It takes more than a good idea to get attention

Earlier this month, Wayne Johnson told Guardian Business that Bahamians were losing millions of dollars in revenue by failing to embrace e-commerce.
It therefore seems appropriate that Financial Bookworm should now provide some insight on how to operate successfully within e-business.
As managing director of a top U.K. web design company, Jed Wylie spent years researching the best online techniques used by the most successful e-commerce companies.  The result is a book providing a practical step-by-step strategy to create online success -- 'Make Your Website Sell'.
You don't need to be an I.T. expert to understand and implement these strategies and Wylie makes good use of humor.
'Make Your Website Sell' provides a nine-step strategy that includes: turning visitors into customers, generating website traffic, seven principles of internet marketing and website planning and performance analysis as a route to online success.  This is underpinned by practical ideas and simple how-to guides dedicated to increasing online profits.
Wylie explains that although web designers create commercially successful websites, they are not experts in promoting your business.  This remains your responsibility and successful website marketing involves exploiting multiple channels including search engine optimization, Google AdWords, joint ventures, affiliation with other organizations, blogging and using social media.
A key theme within 'Make Your Website Sell' is that you must focus on the benefits your product/service offers to customers using the 'AIDA' (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) technique.
It's alarming to note that on average 99 percent of visitors leave websites without actually doing anything.  However, Wylie suggests offering free incentives in exchange for your visitor's contact details to address this problem.
Amazingly, few businesses realize the potential of Google despite it handling 4.5 billion monthly searches.  Google Adwords can be used to display appropriate adverts when keywords are typed into their search engine.
Google Analytics provides free access to website performance data, including the pages visited and sales that people made upon visiting your website.  Wylie underpins this goldmine of information with his unique profit calculator to benchmark your marketing efforts.
Consumers and businesses are increasingly using the internet to find suppliers of products and services, thus placing websites at the heart of e-commerce.
By applying the strategies within 'Make Your Website Sell', Bahamian businesses can start accessing this multi billion-dollar global marketplace -- today.
 
o'Make Your Website Sell' by Jed Wylie
Published by Marshall Cavendish Business.
Available in hard copy and in E-Book at www. business-bookshop.co.uk.

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Evergreen Mortuary Hosts Hundreds of Students to Back to School

Nassau, Bahamas - Evergreen Mortuary teamed up with neighboring businesses
in the Mackey Street South community to provide hundreds of students
in that community with back to school items during its Second Annual
Back to School Jamboree on Monday, August 23. 

Managing Director
of Evergreen Mortuary, Ms. Denelee Penn along Minute Muffler, Bertha's
Go Go Ribs, The Q Cub and Sheila's Take Away provided hundreds of
children with school supplies including school bags, books, geometry
sets, pens, pencils, rulers and sharpeners, calculators, art brush and
paint sets and glues. There was lots of exciting music and mouth-watering
food...

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Customs rate on security equipment among duties reduced

Business owners are getting some relief in securing their businesses with the elimination of customs duty on surveillance equipment in the 2011/2012 budget.
It was one of a number of reductions in customs duty rates Ingraham listed during the budget debate Monday.
In addition to the security equipment exemption, rates were reduced on a number of food and other consumer items, medical equipment, building materials, classroom school supplies for teachers and electronic book readers.
"
My government is again introducing a number of measures to further rationalize tariff and excise rates, encourage energy efficiency and provide relief to consumers," Ingraham said during his budget communication in the House of Assembly.
Guardian Business has the list of changes to duty rates provided for in the amended Revenue Order Act.

