Administrative Interface and tools
Setting up a password protected administrative interface is essential as this allows you to manage and administrate your website as well as the data in your web application. The best way to manage the textual content is through the use of a Content Management System, which is discussed later on in this section. Some of the features of a good administrative interface are:
View changes in the Website
This feature would enable you to view your website after you make changes to it, without having to leave the interface. In some cases, you are required to log in to your administrative section to make changes and then log out to save and view the changes reflected in your website. This should be avoided. The administrative interface should be such that you can preview changes from the interface itself.
Manage orders
The administrative interface to your web application should have a feature that allows you to retrieve, manage and process customer orders securely. Your application could either just provide you a list of the current orders with relevant details or you could build functionality to process orders online and also perform analysis of orders received such that it can provide valuable insights to your business. If your customers have ordered products that get delivered after some time, you may even like to provide your customers the facility to view their order status and track the delivery schedule.
Manage customer database
Access to the customer database should be provided from the administrative interface. You should be able to manage your email lists as well. Editing and managing customer profiles and accounts is a vital function that will be required in membership websites. You should be able to add, edit and delete customer accounts, manage and maintain customer records and billing statements. You can also have provisions to temporarily disable customer access for specific customers and open up the access again. If you are managing a subscription site with extensive customer activities and transactions/billing, you may need to view details of customer accounts and track their usage status. This may also be required as part of your customer support and help desk services, if they have questions related to their account. You may have set up your site such that when a member signs up for a subscription, there is an approval stage. The interface should prompt you for each new sign up and should facilitate you to process the request and grant approval (or denial) expeditiously. Auto responders would also be required as an interim message from your side. Your site has also to store customer’s user names and passwords. The passwords may either be selected by your customer or your site may have an auto-generated password at the time of accepting a sign up. Generally, auto-generation of password facilitates a sort of authentication and verificati on that your customer is indeed genuine user of the email address provided. In case of paid websites, this may not really be necessary. In any case, your site must provide a facility to your members to change their password and for providing them information about their username and password if they forget their password. All these functionalities should be built in within your customer database management module.
Change your administration password
This is where you can change the administrator password to improve the security of your web site. Other details can also be updated.
Back-up files
The administrative interface should also have in built features to allow you to back up important files pertaining to your customers and products. You must plan for service interruptions and business continuity as appropriate for your size of business and criticality. Efficient and disciplined data back up and restore facility must be part of the administrative system of your website application. You may also need a facility to purge data from your database after a specific time interval, otherwise your database will just grow and may become unmanageable. You should notify your customers if some of the data they have stored on your site is going to be purged at a specific time interval, allowing them to copy it to their system if they wish to.
User management - customization and restricted website area websites are great tools for one-on-one marketing and customizing information flow per user. Your website should allow users to identify themselves to the site, and help them personalize their online experience.
Once logged in, users should get their very own home page, which summarizes all the information that is important to them. They can customize the page by setting up their profile, and by adding important information and categories from the site to their home page. Whenever there is a change in content of their interest, they can be notified by email. They can also set a list of new information or product categories to watch. They can store a hot button or quick access link on their home page and thus quickly access the content or section that they generally access.
Your website should be such that it allows easy administration and flexible policies to be created for large volumes of content. Visitors can be restricted to certain parts of the site. The website itself should have the ability to set up restricted-access zones, using a security system. This allows the administrator to restrict users to a particular zone just by placing one restriction at the top page of the hierarchy. All other pages inside that page are automatically protected. This means that you can easily create a restricted access or members-only area on your website that only a selected set of users can access.
Content Management System
A content management system is the tool that allows you to easily and quickly update content on your website. A content management solution gives you complete control of your own content. With the use of e-commerce and email functionality included, you can administer all content through an easy-to-use web-based interface. Updating content is simply a case of making changes, and submitting them with the click of a button.
What is Content Management?
The Content Management System is a password-protected administration system that allows you to update and add content to your website instantly. If you are an information- based website you can add news, articles and pictures. If your site is selling products and services you can add new products or edit the pricing or description of existing products. It also allows content archiving and purging, which is vital for back up purposes.
