Want to discover the fastest way to jumpstart your
sales? |
|
Customer friendly business web design South Africa
Web design that works |
Is your Online Business Customer- Friendly?
Customer service is increasingly seen as one of the most
valuable uses for a commercial World Wide Web site. Your
Web site is available on a 24 hour, seven days a week
basis. So it is well worth exploring ways in which your
customers can virtually “serve themselves," without the
need for overtime staff, or lengthy voice mail
procedures.
JFA, Inc., an online business offering high quality and
unique gift items including automatic watch winders,
Grundig shortwave pocket radios, and nitroglycerine pill
fobs. The JFA Web site has been online since 1997, and
has doubled its income every year - it’s now a
multi-million dollar e-commerce enterprise.
A speaker and expert on customer service, highlighted
for me how the online buying experience differs from the
bricks-and-mortar model.
Buying online eliminates the physical presence and
personality of the salesperson from the process. This
makes the Web site copy critical in creating a one-to-
one relationship with the customer or prospect.
Which echoes one of my favorite mantras:
Every page of your site should be written from the
visitor’s point of view, not yours.
|
Our Services. EPNET Web design:
Internet consultancy
Website design & development
Flash design
Website search engine marketing
Search engine optimisation
Internet research
Website hosting
Domain name registration
Email services
Web design quotes
|
|
|
A visitor should be able to look
at your offerings, and immediately
answer the questions:
“Why me?”
- that is, is your Web site the
right place for me?
“Why should I care?” - does this
copy convince me that you can meet
my needs?
It’s much easier and immediate to
jump from Web site to Web site than
to move between real-world stores.
So the visitor has far more freedom
of choice online. The
challenge for customer service is
therefore very clearly to focus on
one customer, one purchase at a
time. E-customers expect great
service, with little or no direct
interaction. They will tolerate some
mistakes, but not many.
Rules for effective online
customer service:
Be accessible. Show very clearly on
your site all the ways that your
customer can contact you - including
e-mail, phone and fax numbers, and
your office hours.
And, if it’s practical for your
business, be personal - give your
visitors a real person to call who
has a name, as opposed to sales@mycompany.com
Of course, if you’re really upscale,
you can include a “Live Help” button
on your site.
Return every e-mail or phone call in
the same day, as far as reasonably
possible. This may sound simplistic,
but a recent experiment with the top
Fortune 100 companies showed that
nearly a third failed to respond to
e-mail sent through their Web site
within one month! Some of these
companies still don’t provide a
usable e-mail address on their sites
at all.
Acknowledge all orders. Send e-mail
confirmations (this can be done very
effectively with autoresponders
through your shopping cart), and if
you’re shipping actual products,
give tracking numbers and expected
delivery dates.
Provide a clear return policy, honor
it and learn from it. This may
give you more information about
what’s working and what’s not.
Expect more phone calls.
“Customers can’t read or write!” If
your Web site traffic and response
rates grow (which is, of course,
what we want), so will the volume of
phone calls, whatever your business
or industry.
Regardless of the site quality,
clear returns and privacy policies,
secure servers, etc., people still
require human interaction. All of my
clients report talking to customers
on the phone, and walking them
through the Web site, where their
questions are clearly answered.
Maybe these psychological barriers
will lessen, but right now, they are
very much there.
If you can get the customer service
aspects of your business working
well, there’ll be a definite bottom
line impact. Your business will grow substantially
through repeat business and
referrals from satisfied customers.
And in contrast, we can see the
impact of poor customer service and
fulfillment procedures in many of
the dot.coms that failed. People buy things online in the
expectation of getting something
more valuable than the actual money
they spend. |
|
|
Web design South Africaa, Web Design Johannesburg, web design Sandton - African web design company
|
|
