Use Three Trust Seals to Grow Your Business

When creating a secure website for your online business, it is crucial that you are PCI Compliant and that you boldly display a secure trust seal on your website. Secure trust seals comfort your customers to let them know that you care about their privacy and security.

What many business owners don’t realize is that there are actually a few of different types of trust seals, depending on what kind of image you want visitors to have of your business. My goal is to help you understand three different types of trust seals so you will be able to create the most trusted website for your online business, thereby increasing your online profits.

1.      Privacy Seals. A privacy seal supplies a company with a privacy policy that best suits the needs of your specific business practices and those of your potential clients. Displaying a privacy seal on your company’s website helps your business identify potential privacy threats.

2.      Business Identity Seals. This seal is also known as a Verified Existence Seal. The business identification seal verifies your business’ legal name and actual existence of your business by verifying multiple parameters such as the contact details, address of the company headquarters, and key management details. These seals help build the trust of your consumers. It comforts potential clients by letting them know that your business is professional and legitimate.

3.      Security Scanning Seals.These are the most popular and widely known type of trust seals. Trust seals verify that you are running credit card transactions securely by displaying an approved SSL Certificate. Security Seals also require server verification or security scans to preform daily examination of your hosting server. These scans eliminate hackers and verify that the information you run on your website is kept secure.

When your online customers see these Security Seals on your e-commerce website they automatically feel more secure. These Security Seals have been proven to increase profits by at least 10% because they build a more secure, trusting relationship with online consumers. They protect your computer, software, gateways and website from hackers and threats to help you run a more secure online business.

Knowing the differences between the three main types of Trust Seals is crucial to having a more successful online business. Displaying Privacy, Identity, and Security Seals will help business owners create a more efficient and trusting website and will help inform your customers that you care about the safety of their online purchasing experience. When customers feel secure they are more willing to purchase your online products and services which helps increase revenue and profits. 

Stop Hackers with Security Scanning and Trust Seals

On June 1^st a recent poll went out to see what techniques work the best to help online business owners make more money online and stop hackers at the same time. The verdict was: display trust seals. “Trust Logos that clearly convey the safety status and last scan date of your website” was voted the #1 way to be more successful online.

With this survey, they also found that security focused trust seals increased conversions by more than 10% and they learned that displaying the seals was a simple process to implement.

So how can having a trust seal on your website help stop hackers from visiting your site and simultaneously bring you more online business?

Trust seals provide a level of confidence and trust to your online consumers. When your trust seal also shows the last date your website was scanned, this increases that level of trust even more, (as long as this stays up to date). You will also want your trust seal to state that your website security scan and trust seal is active.

All of these things ensure your potential customers that you care about their online safety and that you want them to know that their personal information is not going to be compromised. When your consumers feel this sense of safety, they are 90% more willing to buy your products. Because of this, your conversion rate (amount of sales) automatically increases. 

By having a secure, up-to-date trust seal, hackers will move on to less intimidating sites – just like robbers who see signs that the house has a security system move on to the next house. When computer hackers and online identity thieves see that your website is secure, has recurring security scans, and is up-to-date, they move to a site that isn’t safe – that’s easy to break into. They know that their opportunities to successfully hack a scanned website are difficult at best.

Trust seals can literally save your business. They get rid of online hackers and they are guaranteed to increase your online conversion rates by a minimum of 10%.

When Is Enough Revisions Really Enough?

As a rule, published writers are usually fairly proud people. We don’t start out that way, of course, but once we have a finished product and the general public doesn’t completely reject us, we become proud.

That because there are so few of us who have spent the time and energy necessary to create something valuable. It’s not that others couldn’t have created something similar to what we have done, it’s just that they didn’t and we did. And, truth be told, that’s something we should be proud of!

Part of the creation process includes revisions. Before we let our first real work of art out into the public, we review and edit and revise and rewrite. We let those we trust and even those we don’t mark it up and tell us what they hate about it and what needs to change to make it better. We want it as close to perfection as possible, and we are willing to pay the price of personal scrutiny.

Authorship is a beautiful thing that no one can take away from us. However, one problem with pride of authorship is that we can get to the point where ten revisions become seven, then seven become four and soon four become two. It’s one reason why great authors become forgotten.

Revisions can be done differently. Sometimes I take them a chapter at a time – out of order – before editing it from start to finish. Even after writing a book I will review the outline and see if it is what I wanted or if it needs rearranging before sending it in to be published. At times I check only for spelling and grammar. Other times I check only for the flow in my characters’ personality. Sometimes I only scrutinize the plot, place, or chronology.

The other day I was asked how many revisions are enough revisions. It’s a tough question. I have written poems that have had only minor revisions from the first inspired thought. Then I have had others that I worked on for years before I was satisfied with them. The same holds true for my books and articles.

Here’s my answer to how many revisions are enough revisions: When you think that your written work is perfect and that you would be happy to finally send it in to the publishers, have one more editor review it and make one more personal revision. The last thing you want is to find a mistake after thousands of copies have been printed.