Content Management systems allow you to set up different users such as administrator, publisher, editor, and author. The author would be responsible for writing new content, which can be sent to the editor or the manager for approval and editing. Once edited, this content is sent to the publisher who again approves the content and publishes it directly on the website.
Apart from these you can completely manage and maintain your customer records and information. You should always select Content Management solutions that are customized to your website requirements. This would allow many options to be included or added at any time to your website management needs. For instance, if you require comprehensive traffic statistics or if you are looking to send out email campaigns these options can be added without affecting your workflow and with no downtime to your website.
If you are looking to evaluate Content Management Systems that are available in the market, you must select one that matches well on the feature list that you need. Do not select software that caters to multiple authors and multiple stages of approval, if that is not the process applicable to you. You may choose to use commonly available systems such as Microsoft’s Front page to manage your site design as well as content or you may choose systems that have a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor and allows persons who do not know HTML programming to update content on your site.
Other features that you could look for in a Content Management System are:
• Comprehensive Administration Interface - This administrative interface would allow you to handle much of the site maintenance, thus minimizing ongoing expenses for the website. Using this interface, you can add, modify and remove categories, indexes, subcategories, manufacturers, products and customers.
• Collaborative authoring of content and content building and provisioning - Several authors can contribute to your site content and their material can be written directly using this system so that it can be logically positioned in folders that reflect the site map. Another benefit is that consistency of format can be ensured through this use.
• Processing workflow – You can set an editing and approval workflow, if you have multiple content contributors and editors. A good system can provide you meta data to keep track of each piece of content as to which system user has authored it and which user has edited it and when. It can also provide the facility of version management and roll-back in case you wish to revert to an earlier version while editing a piece of content
• Separation of content from the graphics interface or template – This feature allows you to make changes in content without any change in the graphic look and feel of the page and the navigation and menu bars. A person can quickly update the content without making any changes to the “design” elements on the page. Moreover a good system also allows you to change the template for an entire section or even the entire website just by a single change rather than going to each page of your website and making the changes on each page. This is achieved by storing the content (text) in a database and associating each content piece with a pre-defined template.
• The use of a simple editor facilitates making changes by using a normal word processor type of features – no need for knowing HTML tags and doing a lot of precision cut paste directly on the code.
• Automating the publishing after all approvals and previews have been completed, without the need of performing FTP to the web server. This quickens the update process. You can, of course, set the schedule such that a specific change will take effect on the site at a pre-determined time.
The importance of the Content Management System is greater in content and information sites, particularly paid sites. The need for providing fresh and frequently changed content is vital and you need software that makes this process smoother and fully controlled by you rather than by your webmaster.
Email Auto-responders and reminders
The auto-responder is a program that automatically sends a reply with a pre-designed response to any email address that sends email to you. It is also often called infobot, autobot, auto-mailer, or responder. Auto-responders are great for confirmation messages, much like your answering machine on the telephone. .
The auto-responder allows you to capture the email addresses of your visitors; so you can build your own opt-in targeted mailing list. The auto-responder will automatically extract the prospects name and use this information in your follow-up messages. With this marketing tool you can send personalized follow-up messages. If you personalize an email message, your prospect is twice as likely to buy from you.
You can sell your products 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with the help of an auto- responder. You can send your sales letter as a part of any automated response to anyone, anywhere in a matter of seconds with no work on your part.
Following up with your prospects could mean a 50% increase in your sales. Your potential customers may simply forget about your initial message or they simply may have a bad day; for that reason, it is important to follow up with your prospects at preset time intervals after sending your initial message. This is achieved with auto-responders and reminders. A reminder informs your customers about new products or leads them to new content that the customer might be interested in. You can configure your auto responders with business rules to select from incoming mails or your address book, choose appropriate messages based on specific conditions or filters, and also set the time interval when such reminders have to be sent.
