or interest into a purchasing action.

“You can save your business 50% on printing bills by calling us today” clearly outlines a benefit and incites a quick response from the visitor, instead of filing the thought away to be forgotten.

3. Improve your landing pages
Visitors may arrive at your online store through a variety of routes, meaning that they may land on different pages of your website.

Because of this, ensure each relevant landing page is focussed on closing that particular sale. The internet is about instant gratification, so reward a visitor searching for your bargains with a quick response to their needs. Each landing page should be designed to provide a simple ‘one click sale’ if at all possible, providing an instant solution to the visitor’s request, whilst removing clutter. Take the visitor by the hand and lead them where you want them to go.

4. Make them an offer they can’t refuse
That’s what Domino Pizzas did when they entered the competitive pizza home delivery market with their “30 minutes or it’s free” campaign. What can your online store offer to encourage customers to buy from you instead of the other online stores fighting for attention; cheap deals on fast delivery, a money-back guarantee, free upgrades?

The online shopping world is different to the high street, where your shop is only competing with sellers in the local area. Online, a customer can visit numerous stores in minutes to compare prices and deals, increasing competition dramatically. Ensure your offer stands out from the rest.

5. Have Postage and Shipping Alternatives Advertised Up Front
It is common for customers to abandon a purchase at the very last page of the payment process once the postage is factored into the overall price, catching them by surprise. By offering fair postage rates up front, you allow a customer to effectively assess the value of buying through your store.

Offer alternative methods of postage, where possible. Some online stores offer delivery only by courier, or other expensive methods, which can turn customers away. Courier costs can more than double the price of an item in some cases, immediately short-circuiting a sale. Ensure every product on your website has a cost-effective postage solution that makes the whole package attractive to the buyer.

Online Stores Solutions with TPP
TPP has years of experience in helping small businesses put their stores online. Let TPP help you get started so you can make sales sooner!

‘Tis nearly the season to be jolly, but how jolly will you be if your online store doesn’t snag its share of the Christmas sales boom?

Every year, more customers turn to the internet for their Christmas shopping. The benefits are numerous;

• No queues
• No crowds
• Worldwide choice
• International delivery to distant family members
• 7 day, 24 hour shopping
• No piped Christmas music on an eternal loop!

If your online store can offer some of these benefits to customers, and can get that message out, you stand to increase your sales over the next few weeks.

Of course, all strategies vary depending on the product to be sold, but if any of your products would be suitable gift ideas, this needs to be communicated to your potential customers.

Deck the Halls

If you have the option to perform some site adjustments, it can help to add a Christmas theme. A welcoming Christmas message and a couple of well chosen images can show a visitor that your site is catering directly to their Christmas shopping needs. Christmas imagery produces a positive reaction through happy associations and promoting a jolly experience for your visitors can certainly help to improve sales.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

With many Christmas shoppers wanting to send presents over long distances, you can become Santa Claus and make sure those gifts land in the right stockings on time – no chimney climbing required.

By adding a gift-wrapping service to your postage and packing, as well as the option to send the item directly to the family member, you save the customer time and money. Such a service could make the difference between you and competing stores when the customer makes their purchasing decision.

If you do offer this service, it is very important to stress the time needed to guarantee delivery before Christmas and let the customers know how many days they have to take advantage of your offer. This also produces a sense of urgency that can encourage customers to buy now rather than later.

Ding Dong, Merrily on High

You may not have church bells to announce your Christmas specials, but it is still very important to get your Christmas message out. Consider adjusting your search engine advertising to include Christmas themed adverts, highlighting your promotions.

Alternatively, if you have a blog or email newsletter, make sure you put out plenty of information of what you have to offer in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

The 12 Days of Christmas

These days, it seems that Christmas is over by Boxing Day, but the Christmas festivities traditionally last until January 5th, Twelfth Night. Superstition requires that all Christmas decorations should be brought down before the end of Twelfth Night to avoid bad luck in the coming year and this would seem to be a good practice to adopt for your website as well.

Of course, you may have already adopted a New Year theme by then, but whatever you choose to do, remember to remove your Christmas promotions soon after the Christmas holiday, to avoid giving the perception that your store is outdated and poorly maintained.

On the other hand, removing Christmas from your website too early can look cold and cynical. A small adjustment in the content and imagery can keep the Christmas theme running under the banner of a post-Christmas sale, which also gives opportunities for late shoppers to get something for that distant aunt in Ipswich they forgot about.

So why not adopt the 12 days on your website?

Joy to the World

If you adjust your sales plan to encompass the different needs of shoppers during the Christmas period, you can increase sales and have a Merry Christmas all of your own.