Work At Home Mom (WAHM) 24/7

Hi All,

Sorry, it has been awhile.  I have been away on what I called a working vacation!  What a load of CRAP!

Anybody else ever try this working vacation thing?  I personally found out, there is no such thing as VACATION when you are still working.   It doesn’t matter how much you promise yourself you are going to take time and see something or do something, it is always pushed to the background because there is always business to do.

When you own your own business or are a work at home mom (WAHM), you just can’t get work out of your head. If you think you can plan a “working and vacationing”, I got news for you, it just doesn’t work.  You can’t let the business go. 

So, much for your family, that thinks you are going on vacation with them, unfortunately they take a back seat, because there is always another email to get out, another meeting to attend and that just isn’t fair to them.

Maybe it is just me, maybe I am just a type A personality and can’t let it go, maybe I can’t prioritize?  Any of you have this kind of experience?  I would love to hear if I am the only one, or if maybe I am more normal then I think. ( I doubt that<g>)

I do know there will be no more “working vacations” it will be a vacation period or nothing.  Take no computers, no cell phones, no handheld devices of any kind.  Me, the family, a beach, a margarita, (for medicinal purposes only) and NO WORK.  Lots of fun times with the family period!!!!!

Don’t just focus on the home page, keywords and titles.

The first step to sales when customers visit your site is to see the products they were looking for. Of course, search engine optimization and better rankings can’t keep your customer on your site or make them buy. The customer has visited your site, now, ensure that they get interested in your products or services and stay around.

Motivate them to buy the product by providing clear information.  If you happen to sell more than one product or service, provide all necessary information about each product, maybe by keeping the information on different pages. By providing suitable and easily visible links, the customer can navigate to these pages and get the details they need.

Understand Your Target Customers

If you design a website you think will attract clients, but you don’t really know who your customers are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely you won’t make much money.

Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard storefront. You can send emails to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website ask them to complete your survey.

Ask them about choices they want to see. Why do they like your products?  Are your prices consistently lower than others? Is your shipping price cheaper? Do you respond faster to client questions? Are your product descriptions better? Your return policies and guarantees better than your competitor’s? To know your customer you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple contact form with name, address, age, gender, etc. when they purchase a product.

Does your website give enough contact information?

When you sell from a website, your customer can buy your products 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week. Your customers may be from other states that are thousands of miles away. Always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website, complete with mailing address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you.

People may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site. Also have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often. When offering customers the option to buy online provide enough options like credit card, PayPal or other online payment services, don’t give them any reason to leave a sale behind.

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

Over the next several days I want to talk about designing your own webpage, it really isn’t that hard if you take your time and learn some basics that you must do, to make your website easy for search engines to find. 

Work at home moms (WAHM’s) should definitely consider making a web page for their home businesses, as, search engines like web pages better then blogs.  More and more people are looking for more and more information, a website can offer you customers easy to navigate information that they will keep coming back too.

Okay, let’s look at website design.

Your website is where your business resides — it’s like the headquarters of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practice good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible.

 Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.

 Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.

 Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into separate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.

Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.

Use CSS to style your page content because they save a lot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.

Happy as You Want to Be…

Almost everyone have heard the hit single ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ by Bobby McFerrin. The song has a very catchy way of conveying its message of being happy to everyone. Being happy actually protects you from the stresses of life. Stress is linked to top causes of death such as heart disease, cancer and stroke.

One of the best sayings I ever heard was – ‘The only thing in life that will always remain the same is change’, and in our life we have the power to make the necessary changes if we want to. Even if we find ourselves in an unbearable situation we can always find solace in the knowledge that it too would change.

Relationships are essential to happiness. People are different, accept people for who or what they are, avoid clashes, constant arguments, and let go of all kinds of resentments. If arguments seem unavoidable still try and make an effort to understand the situation and then let it go.
To be happy is relatively easy, just decide to be a happy person. Abraham Lincoln observed that most people for most of the time can choose how happy or stressed, how relaxed or troubled, how bright or dull their outlook to be. The choice is simple really, choose to be happy. He is quoted as saying that, “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

 
Being grateful is a great attitude.  We have so much to be thankful for. Thank the taxi driver for bringing you home safely, thank the cook for a wonderful dinner and thank the guy who cleans your windows. Also thank the mailman for bringing you your mail, thank the policeman for making your place safe and thank God for being alive.

News is stressful. Get less of it. Some people just can’t start their day without their daily dose of news. Try and think about it, 99% of the news we hear or read is bad news. Starting the day with bad news does not seem to be a sensible way to start your day.
Manage your time. Time is invaluable and too important to waste. Time management can be viewed  as a list of rules that involves scheduling, setting goals, planning, creating lists of things to do and prioritizing. These are the core basics of time management that should be understood to develop an efficient personal time management skill. 

Laugh and laugh heartily everyday. Have you ever heard a young child laughing and not been able to laugh yourself?  Laughter is contagious.  Heard a good joke? Tell your friends or family about it. As they also say -’Laughter is the best medicine’.
 
Express your feelings, affections, friendship and passion to people around you. They will most likely reciprocate your actions. Try not to keep pent up anger or frustrations, this is bad for your health. Instead find ways of expressing them in a way that will not cause more injury or hurt to anyone.
 
Working hard brings tremendous personal satisfaction. It gives a feeling of being competent in finishing our tasks. Accomplishments are necessary for all of us, they give us a sense of value. Work on things that you feel worthy of your time.
 
Learning is a joyful exercise. Try and learn something new everyday.  Learning also makes us expand and broaden our horizons. And could also give us more opportunities in the future.

Run, jog, walk and do other things that your body was made for. Feel alive. Avoid exposure to negative elements like loud noises, toxins and hazardous places.

These are the few simple things you can do everyday to be happy.

Bobby Mcferiin’s simple message surely makes a lot of sense if you listen and follow his advice, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy!”