Description

Old

New

Rate

Rate

Sugar free gum

45%

30%

Sea salt and seasoning

salt

45%

10%

Wild rice

40%

0%

Instant coffee

30%

0%

Sliced and unsliced

sandwich turkey meat

40%

0%

Sliced and unsliced

ham sandwich meat

40%

0%

Sliced and unsliced

beef sandwich meat

45%

0%

Fresh fruit

30%

0%

Dish washing

detergents

40%

0%

Other laundry

detergents

7%

0%

Peanut butter and

peanut butter jam mixed

40%

10%

Jams

25%

10%

Frozen vegetarian food

45%

30%

Yogurt

35%

10%

Spices and Seasoning

35%

10%

Active yeast

30%

10%

Ketchup

30%

10%

Salad Dressing

30%

10%

Brake fluids

45%

40%

Fans

45%

25%

Air conditions

45%

40%

Anti-freezing

preparations (radiator coolant)

45%

40%

Tubular needles and

needles for sutures

35%

0%

Human organ and glands

40%

0%

Kidney machines

10%

0%

Parts for kidney

machines

10%

0%

Printed documents

40%

0%

Electric cars

85%

25%

Underarm deodorant and

antiperspirant.

45%

10%

Removal of duty on

used personal clothing including footwear of returning residents

35%

0%

Ribbons for type

writers

45%

10%

Plastic toilet seat

45%

25%

PVC fittings

45%

35%

Insulated concrete

forms

45%

25%

Insulated steel wall

panels

45%

25%

Insulation spray foam.

45%

10%

Varicose stockings.

45%

0%

Parts and accessories

for typewriters, word processing machines, calculators and similar machines.

60%

10%

Parts for routers and

switches for telephony.

45%

10%

Baby bottle nipples

45%

0%

Baby wipes.

10%

0%

Solar air conditioners

45%

10%

Chicken

40%

30%

Security cameras

10%

0%

Security cameras

systems

45%

0%

Animal food

45%

0%

Electronic book

readers

45%

0%

Allow teachers duty

exemption on school supplies to be used in the classroom.

Various Rates

0%

Reduction of duty

biodegradable Styrofoam boxes, cups, plates and silverware

45%

10%

 
 
 
 

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Helping those in need in time for back to school

By STAFF WRITER
Nassau Guardian
Evergreen Mortuary teamed up with neighboring businesses in the Mackey Street south community to provide hundreds of students in the community with back to school items during its second annual Back to School Jamboree on Monday, August 23.
Managing Director of Evergreen Mortuary, Denelee Penn along with Minute Muffler, Bertha's Go Go Ribs, the Q Cub and Sheila's Take Away provided school supplies including bags, books, geometry sets, pens, pencils, rulers and sharpeners, calculators, art brush and paint sets and bottles of glue to the children
"We realize that these are difficult times and decided to team up together with local businesses to give back to ...

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Sandals donates school supplies to Gambier Primary

Last week saw the start of a new school year and to help lighten the load for a few parents Sandals Royal Bahamian donated school supplies to all 107 students at Gambier Primary, the resort's neighbouring school, to ensure the children were ready for the new school term.

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Halsbury Chambers holds their 6th Annual Free Legal Clinic

Nassau, Bahamas - On the 18

th September, 2010, Halsbury Chambers
held its 6

th Annual Free Legal Clinic "Information You Need for the
life You Want" at its main office situate Halsbury Commercial Center, Village
Road.  The firm's legal clinic was
open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. 
Attorneys at the firm gave free legal advice on a variety of legal issues,
including corporate matters, real estate and mortgages, wills, matrimonial and
divorce, landlord and tenants, debt collections and banking.

Persons who attended left with the September, 2010 issue of
the firm's Newsletter "Inside the Chamber" as well as pens, mugs and
calculators embossed with the firm's name; refreshments were also served... 