Research When Writing: How Much Is Required?

 I just finished reading an article from a published writer who says that he spends ten times as much time researching for a book he is writing as he does writing it. In his case, he confessed that it didn’t matter whether he was writing fiction or non-fiction.

In my own experience, I believe that the amount of research required depends on the topic you are writing on, your style of writing and the end result that you are looking for. I have written a book of poetry, for example, that didn’t take any research at all.

I simply wrote the poems, organized them, wrote a quick introduction and obligatory ‘Thank You’ page for being alive and well enough off to spend enough time to make my poems readable and hopefully understood. Of course, there were hours and hours of re-writes and revisions, but that the subject matter for another article.

I also wrote a fictional tale of dancing aliens for my soon-to-be eighteen-years-old daughter. That one probably could have benefited from additional research, but, because it was made for a pre-teen, at the time, and because the emphasis was on the experiences and not the mechanics of robotic alien life forms, I got away with it.

The same was not true, however, for my series of stories on the life-saving antics of the teen-age adorable potato bug named Rolando. I spent hours tops at the library and online reviewing where these little ‘rolly pollies’ lived, what they ate and how they interacted with each other. I also spent hours observing their behaviors ‘in the wild’ – or in this case, in my front yard by the sidewalk and by the front door steps under some watermelon-sized rocks.

Some of the most important research begins early on in the writing process. Once you decide on what you’re going to write about, and who your audience will be, the next critical step is to research your topic to make sure that what you want to do hasn’t been done before.

A good writer doesn’t take research for granted. All it takes is one miss-cue to become what readers classify as an unreliable author and put one’s writing career in serious jeopardy.

Hackers Pose Huge Threat to Wi-Fi Users

You may think that the only people capable of prying into your Internet activity are government intelligence agents or possibly a talented teenage hacker holed up in his parents' basement. But some simple software lets just about anyone sitting next to you at your local coffee shop watch you browse the Web and even assume your identity online.

"Like it or not, we are now living in a cyberpunk novel," said Darren Kitchen, a systems administrator for an aerospace company in Richmond, California, and the host of Hak5, a video podcast about computer hacking and security. "When people find out how trivial and easy it is to see and even modify what you do online, they are shocked." Anyone can now hack into your computer and see everything you are doing on your computer. It’s crazy how intense technology is, and terrible that without proper website security and secure trust seals, your computer could be hacked by just about anyone.

Until recently, only determined and knowledgeable hackers with fancy tools and lots of time on their hands could spy while you used your laptop or smartphone at Wi-Fi hot spots. But a free program called Firesheep, released in October, has made it simple to see what other users of an unsecured Wi-Fi network are doing and then log on as them at the sites they visited.

The only sites that are safe from snoopers are those that employ the cryptographic protocol transport layer security or its predecessor, secure sockets layer, throughout your session. PayPal and many banks do this, as well as Trust Guard, but a startling number of sites that people trust to safeguard their privacy do not.

If you have a computer and use the internet, especially in public places like work, school, business meetings, restaurants, parks, etc. then you need to get your computer protected before it is too late. Many online security companies can teach you how to protect your online identity from hackers who are trying to steal your information. And if you own an online business, companies like Trust Guard can run vulnerability scanning to continuously verify that there are no known holes in your website accessible to hackers.

http://www.trust-guard.com/

Social Media Marketing – An Hour A Day

There are many activities that fill up our days besides social media marketing. An hour a day might seem like a lot to give up focusing on increasing our online presence and building our social equity. But there are some bonuses that come with organizing a small portion of our time with activities that really matter.

We’re not just talking about decreasing the amount of TV or movies we watch, although the sacrifice for doing so is minimal. We are talking about organizing our work day so that we can spend a solid hour working on increasing our relationships with customers, clients, partners, co-workers, vendors, and even competitors.

Here are a few specific social media marketing activities that will pay off huge dividends if we are committed to spend an hour a day doing them.

1. Find one social marketing program. We shouldn’t waste our time constantly looking for systems and programs. We could spend months looking at different systems without ever starting to increase our business’ visibility and that is not productive. Preferably, the system we choose should combine search engine optimization (SEO) with social media marketing.

2. Start spending and hour a day working through the social marketing program’s modules. Set aside time during the work day for training that will improve our relationship-building activities. We shouldn’t start a new module until we have extrapolated everything that we can from the module we’re on.

3. Fill up down time with proven habits such as listening to motivational or social media optimization (SMO) training, calling a client just to see how they are doing, and taking advantage of the opportunity to visit our competitors just to see what they have up their sleeves this week.

4. Get to know co-workers and vendors better. I once sold an item that had been on inventory for nearly a year simply by asking our delivery personnel if they knew anyone who might be interested in it! They appreciate our concern and our sincere desire that we have for them to succeed. Spend some time with them and watch their productivity soar!

In an effort to heed my own advice, and not feed you more than you can chew – at least while keeping your mouth closed – I will end there. Follow these simple concepts of focusing on social media marketing an hour a day and you will be successful.

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