Does Your Web Site Deserve to be Fired?

If your website was one of your sales staff would you be happy with his results? A good website design should deliver you quality leads and generate a return on your investment – not just than just sit there and look good.

Remember that website design is a marketing activity not a technology decision. So many people seek out a web developer as their first port of call when they need a website. But that’s putting the cart before the horse.

Your first activity when contemplating a website should be to think about your marketing objectives and what job you need your website to do for you.

To do that let us revisit the sales person analogy. If your website was a sales person what should its sales process be? How will it get customers to engage with them and your company. Thinking about this analogy forces you consider what information and functions your website needs to get you real sales results.

For a start, You need to arm your online salesperson with information to they can appear knowledgeable about the benefits of your products and services. He needs to be able to succinctly articulate what your unique selling proposition is.

You need your salesperson to acknowledge that customers are different stages of their buying process and therefore have different informational needs. For example, provide product comparisons for people who haven’t yet decided on the right product, but also provide in depth product information for those who are further advanced in their decision process.

You need people to trust your online salesperson too, so consider what do you need to do or say on your website to engender trust. Even the aesthetics of your website can contribute to trust. A shabby looking website from 1992 isn’t going to help your image.

Not everyone will buy or engage on their first visit. Your online salesperson needs to provide a reason for the customer to come back. Constantly updated content gives people reason to return. Make sure your website is a worthy destination. A website that never changes is like a retail store that doesn’t change their window display. It makes people think they’ve already seen everything you have to offer and they won’t bother to come in.

At some stage in the process, your online salesperson needs to ask the customer’s name and contact details. To do this, you usually need to give them the promise of something in return (eg. early notification of specials, a free assessment). This is a critical point in your sales process. Now your visitor isn’t anonymous, he has a name and you know how to contact him and have permission to do so. At this point, you can call them an actual “lead”. Yippee.

Once your online sales person has promised something they have to deliver. They need to follow up on their promise. If you promised email notifications of sales, make sure you do it. Take every opportunity to re-engage with them. That means more opportunities to communicate with your customers and ultimately make sales.

If you actually want to sell your products online, at some point you need to facilitate the sale. Online shopping cart facilities make this easy. Design your sales process so that it provides a good shopping experience. No-one likes waiting in a checkout queue and similarly online shoppers don’t like clunky purchase processes.

So when you’re ready for a new website – remember, the brief to your web designer should read more like a job description than a shopping list.

Jane Davies is founder and Director of Cat and Moose Marketing Solutions and specialises in online marketing in Brisbane. The core philosophy is to create and design websites that deliver real marketing results rather than just sit there and look good. Cat and Moose Marketing Solutions also advises clients that online marketing be used as part of a broader marketing plan.

5 Ways to Improve Your First Teleprompter Presentation

Here are the 5 main points to be aware of during your presentation:

1. Try the Script

The Director should always give you a pre-read of the script on the teleprompter during the rehearsal.

Sometimes you find that words that usually go together on one line are split up over two lines to help readability. Occasionally the opposite helps.

On a written page, you are normally reading 8-15 words per line, but with this medium you’ll be reading 3-5 words per line.

It’s a different rhythm and requires getting used to . . . it’s your autocue operator’s job to help you with readability options.

2. Keep to your own speed

An experienced teleprompter operator will react to your talking speed, changing the scroll speed to keep up with your reading speed. Speed up your delivery and the teleprompter go faster. Slow down and the teleprompter slows downs with you.

3. Maintain Eye Contact

Easier said than done, this needs practice and will probably need a few takes to get spot on.

Until the Director tell you anything different, before the take starts, during the take and after it finishes, just keep looking straight into the camera. That is of course unless you’ve mastered the technique.

Eye movements are more important, the closer the shot is. Eye movements away from your audience will make you look either uneasy or slightly dishonest. The only time you can really look away from the screen is when the Director says ‘cut’.

Most people won’t even know they are looking away from the camera. Turn away during a script edit point and the shot will have to be re-done.

It’s ok to blink though!

4. Don’t Rock

Even when standing still, people usually move from side to side or shuffle their feet positions. This is a completely normal reaction but one best left out of a shoot.

Swaying from side to side makes you look uneasy, which you probably are if you’re rocking about.

It’s a bit like the eye contact and body movement discussed earlier on. Animated gestures during a shoot are fine as part of our communication is based on movement. Awkward looking swaying or shuffling aren’t.

At the start of a take, shake the fidgety off. Stretch, run on the spot, jump up and down. Anything to shake off the lethargy and fatigue. Begin each take mentally and physically prepared.

If the warm up still won’t keep you still, ask for a pedestal to rest one foot on or even make your presentation sitting down.

5. Sell the message

This may sound a bit cheesy, but don’t just read your message . . . value the script!

Delivering the script could well make you so drowsy, your face starts to look like it’s going to sleep.

If you yourself look bored with the presentation, imagine how your audience will be feeling. Get upbeat about the project. You might not like the script or even agree with it, but you have to put on a convincing presentation. Vary the stress of your voice, use gestures, get involved. Practice in front of a mirror if you have to but by all means try not to look bored with the whole business!

Your script has all the information you need and it’s written so that the message is understandable. Now . . . let your audience SEE how valuable it is.

Looking Back

So you’ve finished your recording and it’s time to see the finished product.

The first thing you’ll confront when viewing the tape is vanity. Don’t worry . . . it happens to everybody.

You might think you sound strange. You might think you look weird. The reason for this impression is simple . . . you are used to seeing a reflected view of yourself as opposed to how everyone actually sees you. Seeing your left side where your right side usually appears and vice versa is odd.

Some camera angles can also distort your appearance. You might trick yourself into believing you look unwell or have put on weight.