Auto-responders should be personalized and designed in such a way that they include the following information:
• They introduce your business to the prospective customer
• List out special offers for members
• List out benefits of joining your website
• Compare your product or service with your competitors
• Give testimonials of existing customers
• Welcome letters for new members
• Thank you messages for new orders
• Order confirmation
• Acknowledgement of a query or a receipt of payment from your customer
• A reminder when their subscription or free access period is about to expire.
Customer billing and statement
Your customers should be given complete access to customer billing records and statements on the website and through emails. Ideally a statement should be sent every month and after every order placed. A customer should be able to access the customer billing area. This should give a detailed view of his/her payment options and detailed history of all transactions made.
The customer bill should include a bill number, payment amount, name of product or service, or if it is just a membership bill – membership status and type of membership, payment mode and other details. Information on how to contact a customer representative in case of discrepancy should also be provided.
You may have different levels of membership available at your site and your members may switch their category and graduate to a higher level of membership mid-way through a subscription period. Your application should provide them appropriate set off of the subscription amount for the unexpired period and use this as set off against the new payment. If you charge members for specific usage or download, then customers would like to see the details of the charges in the form a billing statement. You can either use appropriate packaged software for such customer billing and account management, or you may need some custom development to achieve efficient management.
Customer Service
In order to develop a good relationship with your customers, you must provide them with quality customer service. Let them know that, should they have any questions or problems, they are free to contact you. Provide them with all of your contact information to make the process simple. Even if you can't personally assist them, make sure that you have a good customer support group ready to help. Reply to their support requests as quickly as possible and assist them until the problem is resolved.
Customer service is one of the most important factors in determining your customer's satisfaction. Even if you have a great product or service, if your customer support isn't good, your sales will suffer. Good customer service is perhaps the most important way to build your credibility with the customer. When you are doing your entire business online,
building trust and credibility is the most important factor. Prompt customer service can make the difference.
For every dissatisfied customer, you can expect to lose one hundred new customers. Why? When one customer has a bad experience with your company, you can be certain that they'll tell everyone they know about their bad experience. It will travel through the grapevine and ultimately cost you sales.
Follow-up with your customers and ask them how they like your product or if they have any questions. This is a great way to not only provide good customer service, but to also obtain feedback about your product. By listening to your customers, you will know exactly what they want, what they're having problems with and how you can develop a better product.
By following up with your customers and providing great customer service, you are creating a life-long relationship. Satisfied customers are more apt to purchase your new products in the future. Treat them with the utmost respect and go above and beyond the expected.
Your customer and support service should include:
• A 24 hour toll free number
• Email support that is quick and efficient
• Online chat support
Provide an FAQ
Before the clients purchase anything from you they will probably ask a few questions regarding any concerns they have about your product(s) and/or service(s).
During the first few weeks of business you will experience similar questions constantly resurfacing. You would be fairly well advised to put this regularly asked for information on your website to reduce your administrative workload. Your interested parties will be happy to get the answers to their questions answered immediately; and you didn't even need to lift a finger.
Providing a detailed FAQ (frequently asked questions) page on your site is the first level or Tier-1 support that you are providing to your customer. Have a detailed FAQ page that tries to offer clear explanation of your policies and rules, how the site works and what are the most common problems that customers may face and how they should tackle them. An online help document that provides what is known as context sensitive help (help relevant to the action being taken by the user) provided either through an indexed help document or through friendly pop-ups or blurbs/tool-tips at the right instance can be particularly helpful. Besides, these will really reduce the need for your costly support time.
Cluster and mirror servers
If you have members spread over vast geographic areas, for example you have customers in Asia, Europe and the Americas and if you have large number of members who undertake frequent downloads from your site or interact frequently with your site, you may have to start thinking of mirror sites (servers) and databases. A mirror site is a replica of your site, hosted on a separate web server with synchronous connection between the two. Some of these servers can be located at data centers nearer to your different customer bases. Thus when a person is interacting with your website, he/she can be redirected to the appropriate mirror site. This distributes visitor load increasing efficiency and providing a superior customer experience.
