3/21/2016, Entrepreneur -- Want to have more customers, opt-ins on your website and clicks on your “Buy Now” button? Do what Hollywood does -- use stories to sell your products and services.

This makes sense: At some point, you've probably gone to a meeting featuring a PowerPoint presentation with charts and graphs . . . and wanted to poke your eyes out with a pencil. The reason: Stories, not data, are what inspire people. Stories, not bullet points, create customer loyalty, build social media platforms and increase sales. Stories create an emotional bond between your business and your customers.

And today's technology helps us tell those stories in the many different ways it's given us to offer our message to millions of potential customers -- instantly.

Yet, many businesses are losing customers because their methods of reaching them are outdated. Want to get people to buy your product? Then get them to listen. Here are three essential stories you need on your website to do just that:

1: Your customer’s story

In my book, The Message Of You, I call this your “credibility story.” It goes like this:

• Customer X came to you with a huge mess (describe it).
• Customer X took advantage of your products or services.
• Now, Customer X's life is so much better! He or she can now walk, breathe, save money, and perform like Lady Gaga. (Okay, maybe not exactly like her).

Better yet: Record your customers telling this story. One way I make a living is by coaching speakers. And, after I’m done and my client is (presumably) a happy camper, I use a Skype video recorder to record my client’s "mess-to-success story." These tales are gold! You can view four of them here. 

2. Your company’s story 

Every company also has a "mess-to-success" story. Take Microsoft, for example: “We started with our office in a garage, and now we sell ‘office.’” Isn’t there someone else who started in a garage? Oh yeah, Apple.

Airbnb, meanwhile never tires of telling its story of how its founders went from sleeping on air mattresses at friends' apartments to creating a billion-dollar company providing sleeping accommodations for travellers worldwide.

Your company didn’t launch and become an immediate success, right? And, while you may not have started in a garage, you still have a story. Why, the history of how your company achieved its goals is the greatest story ever told . . . or something close to that. So, identify your company's story, add it to your bio (your “About Us” page) and share it with your customers. 

Read the rest here: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/269881

2-15-2017, Entrepreneur -- Eight years ago Jason Wachob was physically crippled from a business venture that went bust.

“I flew 150,000 miles coach in a single year for my last start up company,” Jason said in a recent interview. “When you’re 6’7”, that’s torture.”

By the end of 2006, the former Columbia basketball standout’s business had tanked. He had nothing to show for it but two bulging disks in his lower back. 

“It was excruciating pain. I literally couldn’t even walk a block,” said the New York City dweller. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Every doctor told Jason he needed surgery. “As an afterthought, the last guy said, ‘Oh, you might want to give yoga a try too.’” Jason had to laugh here. “So I started light yoga for 15 minutes in the morning and evening. Within six months, I was completely healed.”

After the yoga cure, Jason looked into sleep, nutrition and exercise for more healing. Then the MindBodyGreen concept came to Jason in an epiphany.  

“Every other site was talking about self-help, or weight loss, or meditation. But nobody was talking about all of it combined. Living your best life is a blend of mental, physical, spiritual, emotional and environmental wellbeing. And it’s all connected -- MindBodyGreen. One word, not three.”

“My wife worked on the weekend, but I went all in. It was a real passion point -- there was just nothing else I could see myself doing.” And it all started with one post per day. 

“I was really curious, and smart enough to know I didn’t know everything. So I reached out to all these yogis and doctors and nutritionists, you name it.”

As the interviews piled up, Jason started posting twice per day, then three times. Within months, experts were asking Wachob to guest post.

“They told me they were tired of writing for Huffington Post, that they wanted to reach a different audience. And that’s how the community started. Today we have 4,500 plus contributors around the world.”

MBG has a world-class contributor network, but Jason never asked a single person to write. Instead, he advises people to focus on the basics.

“Do the ground-work, “ he said. “Do what you love. Find an untapped niche that your passions, talents, and experiences can fill. Then do it because you love it. Go all in. Connect with people in the interest of gathering and sharing valuable information. Then work your ass getting that value to your audience. When your business is ready to grow -- when you’ve done the groundwork --people will come to you.”

