What makes for good online customer service? Read more here.

Customers are now in charge. Thanks to the growth of the Web, it is easier than ever to comparison shop and switch from one business to another with the click of a mouse. However, research has found that in the online market, customers yearn for trustworthiness more than ever.

Customer relationships are a company’s most valuable asset - worth more everything else combined as no customers = no business. Getting and keeping more customers who stay with you longer is crucial. If your customers are loyal to your business, they will be much more likely to choose you over your competitors. Loyal customers will be much more likely to tell their friends about you. Loyal customers spend more and bring in even more new customers. Loyalty is immensely valuable. Research has shown that a 5 percent increase in customer retention rates results in a 25 percent to 95 percent increase in profits.

It’s easy to say customers are our most important asset but turning CRM strategy into bottom-line results is hard work. It means winning the battle for customers’ hearts and minds every day, with each interaction at every customer touch point. Long-standing relationships only arise from trust gained over many transactions and by customers' belief that the company wishes to keep them around rather than drive them away.

Creating a customer-focused company starts with the definition of a CRM strategy, which must then be filled out with new work processes, organizational changes, and even a revamped corporate culture.

To create customers for life, customers who will become advocates with the perception (and don’t forget that perception is reality) they need to believe that you do what's best for your customers, not just what's best for your bottom line.

To do that you need to:

1. Find out what customers want and know what you are providing matches that. Do not start with the bottom line. Profit and cash flow are residuals of attention to the needs and preferences of your customers. Of course, profits are crucial. But long-term cash flow and profits come from regular customers

2. Be honest and keep things simple, listen, communicate openly and keep your promises. Deliver what you say you will. Far too many businesses focus on ways to keep customers, only to lose sight of the fact that their product or service simply isn't what it should be. Make certain that the core of what you do is deserving of long-term customer loyalty, and then look for ways to nurture it. Make it simple to do business with you.

3. Practice what you preach and preach what you practice. Treat your customers like you would like to be treated and then go even further by, in that classic phrase: exceeding their expectations. Give customers reasons to stay. Great service or products are terrific, but it never hurts to lure customers into the long-term fold. How about discounts for regular customers? Customer loyalty is needs to be appropriately valued and rewarded.

4. Nurture employees. “Old-fashioned” solutions still provide the edge. Research shows that a personal relationship with your employees is the key to keeping customers loyal and that happy staff keep customers coming back. Treat your employees as you would want to be treated year after year. Not only does that encourage staff to also do their bit to entice customer loyalty, it's emphasises a supportive, responsive environment. Employee loyalty needs to be appropriately valued and rewarded.

5. Use sensible marketing practices. Not many people enjoy being inundated with telephone calls and mailings so don’t do it! Test, test, test and track the customers who come back. Once you know who your best customers are, the real work begins—convincing them to stay forevermore. Repeat purchase and retention rates capture the real financial ramifications of whether or not a company is delivering high value to its customers.

6. Know the value of your customers, segments and groups. Know who is likely to be loyal. Some customers are more trouble than they're worth. Monitor what goes into keeping a customer satisfied; if it's too costly or simply too much work - it's wrong to say that everyone should be a lifelong customer.

7. Use effective CRM systems, don't let the systems use you. Don't be driven by the vendor or consultant - use them, they're likely to know the technology far better than you. But let customers' needs and everything above drive how you use the technology. Remember it is an aid not an end.

That’s all there is to it!

ECommerce - a plan

Planning an ECommerce website is like building a house – architecture and budget need to be agreed before the decoration.

AN AGREED REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION MUST BE DRAWN UP AS THE FIRST STAGE BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE IS DONE – ANY OTHER APPROACH WILL ONLY LEAD TO CONFUSION AND WORSE.

Once an AGREED REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION has been agreed then solutions need to be evaluated and costed against that specification are:

• Project management

• Hardware

• Web design and software

• Site marketing

Project management:

All aspects of the project need to be managed. Decide who is going to do it and properly plan the requirements, activities, outcomes, milestones and timings.

Hardware:

Your choices here are a managed service or your own server. The security and disaster recovery aspect that is achieved by hosting with a major provider is very important. Only go with your own server if you have the experience and facilities.

Design and Software:

Site design

Develop site templates and test them with real people. They have to be easy to use and navigate. Don't let "design" drive the site; let ease of use and sales drive the "design". Think how the customer thinks.

Software

At least 5 solutions need to be considered.

1. Updating

2. Shopping cart

3. Forum

4. EMail

5. Statistics

Updating

There are 2 realistic routes here. Either an online or an offline, PC based content management system (CMS). The online CMS can be either an Open Source CMS (Open Source means any application that has been made available, generally free, to developers to view and modify freely. Examples of Open Source applications are MySQL and PHP) or commercial.

There are pros and cons to both routes. An online system is available to anyone with relevant security clearance anywhere any time. A PC based system is, obviously, limited to the PCs running the licenses. An example of a PC based system is Macromedia Contribute which integrates with Dreamweaver. There are a whole range of online Commercial and Open Source options such as Drupal, Joomla, and Website Baker etc. However, even this is complicated by the fact that some of the shopping cart solutions also contain CMS that may be sufficient for many companies’ requirements.