Clustering is required when the transactions with your website are critical and your site has to be on its toes all the time. Clustering provides you with redundant web server and database server, such that one functions as a back up if the other one fails. It also helps you to distribute your server load between two machines.
Depending on the traffic to your site, time sensitivity and wide geographic reach, clustering may or may not be required.
Bulletin boards
Adding a professional looking easy to use web based bulletin board to your site is simple. Web boards allow you to create your own discussion groups, interact with your customers, friends, or associates. Adding a bulletin board to your site is inexpensive.
What is a bulletin board?
A bulletin board is an online discussion forum where your customers, friends, or associates can ask questions and post answers, have a discussion, etc. It is an excellent asynchronous method to build interactivity into your offering.
Why would you want one?
A bulletin board would allow you to have a support forum where customers can assist each other with the use of your product, or, if your site is focused on something like music, visitors could discuss their favorite artist or song. Having a bulletin board can make your site more useful to customers or just every day web surfers.
Bulletin board enhances interaction. It can also be a good way to promote word-of-mouth publicity. If a customer likes your product or service, he/she is very likely to spread the word. A bulletin board is also a great way to allow your customers to keep coming to your site
Where can you get one?
Many websites such as download.com offer inexpensive and multi-featured bulletin boards. These are not too big in size and can be downloaded and installed on your website easily.
How much do they cost?
Some basic bulletin boards are available for free. Others with higher functionality range anywhere between $20 to $100 or even higher.
Automated recharge facility for recurring membership accounts
An automated recharge facility can be useful for paid membership websites. This facility automatically recharges a customer account at the end of a membership term. For instance, if a member opts for a one-month membership, with his consent, his account should be automatically recharged for another month at the end of the term.
You should make sure that while the member signs up, he is given the option of automatically recharging his account. The terms and conditions for automatic recharge should be clearly mentioned.
Instructions on how to cancel automatic recharge should also be provided. To encourage your customer to recharge his/her account, you should offer a discounted membership rate. This would increase the possibility of retaining your old customers.
Website management and maintenance
There are paid websites emerging online everyday to the tune of many hundreds. Some survive, some don't. Of these new businesses, many are one-person bands. Some are partnerships as well as a handful of others have formed a company with the view to operating 100% online.
The part which makes or breaks a business like this is the website management and maintenance. Don't assume that once the site is online, your work is completed. If people are to return to the site, it will need to have fresh content in order to make the site
"sticky". Since this is the most important part of your online business it is very important to be able to keep the administrative tasks to a minimum.
A well maintained and updated website is very important to attract customers. An attractive and user-friendly site makes the visitor interested. But if the site contains out- dated information or links that do not work, customers are unlikely to inquire for your products or service. For this reason, testing, as discussed in the earlier section should be an intrinsic part of your maintenance process. You should frequently test your site for any inconsistency. Also make sure that your website is up and running at all times.
Make sure your payment systems are intact and that your customers do not have any problems while enrolling with your website. Here are some other tips for maintaining your website.
Protect yourself from “Spam”
It's such a drag having to delete all the crap email messages that first of all you never requested; and secondly that are so ridiculously untargeted that the sender obviously has absolutely no idea what he's doing. To these people it's quantity not quality that's important.
One of the great additions to the modern day respectable email program is that of filters. Instead of sifting through unwanted emails that have been bulk emailed to you, you may choose to have your email program trash everything that comes to your email box without your email address in the "to" field.
Grooming mail lists
Professionalism means as much today as it ever did. How many times have you got the same follow up letter from the same company repeatedly? Even if the company has a great product, this can be very off-putting. The task of grooming your mail list is boring but necessary.
The task of removing duplicating entries by hand should be avoided. It is a function that can best be done electronically. It is too tedious to pass on to another person to do. It's quite likely that many will be missed. Make sure that:
1) New members have been added to your list
2) Un-subscribers have been removed from your mail list
3) All requests are automatically deleted from the server when completed.
