Little things make a big difference online.
Common courtesy is a vital tool to being successful online.
If you’re thoughtless or abrasive, you most certainly won’t get very far.
Some people call it “netiquette”. But what exactly are the rules?
Here are Ten Top Tips…
1: Include any previous correspondence in the reply you send someone. It’s important because it allows people to get “up to speed” quickly on what you’re emailing them about. If you don’t include previous emails, you’re forcing them to try to find their copies of your previous emails which may take several minutes. You’ve just made a bad impression!
2: Wrap your text at 55 or 60 characters. I get one particular newsletter where the text goes all along the screen. It’s a nightmare to read… and so are personal emails that don’t wrap the text. How do you make sure the line breaks work? Firstly, hit the “enter” or “return” key at the end of each line to create a “hard” line break. Then send a test email to yourself and your friends. If they say it’s OK, you’ll find most people will receive your emails OK. For a newsletter, ask your list host to send you a test email, and ask them what the settings need to be to ensure wrapping at 55 characters.
3: Test any web-links in your emails and newsletters. People email me saying, “can you check out my site”? Then I find that the link in the email is broken. If only they’d tested it before sending, their email wouldn’t have ended up in the trash. 
4: Check your website’s user-friendly. This can involve a million different factors… but here are some… …does it load quickly (on old modems)? …is the text easy to read? …is there a lot of white space? …pre-populate forms with any existing info the visitor has given you in the past …test your own e-commerce system to make sure the customer has an easy and pleasant purchase experience …offer your visitor very few choices so they don’t have to decide which “click here” is important out of the 50 on your page. …keep your text easy to understand. As friends to test read it and report. Read it aloud yourself. …ditch the banners…especially if you have more than one.
5: OK, a favourite of mine… check how to spell the name of the person you’re writing to. Copy and paste it if you have to, but get it right.
6: Don’t send any “template” emails to promote your favourite affiliate program. It just looks like you couldn’t be bothered to write your own words! Laziness just doesn’t pay off.
7: Don’t write email essays. Time is of the essence. If you write to someone and they don’t know you, you’ve got about 30 seconds to get your message across. People don’t have time to read 5-minute essays from 100 different people each day…they’d spend 8 hours per day just reading those emails?!
8: Don’t assume you’re going to get a reply within seconds. With the Internet connected to every single time zone on the planet, there are going to be times when you email people who are fast asleep. Yes, the Internet marketing “gurus” need to sleep too! So, if you buy something and the instant delivery system fails, don’t start screaming “scam” and send 20 follow-up emails in the next hour promising hellfire and eternal damnation if the product isn’t delivered within minutes. (you’d be amazed at how often this happens!)
9: Don’t reply in haste. Just because the Internet is instant, it doesn’t mean you should reply in anger to anyone who upsets you. All you’ll do is start a “flame war” where insults are traded. It’s not worth it. True story: I once had a very irate customer send me abusive emails for something they thought I did wrong. It was very, very tempting to tell them where to place certain objects. But I didn’t. I walked away from the computer and returned later to send a cool, calm and collected reply. The next day I got an email apologising for the abusive email and saying that they’d “had a bad day”. So, as both customers and merchants, keeping a cool head is essential.
10: Don’t spam. Just don’t! This list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning spam as the single most intrusive and objectionable act which breaks all the rules of netiquette. Please, permission email only!
