News and articles from Hyperlink

What's your price?

Have you ever wondered if price has an effect on what you buy? Well, yes, if it's too expensive I won't buy it, I hear you say! Okay, I left myself open to that one, but lets examine this in a bit more detail.

Often when we shop we are confronted with prices ending in ninety-nine cents (99). We intellectually know it's a ruse. These tactics are right up there with the "buy one, get one free" offers. But, is the price of $4.99 better than $5.00 for example, or $497 better than $500?

There will be a lot of you who will say this pricing trick has no effect on what you purchase. That may be true for you on one level, but the proof's in the pudding. Research does show that such pricing strategies can boost sales by 15%. This was the findings of French research that found that by lowering the price of pizza from 8.00 euros to 7.99 euros boosted sales by 15 percent.

There are heaps of theories that try to account for why this happens, but one that I like is offered by Robert Schindler, the Professor of Marketing at Rutgers Business School in the United States. He says that when a price changes from $30.00 to $29.99, the change from three to two makes more of a difference than the value of that money could predict. He likens it to when a 39 year old turns 40, it feels like a big deal (ever had that feeling?). It feels like an emotional difference.

It seems strange that such a minuscule change in price can increase sales by that amount. If there's a lesson to be learn't for our own businesses it is:

• Don't implement what you think will work, because that would quite possibly be completely ineffective.
• Don't listen to what others tell you will work. What they say they'll do and what they'll actually do are usually completely different things.
• It is the actual testing that will tell you what works.

These small drops in price creates a sense of greater value in the mind of the purchaser. It helps lower the tipping point for someone to take action and purchase.

Applying this to your website

On our websites we can also use these mechanisms to help lower that tipping point. One tactic is to offer something that has a perceived value, in exchange for a visitor taking an action, you could easily increase your conversion rate.

You could apply this on your website in a number of ways. For example, in order to entice people to sign up to your newsletter you could offer a free report on something that is in your specialty area, or to increase purchases offer an extra bonus. These things won't increase your costs, only your profits!

The Power of Email Marketing

One thing that website owners don't do enough, or do too often and badly is email marketing. Email marketing is a must for developing and sustaining long term business in the internet age. You're probably saying to yourself right now, that you often don't read what gets sent to you now. I would probably say pretty much the same thing.

The reason we often don't read email newsletters is because they're often pretty boring and don't offer too much of real value. So many email newsletters I've had the misfortune to subscribe to have been so full of themselves there was very little value in it.

If you're to be successful and use your email newsletters as a way of both maintain and attracting business you must offer real value to your subscribers. People have signed up to your newsletters because they believe they're going to get value from it. From your perspective, the aim of the newsletter is not only to give the value that's expected, but to create a conversation with your subscribers in which you not only create trust, but also credibility.

"It's just too complicated"

A major concern for many businesses about establishing and maintaining an email newsletter is not having the tools to manage it nor the time to write it. For example, if you try and do things by yourself, your ISP will throttle how many emails you can send at any one time making things very time intensive. Using messageMaker you can reclaim your time.

messageMaker (http://hyperlink.net.nz/products/messagemaker.php) is a complete email marketing solution that enables you to maintain your relationship with people who want to hear from you, while cutting costs, saving you time and driving sales.

Here are some really great benefits to using messageMaker:

• Ready to use on your Hyperlink hosted web site.
• Immediately gain the attention of your recipients with a one-step personalisation.
• Maintain the trust and confidence of each recipients by never exposing your mailing lists to others on the that list.
• Gain extra qualified subscribers to your list by using the 'Tell-a-friend' feature.
• Save your valuable time and ensure your mailing list is always up-to-date with automatic subscription management.
• Easy to use with simple and intuitive process: Create email - Select mailing list - Send.
• Free updates, giving you the most up-to-date version all the time.

Call us today on 04 801 8034 to arrange a demonstration of messageMaker and now it can benefit your business.

How to Keep Your Laptop Secure

Very shortly I'll be in the market for a new laptop. I've been very lucky with my existing laptop as it has not been stolen or lost. But as I'm thinking about it now, my laptop is worth a lot more than just its replacement value. It contains a lot of valuable information that would take me ages to replace and reinstall.

So, my mind is now thinking, "How can I track it down if it gets stolen or lost?" Well, I have just come across a solution that I would like to share with you. Enter Adeona (http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/), an open source Internet-based tracking system for lost or stolen laptops.

It's free to download and install, and will protect your privacy by not relying on a proprietary tracking system. This is the main reason I like it, because no one besides me can use Adeona to track my laptop in the event that I lose it or it gets stolen. With current proprietary tracking systems I have to sacrifice my location privacy with someone keeping tabs on where it is, even when it is in my rightful possession.