Shopping cart and CRM

There are also 2 realistic routes for the shopping cart – Open Source or commercial.

There are excellent Open Source shopping carts such as OSCommerce, but also commercial solutions such as Actinic.

There are other factors to consider with the shopping cart:

• Does it have its own or does it easily integrate with your exiting stock control systems?

• Does it integrate easily with accounting systems (e.g. Sage, QuickBooks)?

• Does it have or integrate easily with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems that may be proposed in future?

Forum

Many CMS have good integrated forums but if they do not our recommendation would be to use a good Open Source package such as PunBB or phpBB. They are free, robust and easy to integrate and customise into any site.

EMail

Most CMS, shopping carts and forums have EMail solutions. However, some solutions are very basic. If the chosen shopping cart solution that best meets the ECommerce and other requirements does not have an effective integrated EMail solution and if the same be true of the CMS and forum solutions then stand alone Open Source applications such as PHPlist are one alternative solution and the other is an online solution such as Constant Contact or many others.

Statistics

This is arguably the most important part of the package. If you do not know how visitors to your website and in the shop are behaving, what turns them on and what turns them off then it is far, far harder to improve sales and site profitability. Commercial applications such as WebTrends and ClickTracks need to be evaluated for best fit.

SITE MARKETING

There are 4 major areas to consider here.

• Offline marketing – e.g. in-store. What works most cost effectively to drive traffic and orders via the web from non-web activities.

• Site optimisation – how to make sure technical structure, copy, content, back-links and a range of other factors are initially and remain optimised so that as many high search engine placements on relevant searches are obtained.

• Pay per click and other online marketing – how to get traffic from advertising against key words and phrases used in search engines and from adverts on other sites.

• EMail – how to grow the EMail list and use it to grow profitable sales.

In summary:

• Manage the project

• Think how the customer thinks

• Get excellent software to make finding product and price easy

• Make terms clear and payment simple

• Ensure you are in stock and and have achievable delivery timescales

• Make sure you have a good CRM system and clear communications – mail, phone, EMail

• Market the site appropriately

• Know what's going on – use your stats to test, track and try

Cost ............ well how long is a pice of string, but you could be up and running for far less than the cost of new premises!!!

Monitoring Your Search Engine Positions

Since search engines are the first stop for people on the Internet looking for goods or services, the position your website appears in search results is an important factor.

If your URL shows up far down the results list, the chances of the customer or potential customer never finding you increase incrementally. Once you achieve a high search engine position, it is essential that you make sure you maintain the high ranking you have worked so hard to achieve.

This means you must come up with a strategy to monitor your search engines positions. This strategy is crucial to the success of any marketing campaign. Think of your search engine positions as your online portfolio. Would you let your shares portfolio be ruled by chance and market fluctuations, or would you keep close tabs on them so you could buy and sell when the time is right? This is the way you must consider your search engines positions.

Be aware that at first, after you have launched your search engine campaign and done all the right things to increase your rankings, you will most likely see a continual upward climb. What you need to be on the lookout for is the moment that upward climb reaches a plateau. When this happens, your search engine position campaign moves into stage two, the monitoring and protecting stage.

In stage two, do not be concerned about the short-term fluctuations in your positions. These are similar to the subtle rising and falling of shares in a portfolio. Short-term movement is an integral part of the whole process. It's the long-term changes that you must watch for and prepare to act on immediately.

Each search engine uses a formula to compute website rankings. When a search engine changes this formula in any way, it may raise or lower your ranking. Therefore, you must check your positions frequently in order to catch when a search engine changes formulas and what effect it has on your positions.

You must also deal with your competition - a crucial factor you must always be vigilant about. Your competitor's position may suddenly rise, automatically lowering your position. Or their position may drop, pushing your position higher. Each month, expect position changes due to the continual changes that are occurring in your competitor's position, and be prepared to adjust your marketing strategy to compensate for decreased rankings. Monitoring these fluctuations will also give you vital information about how to improve your website to increase your position in search results.

Another factor to monitor carefully is a sudden drop of your positions in all search engines. This is not the same as monthly fluctuations - this is a neon red warning sign!

It could mean a number of different things.

It all your search engine positions have plummeted, it may indicate that search engines spiders have found some type of problem with your website. Or a search engine may drastically change its formula, and suddenly all of your website comes up as irrelevant. If that search engine is a current favourite, it may create a domino effect, causing all of your position to drop in all search engines.

Finally, pay attention to your keywords. Keywords are the foundation bricks of the entire search engine system, and they demand individual scrutiny in your monitoring efforts. If you have found that a number of your positions have plummeted, it may mean that the competition for that particular keyword or phrase has recently rocketed into outer space. In that case, you must act quickly and efficiently to regain lost ground.

Your search engine marketing campaign is an investment. If costs you time and money on a continual basis. Protect this investment as diligently as you would your financial portfolio. In the same way, track your positions from an objective perspective, and monitor your positions on a regular basis. Make sure your time and effort reap rewards by keeping your eye on the big picture - your long-term marketing campaign.