There are so many different aspects to having good customer service for an Ecommerce business today. Forget about the fact that your company needs to compete on a Search Engine Marketing and Social Media level, forget about the fact that your products must be useful and your services worthwhile. You can have all of those things and bring record-setting amounts of customers through your virtual doors. If you don’t have your ducks in a row in terms of sales, support and customer service, you’ll inevitably watch those would-be customers bottleneck at the point of sale and die on the vine. But you don’t have to die that agonizing E-death, do you? I don’t think so. Organizing an efficient front against incoming customer contact is one of the most important factors in closing any sale. Here are some things to keep in mind when creating or analyzing an existing Customer Service strategy.
Covering Your Customer Service Basics
If a visitor has a question about a product or service, how many options do they have to contact your support staff? Telephone and Email are important and frankly, if you don’t have both of these available, then you’re probably dealing with some pretty bleak monthly revenue figures.
Online Chat is an excellent support tool that allows customers to reach out to your staff with product questions, website issues, order inquiries and plenty more. One of my favorite things about online chat support is the fact that I can assist multiple customers simultaneously, and even while on the telephone with another customer on many occasions. Online chat support allows the customer service, tech support or sales agent to provide direct links to products or guides which can be the deciding factor for a lot of potential customers.
Help Desk Support is also a great way to assist customers in a pseudo-email format that is accessible as long as the user is connected to the Internet and knows their user name and password. Most Help Desk Software programs allow for easy viewing of communication from start to finish. This method of customer contact is especially flexible when trading issues between departments or employee’s.
Discussion Forums are really good if you have a large community of customers, especially if they require ongoing support. With your support staff acting as moderators, you can support your customers via a community of customers who are able to share common resolutions and customer experiences. This can be a really good way to provide a great benefit to your customers by allowing their peers to assist, which enables your staff to oversee.
Don’t Just Email. Follow Up!
Every Ecommerce website will at least have a contact form or email address where visitors can reach out to your staff on any number of inquiries or issues. Just because you have email, and write email, however, doesn’t mean you’re really using it. Sure, you’re responding to people and answering questions, but what then? Have you really stopped to consider all the different ways that a pre-emptive email strike can benefit your bottom line?
Abandoned Cart Recovery emails should be sent out to customers who put items in their basket but do not follow through on a purchase. I like to send an email reminder one day after the visitor abandons the cart, and then a second email within 7 days that may contain an incentive to return to purchase, such as a discount code. Abandoned Cart Recovery is an effective way of reeling in customers who may be on the fence, or might have actually forgotten they were interested in the first place.
While we’re at it, there’s no harm in following up with any customer you have been in communication with via email. If you’re quoting the price of a product or a service, absolutely follow up with the customer to see where his or her head is at. I find that when I contact a customer within 3-5 days of issuing a price quote, they often respond with additional questions that they wouldn’t have asked had I not followed up.
It’s pretty clear that whether you’re reaching out to customers via online chat, help desk, discussion forums or the various email scenario’s, you really need to make sure your support staff is intelligent, comfortable speaking with customers, well spoken and well written. Having employee’s who can easily read customer attitudes and thought processes will have an easier time engaging customers and making it easy to complete a purchase.
Well, the secret is finally out and now everyone knows how important it is to consider SEO when building or maintaining any kind of web presence. Sure, there are other important factors to Internet Marketing like Link Building, Social Media, Paid Search and others, but SEO is one of the big one’s for sure. As we all know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization which means optimizing a website or page’s on/off page text content to rank higher in search engines for specific, targeted keywords or search terms.
That doesn’t sound so hard to me. Let’s be honest, it takes more discipline than acumen to compile a list of worthwhile keywords and then to integrate those search terms into your content, whether existing or new. Despite the fact that it may not be technically challenging to compile and execute that list of keywords and bring in traffic from search engines, many of these websites suffer massive bounce rates and very little time spent on each page. The SEOs are bringing visitors in, they just can’t keep visitors there. And they sure as hell can’t convince visitors to convert to buyers. So what gives?
While it’s mostly true that anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection can identify and optimize a web page, for them it is sadly also true that not everyone can write a complete sentence. Doesn’t that sound bad? Well, it’d sound a lot worse if I wrote as badly as 90% of the people I meet on a daily basis. But would it surprise you to know that a major factor in high bounce rate and low customer trust is the fact that your content looks like it was written by, at best, a 10 year old? Seriously, what’s the problem with writing? Why can’t people spell? Why can’t people articulate a sentence? Why do people hate comma’s so much?
I remember seeing a little tweet the other day from Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media where she talked about getting nervous for her Personal Essay Writing class. See, I think it’s great when professional writers keep learning how to write. I started writing when I was very young and even wrote screen plays in my early 20′s. Sure, I never published anything more than a poem here or there, but the very act of writing is what makes me a better writer, and my desire to become a better writer pushes me into other realms of writing that, you guessed it, make me a better writer!