Becoming a polished presenter means casting a critical eye back over your performance. Critical but not negative. Assess your presentation and address any awkward habits or mannerisms.

Don’t go over your presentation looking for details. The objective is a sincere delivery.

The eyes rarely lie. Is you attention focused on the teleprompter texts, are you making a monotonous, boring performance? Are you shuffling around? Are you dropping your eyes?

It’s all about getting an appreciation of your own performance. Most importantly, do you look like you believe what you are saying?

Leaders from all walks of life recognize the importance of an effective communication style delivered in a sincere, personal style. Public speaking though still remains a hurdle for many of us.

This article is intended to acquaint you with the intricacies of video production and the use of a teleprompter. You will have to do some groundwork, but if you stick to the advice in this article, when the big day arrives you’ll be better armed to concentrate on delivering a sincere, professional presentation.

When you are ready to bring your presentation in-house, using professional teleprompter software can really help. You can find a demo of this affordable teleprompter now on YouTube.

Why Are There So Many Godzilla Toys And Action Figures To Buy?

Many science fiction and horror shows and comic books spawn toys relating to those titles. A very well-liked motion picture figure turned toy figure is Godzilla. Originally introduced in Japan in the 1950s, Godzilla has attained a worldwide cult audience. Hundreds of action figures in Godzilla’s likeness have been created. If you adore this fire-breathing prehistoric giant, odds are you would like to collect the several Godzilla action figures in existence.

Whether you label him Godzilla or Gojira, there is no argument that the massive green lizard is possibly Japan’s most popular import, at least beside Hello Kitty and that Asahi beer. Initially an intimidating monster and metaphor for the nuclear attack, Godzilla transformed over time since he debuted in 1954, as director Eji Tsuburaya found out that his largest group of fans were kids, with all of their luscious licensing dollars.

Kaiju collecting can rapidly turn into a very costly as well as fanatical past time. Since the 1960s the kaiju collector has had a growing number of items to use their hard earned cash on, and for most fans, the most enjoyable element of taking pleasure in a collection is to look for that hard to find poster, lobby, card, tin toy, etc. Bizarrely enough, the very first collectible Godzilla toy was not even produced in Japan, but was the America model kit designed by Aurora. For most fans however, the most popular sought after collectible isn’t that hard to find poster, CD or model set. For the majority of fans, the most popular and widely collected Godzilla items are the vinyl Godzilla toys which have stayed popular for more than 30 years.

 

History of the IQ test

Introduction

The prominent French psychologist, Alfred Binet, first developed the IQ test in response to France becoming a country with education for all children. Before, the only school children were the offspring of the well-to-do. France was now faced with the challenge of educating the masses, and they needed a way to separate those who needed special help from those who were average, and from those who were advanced. At the request of the French government, Binet and a colleague, Theodore Simon, took on the task of developing a test to measure the intelligence and potential of each child. Binet and Simon published their first test in 1905. Revisions to this test followed in 1908 and 1911.

The Early Standards

Through observations made during these early tests, they created the concept of mental age, which was:

    * If a 10-year-old child succeeded on the items appropriate for 10-year-olds but could not pass the questions appropriate for 11-year-olds, that child was said to have a mental age of 10.
    * Mental age did not necessarily correspond with chronological age. For example, if a 6-year-old child succeeded on the items intended for 9-year-olds, then that child was said to have a mental age of 9.

IQ Testing in USA

Henry Goddard, director of a New Jersey school for children with mental retardation, first brought the concept of IQ testing to the United States for use in testing people for mental retardation, also in the early 1900s. A Stanford psychologist, Lewis Terman, revised the test to expand its usability by adding questions appropriate for adults, and establishing new standards for average performance at each age. Terman’s first standardized test, published in 1916, was called the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. Terman also changed the concept of a mental age into a standardized IQ score, which is the approach still used today.

IQ Tests Today

The history of IQ testing continues to the modern day, where the most widely used modern tests of intelligence are the Stanford-Binet, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (Kaufman-ABC). Each of these tests have a series of 10 or more subtests or sections of the main test in which all of the items are similar. Examples of subtests include vocabulary (“Define gregarious”), similarities, repeating digit strings of increasing length from memory, information processing, object assembly (putting together puzzles), mazes (tracing a path through a maze), and simple math problems.

www.microscience2006.org.uk

A Family Trust Tip That Could Save You Thousands!

Family Trusts are a very effective way for anyone to protect their assets from a wide range of events that in many cases are beyond our control.

But it’s not just a matter of getting a family trust set up and leaving it alone!  There are important administrative details that simply must be managed properly.  The risks of not doing this could cause serious problems in the future, and cause an overpayment of tax to the IRD.

One of these administrative details that should be considered by you and your accountant or lawyer responsible for setting up your family trust, relates to correct trustee resolutions being made at the right time.

Under New Zealand Law, income earned by a Family Trust or Trust must have tax paid on it.

In some cases however, from a tax perspective, there can be advantages for the Trust to pay the income it has received, out to its beneficiaries.

For example, all income retained by a Trust must be taxed at the Trustees income tax rate.  Trustees are taxed at a flat rate of 33%.   If however Trustees make a decision to distribute beneficiary income, the tax that must be paid on that distribution will be levied at the marginal tax rate of the recipient beneficiary.  That can be as low as 19.5%. 

If the Trustees chose to distribute beneficiary income, they must make that decision within 6 months of the balance date of the Family Trust.  In the majority of cases, this means that resolutions recording the decision to make the distribution must be prepared and executed by all Trustees by the 30th day of September of each year.

Janet Xuccoa BCom LLB, is a director from Gillgan Rowe + Associates. She is a recognised Expert from http://www.familytrusts.co.nz/