Since most users don’t click through to the second page, many websites will see an increase of 400% or more for a term simply by moving to the first page. Since this type of search engine optimization focuses on reinforcing terms for which your website already ranks, it requires minimal effort. We have setup self-optimizing systems on a number of sites.  These systems automatically identify second page search results and modify the internal linking structure to emphasis the desired terms. If you are interested in using this method to increase your natural web traffic, contact us for a free initial assessment.

According to research done by Dell, the majority of your data sits unused once written. You can gain a distinct competitive advantage by including even a small portion of that unused data in your business decision-making process. Given the amount of data that is currently ignored, there are certainly a number of easy-to-implement business intelligence that could produce significant ROI.

In 2003 researchers were able to quantify the value of a photograph on direct mail offers for the equivalent of pay-day loans in South Africa. They sent out offers with various interest rates and various pictures of different races and genders. The rates used in this experiment were randomly assigned from 3.25% to 11.75% in simple interest per month. The results:

• Race didn’t make any significant difference in the response rate.
• Women’s response rate was not influenced by the photograph.
• Men ‘s response rate was the highest with a photograph of a woman.
• Adding a woman’s photograph increased response among men by the same amount as lowering the offered interest rate by 4.5% per month.

If you don’t know, it may be time to invest in web analytics. The software itself is free or low cost and once implemented can provide you with key insights for years to come.  Here are some things you should be able to find easily:

• Search terms that best convert to sales or leads.
• The revenue that each dollar of online advertising produces by keyword.
• How many times people visit your site before buying.
• Specific pages of your website where improvements would increase profit.

The result that design changes have on sales.

In fact, for many businesses, open source customer relationship management solutions offer great value and an excellent return on investment.  Every system has different strengths and weaknesses, and there are a very large number of products to choose from where the software is free.

Some of the best solutions offer workflow features.  This allows you to systematize the human processes in your organization so no steps are forgotten. Xeric has installed a number of these systems and can help match software to your company’s needs.

They trick the end user into installing a program that then threatens to destroy data if they don’t pay a fee to make it uninstall itself. It is best to make sure that your systems are protected both by a good antivirus program on each machine and a spyware blocking content filter on the network level.

Together the small contributions can have significant value.  Wikipedia is the most common example. Sentence by sentence volunteers have created an encyclopedia more comprehensive and just as accurate as Britannica. Many online stores use crowdsourcing to create and rank product reviews. A newspaper in the UK has created a system to let the public review over half a million pages of government expense accounts. So far, the politicians will be paying back £478,000 for inappropriate expenses.

Amazon has built a programming interface and service called MTurk that allows companies to submit tasks that require human effort, receive the completed work, test for quality and then pay for the work.  This is being used for everything from identifying the addresses in drive-by photographs, to translating documents, to audio transcription. The system gives you access to a very large number of workers from around the world—all paid on a per piece basis with appropriate quality controls and error checking.

The current crop of college graduates expect to change jobs much more rapidly than their predecessors. This means businesses are going to face a lot more employee churn. On one hand, there may be some benefit of bringing in new employees with different perspectives, but it also means employees are going to walk away with a great deal of informal knowledge that their successors will have to spend time to acquire.

Systems that capture and retain free-form knowledge can position your business to survive more rapid employee turn over. Technology like internal wikis are inexpensive and easy to implement.  The technical part of many knowledge retention systems are trivial to obtain and implement but it isn’t a silver bullet. To be effective, your organization will require cultural changes and a mental shift in how employees see their jobs.

Careful planning of both the technical and cultural requirements will help minimize disruptions from increased employee churn and increase the benefits from a constant influx of fresh perspectives.

Modern copiers use hard drives to store images as part of the copy and print process. Even if the copier deletes the image once it has been printed, the file remains on the drive unless they are overwritten. It is trivial to recover this data. Off lease and out of service copiers often leave businesses full of confidential information

Businesses that don’t scrub this data before disposing of the machines are handing over vast amounts of potentially sensitive data to the next owner. Copier hard drives should be completely overwritten (filled with ones or zeros), reformatted and then the copier software should be reinstalled.  An even better option is to buy and install new hard drives before the copier leaves the building and physically destroy the old drives.

If you lease your copiers, you might consider drawing up the contracts to stipulate that the hard drives belong to you at the end of the lease term. Also don’t forget to watch for drives that are replaced as part of maintenance.

Colorado is requiring out-of-state retailers to track and report sales. Retailers are required to send consumers an annual report to assist in their use tax preparation. Retailers are also required to submit a copy of these reports to the Colorado Department of Revenue.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the collection of sales tax by out-of-state businesses would unduly burden interstate commerce. They will eventually have to decide if reporting requirements are similarly burdensome. On one hand, simply reporting sales is much less burdensome than keeping up with all the different state, county and municipal tax rates and rules. On the other, sending out a report to every customer at the end of the year could represent a significant burden.

In March, Amazon terminated their relationship with all of their Colorado affiliates as they did in New York. A notable difference between the Colorado law and New York’s is that the latter was using affiliates within the state borders to establish nexus. Amazon’s termination of their relationship with New York affiliates was a reaction to the wording of the law.

In Colorado, the reporting requirements were not tied to the affiliates in any way. Amazon is terminating the affiliates in protest and encouraging them to contact their state government to complain about the new law.