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Psychology of the Purchase

The psychology in making a purchase is both simple and complex. It’s simple, because each element of the psychology is easy to understand. However, actually using it in real life and business can be pretty complex.

The most important elements behind the buying psychology?
Emotions and logic.

Buy on Emotions, Justify It with Logic

Does anyone buy a Mercedes because it logically makes sense? No – they buy a Mercedes because of the way they believe they’ll feel when they are driving the car. [Read more...]

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Does Your Business Make House Calls?

by Sherri Stockman Leave a Comment

In this Dec. 18, 2009, photo, Willo O'Brien demonstrates Square on her iPhone in San Francisco. O'Brien, a designer and illustrator, uses Square for credit card transactions with her customers. Users can sign for purchases by writing with a finger on the iPhone's touch screen.

If you have a service business that travels to your customers, or if you sell goods at a farmer’s market or another location away from “home base,” taking payments has been somewhat limited. To accept credit cards meant an expensive merchant account and portable card reader. That extra expense can cut deep into the profit margin of a small business.

Quickbooks, from Intuit, had introduced a program fairly recently that allows you to use your iPhone to accept credit card payments from your customers. But you have to subscribe to Quickbooks and use their merchant account.

Now, a new company called Square has one-upped Quickbooks with their free app for iPhone and Android. [Read more...]

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What Are Those Funny Looking Boxy Symbol Pictures?

by Sherri Stockman 1 Comment

Scanning this QR code will take you to the About page on the RoosterMoon website

If you live or work in the city, you’ve probably been seeing QR codes for awhile (in rural areas like me? not so much…YET).

These are scan-able bar codes, similar to the ones the grocery store uses to ring up your purchases, except you can access them on your smartphone. They can be used as a click-to-call (or click-to-text) function, give the back-story on a product, display a virtual business card, send you to a specific web page, even generate a mobile coupon for your business.

They can be printed on price tags, posters and brochures, business cards, table tents and menus, signs, the applications aren’t unlimited, but you can get pretty creative with them.
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Still Think Facebook Won’t Help Your Biz?

by Sherri Stockman Leave a Comment

Undoubtedly, Facebook has made huge strides (leaps and bounds, rather than steps) in the past year. There are so many new features, you couldn’t possibly even use them all.

This article in Web Pro News outlines, month by month, just what Facebook accomplished in 2010.

Here is a taste:

Remembering What Facebook Has Done Since the Beginning of 2010

Why 2010 Has Been the Year of Facebook

2010 has been a huge year for Facebook – arguably the company’s biggest yet. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was named Person of the Year by Time magazine, a Hollywood movie about the founding of the company was released in theaters, and attracted a great deal of critical buzz. The company launched the “open graph”, possibly the most important feature the company has ever implemented, as it connects nearly the entire web to Facebook itself. Then there was the messaging product, the privacy fiascoes, and much more.
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