In my translation and design service on PinoyTattoos.com, my customers order designs that are supposed to mean something. I would say the buyer anxiety is much higher compared to ordering a typical product. Getting a wrong or meaningless tattoo would be really bad. Some customers have expressed it’s taken them years to choose what to get inked. I myself took 10 years. I’m glad I waited, otherwise I might have been stuck with a barbwire armband or cartoon character.

To reduce (probably cannot kill it) buyer anxiety, I implemented a few simple things to my checkout page.

1) Paypal Verification seal
2) Contact info including a phone#
3) A Meebo Me widget that connects to all my IM accounts

I’ve had more than a few customers call me while they were on the checkout page needing assurance of the product or the checkout process.

Want more tips? My favorite E-commerce blog has more.

Image by enviied

I just did an interview for my Baybayin site with Michelle from Philippine Script Designs via the Facebook iPhone app. We did it via email 1 question at a time rather than me emailing a bunch of questions. While it’s no Twitterview, it’s quiet effective due to the layout of the app. It’s much better than the browser version. My wish though would to be able to export the conversation somehow keeping the speech bubbles.

Check it out then add me on Facebook

I attended the Web2.0 Expo last week. Here are some of the highlights:
I recently attended the Web2.0 Expo last week here in San Francisco. The theme of the event this year was “The power of less”. Due to the economic environment, companies were pushing optimization of what you already have and what you can by for $$ to save your $$$$$$$$.

The buzz this year was:
· Cloud computing
· Enterprise mashups
· Enterprise social networking with productivity/collaboration features (again)
· Customer social networking

A list of presentation PDF’s, PPT’s and video can be found here.

My favorite keynote was Open Source Administration – John Maeda (Rhode Island School of Design)

Video after the jump….

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April Fools Day is a chance for business to have fun without worrying too much about ROI. That said, there’s still some opportunity to make some money off April Fools Day. You will have to subscribe to the “I don’t make money from my site, I make money because of it” philosophy (I forget who said that).

Poking fun of web celebrities works
Smellr.com did good by featuring a who’s who on the internet. Kevin Rose, Michael Arrington, Scoble and the rest will definitely write about it, Tweet, Facebook, etc. Besides harnessing the web celeb power, they also did good by not trying to sell us their products. Their catchy Web2.0″ badge looked great compared to a generic About or Contact links. Check out sll the buzz on Google.

Missed all the tech April Fools day gags? Techcrunch has a list of the best.