It saves embarrassment, increases professionalism; and in the long run will assist you in becoming more successful.
Automate all of the above
The ultimate in automation is when all automated functions can be pre-programmed to be carried out at regular intervals with an in-built scheduler. You can go on holidays and have everything carried out for you in your absence as if you were sitting at your terminal for the duration.
Some other tips
Put your website address on all of your advertising materials, including business cards, stationery, and print ads.
Put your website address on your car. This is one of the most cost effective ways to promote your business offline. Think of how many places your car goes in a day or a week.
Give out your business cards every day. Some people even put their cards in all the envelopes where they pay their bills. You can also get creative and create different business cards for different occasions.
The large amount of money spent in offline advertising is not wasted. Among Internet users, offline advertising appears to generate traffic to the site, both for people who have never visited the site as for those who did already surf to the site. The impact of offline advertising is particularly important to attract new groups of surfers to your site, e.g. young people, women, surfers with less internet experience and people with non-degree level education. Users admit offline advertising is an important source of information to enable them to discover new sites.
Events
A good marketing campaign keeps its client - your company - in the news. That means your plan must consistently create or exploit events that make news. Contests and Giveaways discussed earlier are major attention getters. Here are some other "newsworthy" suggestions.
Create New and Unique Content
Depending on your site, you might be able to develop and post new content that will make news. News-making content includes new research findings, unbiased wide-scale comparisons of products or services, or a new presentation style that shows the creative use of interactive technologies.
Launch or Re-launch a New Site
If you're planning a redesign of all or part of your site, you can publicize this -- particularly if your new design includes a major technology innovation, if you've used a high-tone designer, or if you've reorganized your content in a new and noteworthy way.
Make Announcements
Send a press release to your media contacts whenever you hire a new manager, form a new strategic alliance, contract a new vendor, or land a large, new client.
Plan Events
You can leverage your online marketing with offline events, such as speeches, conferences, seminars, and sponsored events particular to your industry. Co-sponsoring events with charities almost always guarantees good publicity
Webcasts
Webcasts are proven to provide some of the best Return on Investment (ROI) in generating new prospects as well as qualifying existing prospects. Webcasts are a popular medium for communicating the features and benefits of a product, service or specific technology. Attendees find value in the educational benefits of webcasts as well as the efficiency of participating in this type of event. It's not necessary to invest a lot of time and money as it is with an offline event.
Primary Benefits of Hosting a Webcast:
• A Webcast provides you with the ability to poll the audience for all the important qualify questions. Attendees are likely to respond to these questions in a webcast environment.
• Every action of every attendee can be recorded to help you qualify the audience.
• Interactive features of webcasts include audience polling, private and public chats, create banners and chat messages on the fly to communicate to the entire audience, push the audience to any URL on the Internet i.e. your website.
• Educate a large group of interested prospects at once about your products.
Audience Acquisition
You can promote the webcast to people that have already shown interest in your products from previous conversion i.e. white paper requests, contact requests, newsletter signups, or existing customers to educate them on your latest products. Webcasts prove to be well attended by other employees on a project team of your prospects who may not necessarily be included on all of your sales calls.
Webcast Registration
Make it easy for people to register by providing a form on your site or even in an HTML email invitation. Confirm their registration with instructions for any pre-webcast tests or plug-ins they should perform. There's nothing worse than signing up for a webcast and not being able to connect on the day of the event.
Webcast Reminders
Remind registrants to perform any necessary tests in your confirmation email and any subsequent reminder emails. Remind registrants the day before or early on the day of the event.
Sending a “Stick” letter to your customers
A “Stick” letter is sent to each of your customers as soon as he/she subscribes to your website membership or buys a product or service from your website. The “Stick” letter as the name suggests ensures that your customer sticks to the membership or product/service.
An effective stick letter can do wonders in retaining your customers. A stick letter first of all welcomes a new subscriber and thanks him/her for showing faith in your service. The letter should be personalized and warm. It should flatter the customer for making such a wise purchase decision.
