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How To Turn Your Web Browser Into A Powerful Offline Sales Presentation Tool

by Michael J. Russer

Dear Mr. Internet:

How do I copy my Web site into a PowerPoint presentation so I don't have to go online to show it during meetings with prospects and clients?

Roger Lundy
RE/MAX Real Estate Group I
Indianapolis, IN

Dear Roger:

I have good news for you. You can easily turn your Web site, or any other for that matter, into a powerful and fast offline presentation. You don't need to "copy" your Web site, buy any software, or even use PowerPoint. There is a much easier and free way to demonstrate your site offline!

If you are using IE 5.0 (or greater) as your Web browser, you already have all the tools you need to capture and play back any Web site offline. It is not much more difficult than saving your site as a "favorite" or bookmark in your browser's Favorites menu. The great thing about this method is that it is built right into your browser and you can update your offline copy any time, even automatically!

5 Steps To An Automatic Presentation

The process of saving your site is very straightforward, here's how you do it:

a.Navigate to the site you want to view offline and save it as a "favorite" under your "Favorites" menu;
b.Check the "Make available offline" box and click the "Customize" settings button;
c.Click the "Yes" radio button (to store linked pages) and set the link depth to 2 pages (don't go much deeper than that or it could take up an enormous amount of disk space).
d.Click the "Next" button to set the synchronization schedule to manual;
e.Click "Okay" to complete the process and you are ready to go!

If you would prefer how to see how to do it, I've created a special "viewlet" that will give you a personal step-by-step demonstration on exactly how to save your entire site offline! With this animated and fully annotated slide show, you can play it over and over again until you really "get" how it's done —very cool. To get started, just CLICK HERE, sit back and enjoy!

Keep in mind that no matter how sophisticated or complex your site happens to be, this method will (almost always) be able to show everything including Flash animations, javascript, DHTML effects and the like —only much more quickly. The only time it becomes a little tricky is for database-driven template sites...

Temperamental Templates

If the site you want to demonstrate is a database-driven template, then you need to take one additional step. Before you save the site as a "favorite" be sure to click on all the links that you plan to access during your offline demonstration. This puts a temporary copy of those pages in your browser cache and allows the offline synchronization process to properly store these pages when saved as a favorite.

When you are ready to show your site during a presentation, just go to the "File" menu and select "Work Offline". Then go to the "Favorites" menu and select the site you saved for offline viewing. It will instantly appear and so will any of the links you click (up to the depth that you saved them).

You will find that this is a much more dynamic and powerful way to demonstrate the benefits of your site to a prospect than any series of slides you could ever hope to show. And the best part is that it didn't cost you a dime and it was already put together for you!

Once AOL has you, they just don't want to let you go. Finally, there is a service that will make moving over to the real Internet a snap! Trueswitch.com has a free service that:

Transfers e-mail and address book data from AOL to Outlook or Outlook Express;

Has an automated means to notify everyone in your current address book of your new e-mail address;

Automatically forwards e-mail originally sent to your AOL address to your new, true Internet address and also allows you to set up an automatic response to senders telling them about your new address (i.e. change of address notice);

Automatically will cancel your AOL account after a predetermined period of time so you don't have to keep on paying for it after you have completed the switchover process.

This service was originally designed for small to medium sized ISPs to help new customers switch over to their services. However, for the time being they are making it freely available to individual consumers.

I am still amazed at how many real estate professionals continue to use AOL with all of its inherent limitations. Doing business online with AOL as your primary access is like going to battle with one arm tied behind your back —not a wise thing indeed.

If you would rather switch than fight, now is the time to do it with Trueswitch.com —and welcome to the real Internet!

Published: April 18, 2002

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

Michael J. Russer (a.k.a. Mr. Internet®) is an internationally acclaimed speaker, trainer, author, and strategic consultant to the real estate industry and small business. He is also the exclusive Internet columnist for REALTOR® Magazine, the architect of the revolutionary e-Productivity^TM system and leading voice for the use of Virtual Assistants in small business. You can subscribe to his free monthly leading-edge newsletter ePOWER NEWS by going to ePowerNews.com.

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