But to do the groundwork, to get people to come to you...it's easier said than done. Jason shared five tips to help you get started.

1. Focus on quality

“Get yourself everywhere -- be on every platform. Then produce quality content. Go for quality, then up the quantity as you grow. You can’t post 6,000 articles overnight. It takes a while. It took us three years.”

Related: 5 Reasons Millennials Shouldn't Depend on a 9-to-5 Job

2. Do it for the love

“The most successful people in the world aren’t in it for the money,” says Jason, citing people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. “After you have more money than you can spend, you do it for the love or you’ll crash.”

Read the rest of the story HERE.

6-27-2016, Entrepreneur.com -- You work hard to get traffic to your website. You pay for advertising. You optimize for the search engines. You work it on social media.

And it pays off! Traffic comes. People arrive. They look at what you have to offer. And -- they hesitate.

It takes just a moment’s hesitation to create doubt. In that moment, you can lose a customer. They find you -- but do they trust you?

In the real world, people do business face to face. They meet the waitress, the sales clerk, the serviceman. They make a judgment call instinctively as to whether they like you, whether they trust you and whether they want to do business with you.

Does your website say “Trust me!" so that a customer never doubts? Let’s consider three types of business websites:

• Local business: Your website is an extension of a real business, where you come face to face with your customers in the flesh (store, theatre, trades).
• Service business: You interact with your customers, but not always in the same city (accountant, coach, translator).
• Ecommerce: Your entire process is automated. If all your customers were pink fairy armadillos, you would never know. (Those are real animals, by the way, although rarely seen on ecommerce websites).

Whichever type of businesses you run, ask yourself the following questions.

1. Can customers visualize me?

If they can’t meet you in person, the next best thing is to see you. A picture of the business owner, with his or her name, goes a long way. A quote beneath the picture about “quality” or how you “love customers” goes even further. A video message from the owner is best.  Video is more tangible, almost like meeting you. When I redesigned my website, it's the first thing I added.

Check out the video on the home page of a local contractor's website. There is something special about this screenshot. Keep reading.

If not a video, how about photos of the whole team, as The Pike Brewing Company has. You'll see the same approach across the pages of my website. The Great Lakes Brewing Company shows the "Two Irish brothers" who founded the company, when telling their story.

Which type of website most needs a real, live person up front?  Ecommerce, of course.  The more intangible the business, the more important to show real people behind it.

2. Can customers visualize my business?

If they can’t walk up to your counter, at least they can see that you have a real address.  That boosts trust right away. A real address means that you are less likely to be a fly-by-night scammer. Even better, post a picture of your place of business 

Which type of website most needs to show a real location? You guessed it: ecommerce.  The more virtual the business is, the more important to show that it is real. This business made sure that customers can contact them in every way possible:

Read the rest of the story HERE.

Torrance, Calif. – April, 2018 – Rydeen Mobile just completed and unveiled a new website for Rydeen Mobile Electronics. The homepage and all the new product pages have all new graphics and are much easier to navigate than the previous website. The new site is using a new web platform which enables viewing from mobile devices with easy to use new category menus.

Go to www.rydeenmobile.com to check it out. Rydeen is placing an all new emphasis on ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) which is clearly evident when you see the new home page with scrolling graphics and featured product categories.

All the new Rydeen products for 2018 are featured in the website including the new ADAS product which includes the BSS1LPB Blind Spot Safety System for vehicles with metal bumper applications as well as any vehicle where the bumper cannot be removed.

An entire category is focused on the new cameras including the New Black Diamond cameras lenses with low light viewing capability and Super HD resolution for detail picture reproduction with vibrant colors.

Whether you are looking for product manuals, tech support or checking out the FAQs on popular products, it is all there and is easy to navigate.

Innovation and Value aren’t usually two words you find in the same sentence, but that’s what Rydeen is all about: melding the best of today’s technology into smart, practical devices that are easy to use, and make them available to consumers at an affordable price. Headquartered in Torrance, Calif., with a local staff that lives and breathes consumer electronics, we create unique products focused on driver safety, convenience and lifestyle enhancement.