Many times doubt might creep into a customer’s mind and he/she may have second thoughts pertaining to your product or service. An effective stick letter would eliminate such doubts by highlighting unique features of your product.
An effective stick letter is one which
• Is personal and engaging
• Thanks your customer for subscribing
• Reminds him/her of the benefits of subscribing
• Makes him/her comfortable and confident of his decision to subscribe
Just like every other sales person, subscription website owners need a good stick letter to remind their patrons and subscribers why they made a great purchase decision.
Referral and Customer Appreciation Programs
Long before online sales and online sales leads became a reality, there were techniques and tactics used to sell just about anything. Successful businesses use these techniques to generate revenue and gain a competitive advantage. Unfortunately, whenever a new communication medium or technology becomes available, we tend to rely too heavily on the efficiencies and functionality of the tool and lose focus on the purpose it was created to serve.
Customer Appreciation Programs may have worked for your company in the past and there is no reason why these cannot be implemented successfully online.
If you rely on customer referrals and repeat customers, you've probably tried or currently have some sort of referral program in place. The Internet provides the perfect environment for facilitating and measuring the effectiveness of such programs. Look for ways to encourage online referrals and reward repeat customers. Let them know their opinion counts with easy to use feedback mechanisms. You can also conduct customer surveys, polls, and use other interactive ways to generate online sales leads. Ask customers to provide testimonials and show them on your site.
Feedback and Monitoring
It's not enough to simply create and optimize your web site and hope for high traffic and a load of customers. You need to use tracking techniques to realign your strategy and improve success rates. Your Web site's conversion rate is a measure of your ability to persuade your visitors to take the action you want them to take. Tracking the number of visitors to your website and the sales made against this number is thus, vital. The final section of this guide deals with one of the most underrated aspects of a successful paid subscription website – Tracking and monitoring progress.
Tracking performance and growth
Understanding what your visitors do on your site is crucial information, not to mention interesting. If your visitors proceed to purchase a product but then a large majority leave the site when they get to a specific page in the order process then you need to know about it. It could be that this page is confusing or hard to use. Fixing it could increase your sales by 200%. This is just an example; there are many reasons why you want a detailed analysis of your site visitors.
Most website hosting services offer a stats package that you can study. If you're not sure where this is, call up your hosting service and ask them. Statistics are a vital part of tracking your marketing progress. If you don't have access to website statistics get a package that can help you in this area. Do not get a counter that just shows how many
visitors you've had. You'll be missing out on vital information that can help strengthen weaknesses in your site.
A good website hosting service would offer traffic logs that provide an invaluable insight into the traffic being referred to a web site from various sources such as search engines, directories and other links.
Unfortunately traffic tracking provided by web hosting services is often in the form of raw traffic log files or other difficult to understand cryptic formats. These log files are basically text files that describe actions on the site. It is literally impossible to use the raw log files to understand what your visitors are doing. If you do not have the patience to go through these huge traffic logs, opting for a traffic-logging package would be a good idea.
Basically two options are available to you and these are: using a log analysis package or subscribing to a remotely hosted traffic logging service. A remotely hosted traffic logging service may be easy to use and is generally the cheaper option of the two. WebTrends Live and HitsLink are two good, remotely hosted, traffic-monitoring services worth considering. However, WebTrends Live is a more complicated system and is suitable for larger ecommerce websites. “SuperStats” is another recommended traffic logging service.
These services do not use your log files. Typically a small section of code is placed on any page you want to track. When the page is viewed, information is stored on the remote server and available in real time to view in charts and tables form.
Log analysis packages are typically expensive to buy and complex to set up. Apart from commercial packages there are also some free log analysis packages available, such as Analog.
A good traffic logging service would provide statistics pertaining to the following:
• How many people visit your site?
• Where are they from?
• How are visitors finding your site?
• What traffic is coming from search engines, links from other sites, and other sources?
• What keyword search phrases are they using to find your site?
• What pages are frequented the most - what information are visitors most interested in?
• How do visitors navigate within your web site?
