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Having been in the printing & graphics business for the past25 years, I can attest to the importance of attending to details,both in work quality and customer satisfaction. E-commerceis not so much different, especially in principle.A typing error can not only be embarrassing, but also cost the printera lot of money, considering the waste in paper, time and labor.On the Internet, the fix is cheap - sometimes - unless thattyping error alters data such as pricing, in which case it cancreate an expensive mess, or nothing at all - such as nosales.Last week a fellow wrote to tell me that the links on mypages didnt work! I thought he was out of his mind, butdecided to go through and check them out - just in casehe wasnt. After wading through a half-dozen pages,finding no problems, I finally arrived to a group Id put upabout a year ago. The links at the bottom of the pagessurely did not work!When I originally composed the pages, I did a quick cut &paste of the hyperlinks at the bottom so I would not haveto retype the same information over and over. Unfortunately,I copied a bad link; all my hyperlinks were now calling forfiles in my A-drive rather than those within the directoryon my server. I unwittingly pasted them on each of the newpages Id composed that afternoon and loaded them up tothe server. It probably wouldnt have been much of a bigdeal, but those pages were describing a couple of booksI am marketing and the reader simply could not get to theorder pages from those pages - after, of course, they werevery interested in doing so!Now, you would think Id have double-checked those linksat some point soon after, but I was in a hurry to finish andconfident that I had done a good job, besides, sales werecoming in, so why worry?The sales were coming in, however, from readers determinedto circumvent the worthless links and buy the books any-way. How many sales did I lose from those that gave upafter hitting my problem hyperlinks?I was sick when I realized it!Since then Ive been a little more particular when I composepages, with what goes out in my newsletter (and I still slipup), and the contents of articles that I submit to othernewsletters.Yesterday, I received an emailed proof from a newslettereditor publishing one of my articles later in the week. Normally,Id have simply acknowledged the editor and got on withmy mail. I decided to read it through though and, sureenough, the hyperlinks in the credits at the end were missingand contained error messages in their places! I wrote back,explained the problem, provided the corrections and thankedhim VERY much for the proof! He replied within hours withthe correction and we were happy campers again.I thought it was interesting that I took the time I didntTHINK I had and checked it over. Thats all it took.I will investigate unsolicited email that sparks my interestbut it is so frustrating to get fired up over a message andwant to get to the advertised web site, only to find that the siteis not up, under construction, or otherwise unavailable. I thinkto myself that the author of that email might just as well haveflushed his investment in his time and money down the toiletfor all it did for him, and it all could have been avoided bychecking the little things like details... "Is the site finished?Is it up on the server yet? Good, send the broadcast!"I once read that most millionaires share a commoncharacteristic: they can account for practically every centthey save, spend, invest, etc. They pay attention to details.Do I still have errors out there? Probably, but less so......Im selling more books now, anyway.

About the Author

Tom Cornwell is the publisher of the OraMedia site onDental Self Sufficiency (http://mizar5.com/omedia1.htm)and the OraMedia Newsletter. Tom also handles printingand graphics services in New York. Direct any correspondenceto: thomasc@exotrope.net or phone 607-739-5290.