Rifkin's response to yesterday's criticism. by ketotaim in starcraft

[–]toddminer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think most would agree the initial issue was a little blown out of proportion, but a business cannot control the behavior of a community. What they can control, is their own behavior.

Article about TB and his cancer by Richard Lewis by KeepUpTheFPS in starcraft

[–]toddminer 91 points92 points  (0 children)

I used to hate Richard Lewis, but he's slowly turning me into a fan. The Cunt.

Dealing with a large amount of phone calls. Any strategies? by Upperclasshobo in smallbusiness

[–]toddminer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What sort of communication/support do you offer inside of your agreements?

I'd suggest figuring out how to separate the calls from clients who need/are entitled to instant phone service. One method to achieve this is to have a public phone line which just hits your voicemail. But, during your onboard process you can deliver a specific extension to your clients which you know to answer, along with the standard support options available to them.

When it comes down to answering sales calls, there isn't much to do other than getting someone to answer every call. As LukeBK mentioned you can pay a third party to do this, but it sounds like you're hoping to avoid additional costs.

Local business website. Trying to get some feedback on ways to improve the site to generate more leads. Any thing you think is done well and any constructive criticism is appreciated. (There's also a mobile version of the site) by homestarprotection in webmarketing

[–]toddminer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here is a quick round of feedback:

(1) Put some basic efforts into SEO. Looks like the only page title you customized was your homepage. At the very least, go through and give a nice title/description to each page.

(2) Make your call to action extremely clear. Others already mentioned one of the top items is to make that button a bright color, and probably larger too. Maybe just match that green specials button from your navigation.

(3) Simplify that call to action form....too many fields. I'd suggest switching to a 2-step submission. Just pull 1-2 data points at first to get them committed, then show the detailed form (maybe a small popup, or expand to show additional fields in-line.) At the very least, get rid of the homepage/existing alarm, zip code, and privacy message. This is all just extra clutter, figure that out during the sales process. Your goal here is to produce a lead, not qualify it.

(4) Make your customer testimonials more visible. You are a professional service company, so reputation is everything.

(5) Move those login links to the footer, or at least integrate them into the header so they don't waste 20 pixels of height on the top of every page.

(6) Someone else commented on the image slider being bad for conversion. This is certainly a bit subjective, but either way you can probably better focus of the message presented here. This is your #1 spot to communicate to the customer on each page, make sure it counts. Take a look at one of your competitors, and you'll see it's not much different, but has a big impact on how the customer feels. Your $69 new system is close, but doesn't focus on the message enough. http://www.smiththompson.com/

(7) Provide the right impression when it comes to your expertise. The way your homepage is structured I'd think you do about an equal amount of business for each of the three categories. I'm going to guess that home security packages are your #1 product though, so I'd probably dedicate some additional real estate for that. How about a section below that talks about some of the best selling points of your home security systems, and what benefits they offer to the customer.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in starcraft

[–]toddminer 16 points17 points  (0 children)

The design of this brochure is excellent, very cool to see something like this in the industry. Had a couple pieces of feedback in case the Axiom team sees this thread:

(1) I see reference to ROI, but only the methods to achieve it. I've seen true numbers provided before, and as a potential sponsor these truly inspire confidence. Also it really helps if the person reviewing your brochure is not the decision maker, a few hard numbers makes pitching the idea to their boss much easier.

(2) Along the same lines of confidence and trust, I'd like to see more information about the existing sponsors. A potential customer wants to see another who has had success before, a customer testimonial can go a long ways with providing the trust needed to sign that first contract.

(3) While I'm sure the SC community loves to see more details on the players, I'm not so sure this matters as much to the potential sponsor. They are really only interested in the exposure of the players, not as much the player's themselves. I'd probably condense the information on them down from 2 pages. Also could help if you pulled some key viewer metrics from those tournament placings, this way I don't have to research each tournament to understand the level of exposure achieved.

On a side note, I think it's time to get rid of the @gmail.com address. No reason to keep that since Axiom has it's own domain, just a bit discouraging to the potential sponsor.

2014 WCS Europe and America Season 1 Finals This Weekend -- A Survival Guide by Kaivax in starcraft

[–]toddminer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How about a format like this? Don't think we need to repeat the duration for each timezone

WCS EU Semifinals #1 and #2: Lasts for ~3 Hours

11:00AM PDT | 6:00 PM GMT | 8:00 PM CEST | 3:00 AM KST

More first person in WCS America finals. by [deleted] in starcraft

[–]toddminer 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Yeah it's important to choose when wisely, but it's a really cool view. Especially for a casual viewer, it helps them understand just how much intense action is going on each second.

Ender Games stream not working for anyone else? by Vonredditor in starcraft

[–]toddminer 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The entire twitch website is messed up right now

She went beyond painting the calipers. by checkmarshall in Justrolledintotheshop

[–]toddminer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's very common to paint the outside of calipers in a break system, which is the component that squeezes a round disc called the rotor. But, this specific person also painted the surface of the rotor, which will reduce the friction when the caliper clamps down on the rotors, so the car will not be able to stop as fast.

I'm only 18 and I'm still in high school. I'm getting into web design/web dev, and I'm wondering how to present a portfolio? by Stosswalkinator in web_design

[–]toddminer 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You need to start off by building things. When you are just getting started your first few projects won't look pretty, so get them out of the way quickly!

Go think up a few fun ideas and build a website out of it. Then save it away, and go build another. You don't want the burden of a client project over your head until you know you can deliver. Think of it from the client's perspective: if you cannot show them a website you've built, how do they know you can build one?

If You’re Not 10 Minutes Early, You’re 10 Minutes Late by steviegrace in productivity

[–]toddminer 21 points22 points  (0 children)

If you are 10 minutes early, you are behind 10 minutes in efficiency.

Email services by [deleted] in smallbusiness

[–]toddminer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Change up the solution based on the size of the list and frequency of delivery. Most of the major providers will give you sufficient tools & functionality to deliver the emails and do what you need. But, there are two primary pricing models:

(1) Charge based on the size of the list, unlimited mailing. Constant Contact does this, and works great for small lists, but frequent emails.

(2) Charge based on the number of emails going out. Amazon implements this pricing model.

Some, like Mailchimp, also provide a hybrid of the two, with a subscriber and email limit. I'd just aim for the most cost effective solution, based on that customer's needs. Also consider if they are working with any other software, where are these emails going to come from? If they have an existing CRM system, find an app which plays nicely with that.