I recently took an English Composition course at a local Community College and despite the fact that I am already a relatively well polished writer, I learned a ridiculous amount about grammar that I had either forgotten long ago, or never learned to begin with. I thought I was a great writer and while I still agree with that, I know that now I’m a better writer because, for example, I understand where the stupid apostrophe in a possessive. For some reason I always had problems with that, but now I’ll never forget.
Keep an eye on your writing style and always work to be a better writer. I know your audience will appreciate the fact that they’re getting insight from a source that knows how to present itself, and trust comes with that. Once you have the trust of your audience, I think you can open up a whole lot of new doors that can lead to greater conversions and stronger relationships.
With every Google announcement it seems as though the entire Search Marketing world freaks out. It’s the end of the world! SEO will never be the same! Google is trying to kill our business! Well, I’ll be the first to say Google isn’t taking any food out of my kid’s mouths after rolling out Google Instant, a new feature that claims to predict your search term before you even finish typing. Well, here are some important things for SEOs to keep in mind.
- Google Instant is available only if you are logged in to your Google account. If you are not logged in or do not have a Google account, then Google Instant doesn’t exist for you.
- Google Instant is really nothing more than an add-on to the already-in-use Google Suggest feature which aims to finish your search term, but with the added feature of a dynamically updated SERP below.
- This is a casual observation, but most people can’t type without looking at the keyboard anyway which means they won’t be paying attention to the ever-changing SERPs below anyway.
I don’t see any reason to get worked up over Google Instant. Through the testing I’ve done thus far, most of the predictions aren’t relevant to my search which means I end up completing the term anyway. That means there’s no difference for me at all. That said, I can envision a world where web surfers are made more aware of a better-defined search term through the already-present Google Suggest feature, but the real-time SERP isn’t something that is going to impact SEO negatively in any way.
Everyone can breathe again!
During my Sunday morning Stumble, I came across this excellent piece that showcases a variety of different logos from companies all over the world. The idea of hidden meanings (a message in a message) is something I’ve always enjoyed. It may definitely help to satisfy or comfort consumers subliminally, or that kind of thought may be lost completely. In either event, they’re a lot of fun to look at! Check out 23 Brilliant Logos With Hidden Messages. Which one is your favorite and why?
The Internet is understandably bogged down with a wide variety of failed ventures. While web hosts and domain registrars have made the process of website creation extremely simple over the years, little has been done to teach webmasters how to transform their domains into places that web surfers want to visit. For any website, the prospect of creating a successful presence depends not only on an attractive product or theme, but also on a solid internet marketing strategy. No matter the niche, a successful website will be intellectually satisfying, visually appealing, highly usable, and easy to find.
An intellectually stimulating website contains high-quality original content that is relevant to the subject matter at hand and presented to appeal to a specific targeted slice of the web. If a website purports to be about fitness and health, its’ visitors will have little interest in reading about the latest-and-greatest in smart phone technology. As difficult as the gap may seem to bridge, visitors are more likely to find these scenario’s more often than websites that have well written, relevant content.
An attractive color scheme can set the mood for a web surfer and may be the difference between a quick stop-and-bounce or an extended stay. A fan page dedicated to the Green Bay Packers would do well to execute a green and gold color scheme as opposed to the wretched Vikings purple because its’ visitors will most likely be Packers fans. Webmasters who succeed in setting the mood for their visitors will do so because they think logically about important factors like content and color, and pay attention to what their visitors are looking for.
Quality content and colors that complement content are important, but these components of a successful website are worthless if visitors cannot use your website. The greatest products in the world will never make a dime if visitors cannot adequately navigate the menu to purchase them. Images and text should always be presented in a way to funnel visitors into taking a certain action such as purchasing a product, subscribing to a newsletter or making a comment. All too often, however, users have difficulty locating the proper places to act. The Internet is a fickle place and if the average user cannot figure out how or where to take action, they will leave to find a website with greater usability.
Perhaps the most crucial component of a successful website is its’ marketing strategy. The most intellectually stimulating, color-appropriate and easy-to-use website on the Internet will go the way of the Dodo bird if nobody can find it, and Internet Marketing exists for the sole purpose of making sure a website can be found. Although it is possible for a single well-disciplined webmaster to make an impact with an efficient marketing plan, entire departments are created for the sole purpose of executing Internet marketing strategies. Search Engine Optimization experts tweak content for perfect keyword density, seeking to rank well in search engines like Google or Bing. Link Builders work tirelessly to acquire quality inbound links from authority websites which act as votes of content-confidence. Paid Search specialists create high-powered pay-per-click campaigns that entice web surfers to click on sponsored links that lead to perfectly manicured landing pages. Social Media guru’s create buzz for products, services or content via hubs like YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter an much more in this growing sector of the web. If executed properly, a sound strategy that makes the most out of these four aspects of Internet marketing will surely be given an opportunity to shine on the first search engine results pages on leading search engines like Google and Bing.
Anyone who seeks to create a successful website that is well-traveled and provides quality information, products or services will quickly find that the prospect entails far more than purchasing a domain and publishing a hastily written chunk of content. Listening to the attitudes, desires and emotions of the visitors a webmaster targets is a sure-fire way to create a website that will stand the test of time online.