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Force ripe nation

This article was first printed on May 12, 2011

I love shortcuts. Love them.  I hate to stand in traffic, for instance.  I hate traffic lights (although, I wouldn't want to live in a world where they didn't exist.)  I take the side streets.  I ride parallel.  I like to loop.  I hate to stand still.  First of all, it's hot, so I prefer to feel some wind on my skin as I traverse this dusty little rock.  But more importantly, I hate having to live on somebody else's time.  I want to choose when and where and how I enter and exit.  Shortcuts are the Bahamian way, aren't they?  Why would you take the long way there, man?  Why?
Of course, the short cut is a specialty of modern living.  Modernity seems to be all about doing things faster, in less time.  We never stop to wonder if our faster, if our less, is better.  We move across the earth's surface faster than ever, in cars, trains, boats and planes.  We send packages to one another through the air instead of on the ground.  We overnight it.  Bump snail mail.  We want our messages to be received instantly; even e-mail is too slow; so we "chat" on line. We use a calculator instead of our brains.  We microwave our food instead of resting it on a fire.  We use washers and dryers instead of cleaning and drying the old fashioned (and let's admit, the harder) way.  We staple our stomachs so we don't have to exercise or make ourselves stop eating.  We take diet pills, energy pills, sexual stamina pills, sleeping pills, uppers and downers, rather than work on ourselves.
And we in The Bahamas are particularly fond of short cuts.  We hate waiting.  We take pride in walking past a line of chumps and whispering something to the person behind the counter and getting what we want.  And those of us in the line don't cuss and carry on; we just wish we knew the woman behind the counter ourselves so we wouldn't have to stand for hours like the other chumps.  Shortcuts.  That's why we buy driver's licenses, bribe this one, and bribe that one.  And that's why we know not to waste our time applying for jobs we see advertised.  We cultivate people and they call us when there's an opening. It's the "who you know" system: a shortcut culture.
But this love of short cuts in The Bahamas gat us jam right up.  Jam right up.  The thing about it is that once you develop an appetite for quickness, it would take a force of nature to slow you down again, dare I say an act of God.  There are some things, crucial, critical things, that can't be achieved quickly.
Lives are supposed to be built deliberately.  Maturation is a process that, by design, ought to produce a fully formed, wholly developed end product.  Children don't pop out of the womb and then sit up and start talking, nor does a boy become a man by osmosis.  No matter how much we faster we do things, we have not been able to speed up the rate at which we mature.  In fact, everything seems to indicate that when we force growth there are harmful side effects waiting to unfold.  Give a fourteen year old a baby and yes, you may force her to get a job, earn her keep, and "be a woman", but in so many other ways she still can't help being a girl and she will continue to make the mistakes that are common to children.
I write about my own children pretty often, and I confess that it's sometimes hard to slow down long enough to really concentrate on them and move at their speed, which is super slow compared to mine.  When I do, however, I breathe easier.  I relax; I become quiet; and I really notice their needs.  I'm more aware of who they are and who they are becoming.  I'm more conscious of the investment of time and patience that is required to rear them into smart, compassionate, godly men who can take on families of their own one day.  I hardly notice that when I'm rushing about "doing things."   I want them to grow and develop at a healthy, natural pace, but if I don't live my own life at a healthy natural pace, then what am I modeling?
We want the end result but we don't want the pains of process.  We want to be the boss but we don't want to pay the cost.  But force ripe taste bad.
Take David.  Chosen of God.  But before he could be king he had to walk with the king. Serve the king.  Fight for the king.  Even endure the king.
In my own life, I want things fast.  I want things quick. I want it now.  Now. Now.  I deserve it, I say.  But it don't work like that.  Short cuts lead to dead ends sometimes.  More and more, I tell you, God is saying, "Wait!  Shut your mouth.  Keep still. And wait on me.  You want what you're not ready for.  What you can't carry, you want to hold.  I'm not finished the work I've started in you and the harder you strive for what you think you should have, the more frustrated and exhausted, the more distanced from Me you will be."
This nation is force ripe.  And the taste has the young men's teeth on edge and their stomachs sour.  More next week.

IAN STRACHAN is Associate Professor of English at The College of The Bahamas. You can write him at strachantalk@gmail.com or visit www.ianstrachan.wordpress.com

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Addwallet

• $ 20Services - Other
• Eleuthera, Bahamas

Wow are you in addwallet. Well their is a great tool for all members of Addwallet its called the Addwallet Profit Calculator and now that we have reseller rights we are bringing it to you at a low cost of $20 just.   more »

John Bull Business Centre & Warehouse

• Robinson Road
• Nassau
• Nassau / Paradise Island, Bahamas

Learn More About Your Health On Facebook

Learning about health can be fun. Visit the Doctors Hospital “Health Education” Facebook page or website and learn more about your health. Take advantage of our free health resources for the New Year.

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