Shoppers are often weary of handing over their sensitive financial information to an online store. Even worse, so many companies are ill-equipped to really understand how to protect valuable customer information once they have it.

You can put your customers at ease by using a name they know and trust - Amazon. Checkout by Amazon gives private sellers the same e-commerce solution as the “big store”. Existing Amazon customers can use their Amazon accounts on your web site or the fast checkout feature, Amazon 1-click, which eliminates the hassle of filling out shipping and billing information. Checkout has tools for managing the purchasing process, including shipping, sales tax calculators and printable mailing labels.

In return for providing this array of services, Amazon collects a small percentage of the sale and a transaction fee. Technically, there are no software start-up costs, monthly charges, or contracts. Amazon only makes money when you do. Why don’t you give it a try?

Congratulations to Tyler Bagley. He just won a $30 iTunes gift certificate by playing our weekly caption contest. $30 dollars for 7 words? - good luck getting Conde Nast to pay that much.

As Tyler basks in the glory of his win, we invite you to try your hand at this week’s John Nelson cartoon, found here.

We will award another $30 iTunes gift certificate to the best submission. That’s right, we upped the ante from $25 (well actually, we learned iTunes doesn’t offer $5 increments). No limit on the number of entries- so, keep ‘em coming.

Don’t forget to utilize our commenting plugin. If you are unsure how, we’ve got you covered with this little screencast we created to demonstrate the process.

One of the best ways to get feedback from your customers is to ask them to participate in a survey. Unless you are living in the dark ages, you probably know that surveys have gone digital. Unfortunately, many services make you pay by the survey or, gulp, the question.

Not so with LimeSurvey. LimeSurvey is an open source survey software that offers unlimited surveys and control over the design and functionality of the questionnaire. Check out the demo. Limesurvey has a many features- here are the highlights:

• unlimited number of questions
• unlimited participants
• open/closed group participants
• multi-lingual
• 20 different question types, including conditional questions
• picture and video integration
• invitations and reminders
• template editor
• easy import/export of raw data (CVS, PDF, Excel, etc)

LimeSurvey is a free download, but you will need to install the software on a server with PHP 4.2 and a MYSQL database to store all your LimeSurvey information. While it may sound confusing, it is a straight-forward installation for a web developer.

Bottom line, a survey tool like LimeSurvey is an easy source for perspective (and intelligence) on your business relationships. There’s no need to stay in the dark.

from the baitshop

who’s it for?

This ad tells the McCain biography for those who don’t know it. Surprisingly, Senator McCain has made no mention of the fact that his son is currently serving in Iraq.

why is it being done?

Introduce the candidate and explain his bona fides in national defense and security matters.

are the fish biting?

Those electoral fish can be tricky. It seems that the swing states are too close to call, though there’s much talk of a press corps love affair with the other guy.

where to from here?

While these ads are nice, the real battle will happen when the campaign moves beyond biography.

Few companies can afford to keep a professional copywriter on staff, despite constant need for quality content.

Consider using an on-demand copy marketplace like Helium. Helium is similar to Odesk, the developers community we discussed in It’s a small world. Here’s how it works- publishers submit their article requirements (a brief description of the piece), choose a channel (a specific content category like Travel, Business, or Technology), then specify a deadline, word count, and cash prize amount. Helium uses a rating system to qualify writers, but any member of the community can take a stab at your piece. At the end of the competition, you choose among the submissions and award a winner.

Helium is an ideal solution for the company who can’t commit to in-house talent and doesn’t have the time or energy to sift through freelance portfolios. You choose content a la carte and there is no commitment to the writer who provides the material.

What’s the most important marketing decision you’ll ever make? Your brand name. And for that reason, naming is one of the toughest jobs you’ll ever have. Good thing that crowd-sourcing is now available to make it a little bit easier.

You can just turn to namethis, an online naming and decision-making platform from a company called Kluster. Namethis helps companies find 3 market-ready names for their product or service. Each competition costs $99 dollars (mostly compensation for the winners) and lasts 48 hours.

To enter, simply create an account with Kluster and post a short blurb about your product and business. Kluster then invites its community members to submit a name or invest “watts” in names that are or have already been thrown in the hat. Upon sign-up, all Kluster members earn 1000 free watts, which can be distributed over several competitions or (if you are feeling lucky) invested in a single idea.

This model is very similar to logo and web design service, 99Designs, which we discussed in Take that- luftballoons. Both crowd-sourcing platforms offer ideas and inspiration in a pinch and won’t eat into your marketing budget. You may be surprised by what the crowd has in store for your new product.

Often, a brand can be distilled down to a single visual cue, like the Nike swoosh or the Apple, um, apple. Every opportunity you have to include a visual identity cue should be seized, and one incredibly easy way to do this is with a favicon. Favicons, short for favorite icon, are the small images that appear in the url bar beside a website address and next to a page title in a browser tab.

You can use a tool like favicon.cc to create your little visual cue in just a matter of minutes. The fastest way to create your brand favicon is to upload your logo into their system. It will convert it to the correct size and format. You may need to do a bit of tweaking to get it just right. You can also animate your favicon by creating multiple designs and timing their evolution.

