Your User Traffic and the PromoLeads Pulse

Newsletter 08·14·2008

Is there a Traffic Jam on your Website?

user traffic jam
Imagine driving your car through an unfamiliar city that had no street signs, traffic lights or navigation aids of any kind. You would find your self in a confusing situation and most likely never get to your intended destination. In fact, soon your only goal would be to get out of that city as quickly as possible. Most likely, this is exactly what’s happening to the visitors to your website.

The fact is with any website there is a wide array of visitors every day who are there for different reasons and arrive through different routes. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking all the visitors to your site are the same. If you are a supplier you may get visitors that are distributors, end users, manufacturers of components and even competitors. If you are distributor your website will attract end users, suppliers, advertisers and definitely some of your competitors.

One thing to keep in mind when contemplating the “user experience” of visitors to your website is that there is no such thing as an unwanted visitor or “bad traffic”. Every single visitor to your site has some value, even if it’s to blow your competitor away on how nice your site is! When working on your site (which is something that should be a continuous process) think about the above example of the city with no signs. Make the driving easy: “If you are a distributor go here”, “If you are an end user looking to purchase promotional products go here”, “If you sell materials that may be used for the manufacturing of our products please go here”.

Once the person has been directed to the place you wish them to go, give them clear instructions on what to do next. Forms are a great outlet for this experience if the visitor is not your primary target audience. For example, if a visitor wants to sell you something, tell them their best avenue to pitch their product or service to you is by completing the form, “No phone calls please, but if you complete the form we will respond as quickly as we can.”

Keep in mind that every visitor has value. If you are a supplier and a visitor wants to buy your products, why deflect them away? Instead, collect their information and pass that along to a distributor that can assist them.

Clear, concise navigation, specific instructions, and the ability to interact with visitors are fundamental to maximizing the monetization of your website traffic.

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READ ALL ABOUT IT

NEW PROMOLEADS FEATURES UNVEILED

The PromoLeads Pulse

Feel the Pulse of the Promotional Products Industry!

PromoLeads is not just a static website, it’s alive and kicking! Every day professionals in the Promotional Products Industry are meeting on line to gather there and generate more business, primarily through the generation and dissemination of sales leads.

The daily activity going on really shows that PromoLeads is a living, breathing force! We wanted to share that excitement with all who visit PromoLeads so we created the Promo Pulse, a real-time, running data stream of the activity going on in the PromoLeads system. You can see this activity even if you don’t have a PromoLeads account yet – take a look!

Sales confirmation and tracking

Keeping track of what leads turned into sales is a key part of growing
your business. PromoLeads has new features to mark leads as sold and
record your sales statistics.

  1. Tracking Information Recorded – When you a lead as sold, PromoLeads will prompt you for information about the sale. Input your purchase order number (for distributors) or an order/acknowledgment number (if you’re a supplier).  This data will be available to your partner on the lead so that they can confirm that the order or acknowledgment was received.In addition to the PO/acknowledgment field, both distributors and suppliers may optionally record private data to keep track of their own performance statistics.  Suppliers can record the total value of the sale to them – so that they may more easily track their own sales performance. Distributors may record both their PO value and the sales value so that they may track GM% for their PromoLeads orders. Please note – this data is completely private and is not available to any other user.
  2. Notification / Confirmation of the Sale.    When you mark a lead as sold, the other party will be asked to confirm the sale. This helps to close the loop between supplier and distributor and to reward your efforts!  Each party will be notified that they have a sale that needs to be confirmed.

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Industry News: Sales Tax Confusion

Who Bears the Burden for Sales Tax; what’s the Rule?

There is an interesting discussion going on regarding the rules and regulations for charging sales tax in the Promotional Products industry. Who is responsible for any sales tax? Suppliers, distributors, or end users?

We found this thread on the Distributor Talk discussion board quite interesting and informative. Everything is thrown out there, from needing to have a “multi jurisdiction uniform resale certificate” to the basic theory that if the seller does not have a physical presence in the state the sale is made in there is no tax collection obligation. This was a heavily contested issue with Amazon.com and the State of New York recently.

Here is a link to the discussion, which continues on! Distributor Talk

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