When I’m out and about, trying to complete my holiday shopping, it’s easy to remember how quickly I’m running out of time to get it all done. The traffic, the crowds, the incredible (and time-sensitive) sales all help to reinforce my sense of urgency. However, I find that when I’m at home, at my computer, shopping online, the sense of urgency tends to fade and take a back seat, giving me a false sense of “having plenty of time” to get everything done.

As an online store owner, though, I want to remind my visitors of the proximity of the holiday, and do what I can to recreate a similar sense of urgency. It’s even more important online than in the “offline” world - the choice of online stores is nearly infinite in comparison to the brick-and-mortar choices within a reasonable driving distance. Also, when you factor in shipping times, it’s even more important for the customer to buy now rather than waiting. If they’ve made it to my website, it is imperative that I do everything I can to make the sale before they are off to the next site.

A subtle, but powerful, way to increase the sense of urgency to buy now is to put a countdown timer on your site. Here is a snapshot of the timer that I’ve put on all my ecommerce sites (and even my eBay listings):

It’s a flash-based timer that continually counts down the time left until Christmas day. I used a similar timer on the run-up to Halloween, and saw a significant increase in sales. It’s pleasant to look at, non intrusive, and yet reinforces the idea (through the continual ticking off of the hours, minutes and seconds left) that time is running out.

If you’d like this timer to put on your own site, it’s free! I created the timer myself, so I’m giving it away to my subscribers. Subscribers to this blog will get free access to the timer, all necessary files to set it up, and instructions. An email will be going out later today to current subscribers with the link. (Not a subscriber? It’s easy - fill in your name and email in the form at the upper right, and be sure to “confirm” when you receive the confirmation email. The link will then be emailed to you).

Happy Holidays!

Tags: black friday, ecommerce, free countdown timer, holiday countdown, holiday sales, marketing

For the last few months, I’ve been working on increasing my site’s rankings and traffic. One of the ways I’ve been approaching this is through submitting my sites to directories. I’ve been focusing on free directories that do not require a “reciprocal link” back to their site (as Google frowns upon this kind of “link exchange”). Over time, thousands of one-way links are being built to point to my sites - with the anchor text, titles, and descriptions that I choose.

The Pros:

• Lots of inbound links to your site
• One-way links
• Increased “link popularity” for your site
• Increased traffic from visitors searching the web directories

The Cons:

• It is labor intensive… to be effective, a site should be submitted to each directory individually, by hand

There is a neat piece of software that can help cut down the time required. It is called Directory Submitter and eases much of the “pain” of manual submission in several ways:

• It has a list of over 2,000 directories built-in, and links to each one
• It allows several website titles, descriptions, and keyword sets to be entered
• It will rotate the titles, descriptions, and keywords so that the submissions are varied
• Fills in all or most required fields on each directory submission page with the click of a button

It comes in a free version with 350 directories. If you plan on submitting to more directories than that (and I would recommend it for any site), then you’ll want the full version.

Even with the software, though, it is still very time consuming. If you would like to pass this task off to me and my team, we can hand-submit your site (with your chosen titles, descriptions, and keywords) to as many directories as you wish. Right now there are about 1,000 or so free directories that we submit to, and it can be done at a rate of up to 80 directories per working day. If you recognize the value of building one-way links to your site, but would rather spend your valuable time in other ways, please see our Directory Submission Service page for details on how we can help.

If you have “more time than money” to spend building links to your site, the free version of the Directory Submitter software is an excellent way to get started.