The holiday curve is upon us, and yes, we're all busy tying up those personal loose ends. For those of us in the specialty internet products field, this can be a time of ho-hum sales and reflections upon other career venues. But wait! It doesn't have to be that way!

It is important to remember that what you're doing is a worth-while and valuable asset to your customers. What you need to do is think like a customer and apply that to your marketing strategy.

Add some fun to your site! Fresh content is the major draw for repeat sales, and the holiday slump is no exception. One feature I've added to my own formula is a meticulous approach to updating our entertainment section. By hosting original web comics, RSS feeds, polls and contests on a regular basis, I assure each customer a new experience each time they visit. If it is something that I would find entertaining, so would my customers. By building a regularly updated site, folks will get in the habit of dropping by and perusing the changes. And each time they do, the receive another opportunity to purchase from the site.


Now, that's not to say you should overwhelm your site with every hamster dance and .wav file you come across. You must be selective, and spread the wealth out. Some of it should be nestled in your portal page, while other material should reside on dedicated pages. Your primary goal is, and should always be, your base content. If your sales message gets lost, then you need to re-evaluate your message.

This is also a good time to dedicate yourself to the over-all health of your site. Take advantage of free web-page analysis sites to tighten your approach. Start by analyzing your meta tags and coding. Then, check all of your links... and I do mean all. Everything from your navigation bars to your outside links page. A dead link is a strike against meta-crawlers sweeping your site. With even an average-sized site, this will keep you busy for a while.

Read your content! Imagine you're a customer looking to purchase a piece of original comic art (my specialty) and you've reached a site that the search engines list highly. Yet, when you arrive, all you see is the term 'original comic art' over and over and over just to grab a listing rank... definitely a turn-off. Make sure that what you read makes sense, both from a sales point of view and grammatically.

The down time each entrepreneur experiences shouldn't be a time of concern. Make it your plan to clean out the cobwebs and really dazzle your customers with fresh approaches and content.
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