Don’t let this easy way to connect your URL to your brand identity pass you by.

Not everyone was born with the color selection gene. But that doesn’t have to be a barrier to developing something with great visual appeal.

Color selection can be made much easier with kuler, a web-based tool for creating harmonious color palettes from Adobe Labs. Users can experiment with a rainbow of colors, perfect the combinations, and share them with the kuler community for feedback. And you don’t have to be a digital Picasso to use this application.

To create a theme, access the main marker on the color wheel and rotate like clock hands to set the base of your color scheme. The application will adjust the secondary arms to to harmonize with your color selection based on the governing palette rules (you can set to monochromatic, complementary, shades, etc). To customize your palette, move the secondary arms to a desired location on the wheel or manipulate the actual color values (RGB, CMYK), the hue saturation (HSV), or html code value (HEX). You can import images using the Flickr feature and grab values directly from the picture.

Once your palette is complete, title and tag it, so that palette is searchable, and save. If you choose, kuler will publish your palette; community members can browse the library, rank individual palettes, or draw inspiration from each other’s offerings. To use your palette (or any other public palette) in a design application, open it in an Adobe CS3 software or just the grab the HEX codes.

With minimal effort (and expertise) you can design a one-of-kind color theme. Inspiration is endless and the application is free, so give it a whirl.

Whether it’s a small meet-and-greet with cocktails or a full-blown affair, promoting your event is hard work. And if you want to reach a larger audience than your existing customers and contacts, you have to explore new avenues of publicity.

One resource to consider is Yahoo’s Upcoming. Upcoming is a community site for discovering and sharing events in your area. It’s free, completely user-generated (although Yahoo will tap their sister events site, Yahoo Local, for some tips), and shameless self-promotion is encouraged. Members can see what’s going on in their hometown, or on a broader scale, and follow events that their friends have added or are going to. Event listings are organized by category and popular affairs stream on the Upcoming homepage, listing the date, location, and the number of Upcoming users who plan on attending. Each event is open to comments, so community members can weigh in or add to the information available.

To list your event on Yahoo Upcoming, you will need to create an account or login with your existing Yahoo username and password. You can upload buddy icons or images for your event via Flickr (another Yahoo property). Your event will be immediately added to to the site directory and open for the community to explore. As we mentioned, Yahoo encourages members to promote their own events through the site- it’s the special sauce behind this project- but be weary of spamming. Slow and steady wins this race, as you build a community base and following. You can watch the progress of you event by checking out how many people are planning to attend and who is commenting, then adjust your promotional efforts to get more saturation.

If you need to get the word out about your event, tap into the power of your local community by putting a listing on Yahoo Upcoming.

Your website may do a good job of pitching your product, but in the end, nothing beats a personal connection with your customer. While website chat applications are nothing new, they’re generally just web versions of the old call center. Given that most of your company is probably already on an instant messenger, why not let prospects or customers contact your in-house experts directly.

Google Talk Chatback Badge is a fast and easy way to do just that. It’s a free feature with a Google Talk or Gmail account (both happen to be free too). To add the badge, simply copy a line of code and paste in the html of your website. You can customize the appearance of your badge with a simple drop down menu, and Chatback will generate an updated code. Ideally, the badge should be placed by your name on your company bio page, like we have done here.

Once embedded, the badge appears as a tiny bubble beside your name, displaying your availability status, which updates as your Google Talk status updates. Site visitors don’t need a Google Talk account to use the application. By clicking on your chat bubble, Google Talk will launch in a separate browser window and send you a notification with a link to the conversation.

If you’re looking for a way to engage customers or prospects while they are on your site, try adding a Chatback Badge.

Congratulations to the first feed growth! caption cartoon winner, Frances. Her name will go down in the annals of feed growth! history… at least, for this week. Check out her contribution below:

Do you think you can do better than Frances? We’ve raised the bar and will award the next winner a $25 iTunes gift certificate. Try your hand at this week’s John Nelson cartoon, found at the top of this post.

If you are unsure how to work our commenting plug-in, check out this sweet little screencast we created to demonstrate the process.

You can’t win if you don’t play. No limit on the number of entries.

We will review all submissions and feature the winner on the next time around.

Although the iPhone lets you surf the web with a regular browser, despite the hype, most of the world is not on a smartphone. It’s still a good idea to make your site mobile-friendly.

A service called Mofuse (short for mobile fusion) will create a mobile version of your website or blog in a matter of seconds. Technically, it’s an RSS feed with mobile-friendly packaging, but all your readers will notice is the fact that they can browse your site from their hand-held device. To get started, enter your url or RSS feed into the Mofuse mobilizer (found on their homepage). The system will generate a custom .mobi url (check out http://feedgrowth.mofuse.mobi on your phone) and prompts you to create an account. Your new mobile site launches immediately and through your account administration panel, you can customize the design of your site, add your logo, or switch your mobile site to your own domain.

Mofuse already counts feed growth favorites!, ReadWriteWeb and Mashable, as users. The company recently discarded their old subscription-based business model to focus on developing a mobile advertising network, which they hope to release later this year. This means you get the Mofuse mobile platform for free, including site analytics and customer support.