Knowing the answers to these and other fundamental questions is essential for making informed decisions that maximize the return on investment (ROI) of your web site investment.
The most important aspect of tracking visitors to your website is analyzing all the statistics you get from your tracking software. The three main statistics that will show your overall progress are hits, visitors and page views. Hits are tracked when any picture or page loads from your server on to a visitor’s browser. Hits, however, can be very misleading. It is quite an irrelevant statistic for your website.
The statistic that is probably the most important for a website is Page Views/Visitors. This gives you a good indication of two things. First, how many people are coming to your site, and secondly how long are they staying on your site. If you have 250 visitors and 300 page views you can figure that most visitors view one page on your site and then leave. Generally, if you're not getting 2 page views per visitor then you should consider upgrading your site's content so your visitors will stay around longer.
If you see the number of visitors you have increasing as well as the number of page views per visitor increasing then keep up the good work! Always look for this stat as an overall barometer of how your site design is going and if your marketing campaigns are taking hold.
Also, a good stat to look for is unique visitors. Once a person visits your site they will not be added to the unique visitors’ category if they visit again. This is a good way to track new visitors to your website.
Page views are a good indication of how "sticky" your website is. A good statistic to keep is Page Views divided by the number of Visitors you have. This statistic will give you a good idea if your content is interesting and if your visitors are staying on your site for a long time and surfing.
Some people are intimidated by web traffic statistics (mostly because of the sheer volume of data available), but they shouldn't be. While there are many highly specialized statistics that can be used for more in-depth web traffic analysis, the above areas alone can provide invaluable information on your visitors and your website performance. Remember- this data is available for a reason. It's up to you to use it.
Tracking your sales
Like any business, it is absolutely vital to track and maintain your sales records. You should know every month your income and expenditure. This would give you a good idea of which products are in demand and which ones are not.
There are many ways to keep track of your sales. Using orthodox methods such as keeping a paper journal is time consuming. Simple spreadsheet programs as well as basic accounting software are available at no or minimum costs. However, it is advisable to install advanced accounting software such as QuickBooks, Quicken, or Microsoft Money.
Such advanced programs save you time by sorting your register transactions by date, transaction amount, document number (e.g. check number), order entered, or cleared status. The tracking feature included in such software tracks, by user, changes made to
each transaction. Daily, weekly, monthly as well as yearly sales reports can be generated with a few clicks. These reports help you analyze the sales of each and every product. Logs and reports can be generated to keep track of all your customers.
Receiving Customer Feedback
The most important person visiting your website is not your mother or your best friend, so why rely on their opinions when designing a website? Your "customer" must be able to tell you what they think. Their comments, questions and suggestions can help you make your website the most useful, but only if they send such feedback.
There are people out there who will give you their opinion without any kind of prompting. They'll click around your website and then look for a "feedback", "contact us" or "about us" link to tell you a link is broken or ask how to become a client. Make it easy for them by offering the following information on your website:
1. Your email address
2. Your phone number (preferably toll-free)
In addition, consider adding one or more of these:
• A feedback form
• An instant message link
• A bulletin board
• A guestbook
What do you do if your visitors do not respond? Only a very small fraction of the people visiting your website will bother to contact you about a broken link or to tell you they loved your website.
One option to encourage a higher degree of feedback is by offering a short survey (preferably right on your home page). Even better, offer them a freebie (a newsletter or a special report) as a token of your appreciation.
The bottom line is that customer feedback is extremely valuable. You need to know what your customers think of your website and your products or services. Customer feedback can help you improve the usability of your website and your products, giving you a competitive advantage. Keeping in touch is worth the price, so set up a customer feedback system today.
Visitor and customer registration
It is common on most sites and portals to see a Visitor registration form. However, some incentive is surely needed to prompt a visitor to register and provide you their profile and e-mail address. You could offer some interesting information, free, through download. Visitors may be prompted to register before they can avail this freebie. You could also have a weekly (or monthly) newsletter or ezine with interesting content and could ask visitors to sign up to subscribe to this free service where you could e mail them the newsletter or ezine. This is an opt-in list of prospects, which is extremely valuable. These are the persons who are interested in the type of information or service you offer and you have a chance of converting some of them to your paying customers or members. Make sure that you provide clear guidelines of your privacy policy when you ask visitors to register and always allow them to opt out at any stage. Your prospective buyers will value these features and it will promote the sense of trust and transparency.
The information that you receive from the registration form can be analyzed to study the profile of your visitors, their preferences. Their sign-in and sign-out patterns also tell you a lot about what is attractive to them and what is not.
If you have a password allocated to these visitors and you prompt them to use the password each time they enter a specific section of your website, your application can record the session information of each unique visitor and this can provide you valuable insights into their behavior.
An advantage with membership websites is that your customers are identified through their login details and thus you can track each visit of your customer. If you are offering them information or valuable content on the site, you can set your analysis to check what content or section has been most sought after, and which one was the least visited. If you are offering documents for download, you can similarly track number of downloads for each document.
Your strategy is not just in collecting this valuable information, but also in learning from it and re-aligning your strategy in accordance with it.
Fine tune your website
Your work is only half done when you create a very effective website and achieve higher sales and traffic. To hold a comparative advantage over your competitors, it is essential that you keep fine tuning your website according the needs and demands of your customers.
All the above mentioned tracking and feedback features would help you in laying out a clear strategy to maintain your profits and in time, even scale up your website. Tracking and feedback would help you understand better whether your website is appealing to all markets and whether your content sells your story effectively and engages your customers.
The key is to constantly update your marketing and promotion strategies. It is always a good time to take stock of what's working for you, and what needs some attention.
Building credibility and maintaining it
Finally, make sure that you build trust and credibility for your business. Credibility is a key ingredient for any successful business venture. Building and enhancing the credibility of the products and services you offer is an ongoing and full-time effort.
Why not make sure the web site you use works as hard as you do to establish credibility? Let's look at elements that can be built into a well-designed web site to enhance credibility in the eyes of your potential customers.
Offer a Guarantee
Nothing beats a solid, believable guarantee for building credibility online. It may be hard to believe but buying via the Internet is still unfamiliar, and uncomfortable, territory for the majority of people. It is up to you, the business owner, to put their minds at ease. One way to do this would be to offer an unconditional, 100% money back guarantee. By assuming all of the risk, you will earn instant credibility points with most potential customers.
Provide Contact Information
Even the best guarantee won't help establish credibility if the potential customer cannot contact you. Post accurate contact information on your web site and make it easy to find. Provide as many methods of contact as possible; do not simply post a link to an email address. For maximum credibility, post the complete mailing address, phone number (preferably a toll free number), and email addresses for customers to use if they feel the need to contact you.
Use Testimonials
Testimonials are the Internet equivalent of word of mouth advertising. They can be very effective tools for building credibility provided they are believable. To get quality testimonials, ask your past customers for their opinion. Obtain their permission to use their words and names as part of your advertising. Avoid celebrity endorsements; most people assume these are paid endorsements.
Provide a Brief Bio
Familiarity is one of the most effective tools for building credibility on the Internet. How do you establish familiarity in a faceless, impersonal medium like the Internet? Simple, tell people about yourself. Post a page that provides a thumbnail sketch that describes who you are. Be sure to include personal data as well as professional credentials. Place your photo on the page so people can put a face with your name. Creating familiarity will impart another level of credibility for you and, by extension, for the product you represent.
Emphasize Transaction Security
Nearly everyone recognizes the need to conduct secure exchanges of information via the Internet. Emphasize the fact that transactions from your web site are secure. Place statements to this effect prominently in any location where personal information is requested. Letting your customers know that you recognize their security concerns will add credibility to your site.
Privacy Policies
Most reputable web businesses have established privacy policies to protect the information provided by their customers. Make certain your customers can access and read your privacy policy by placing links near any location where personal information is requested. Be sure the policy clearly spells out if the customer’s information will be shared with any other businesses. To maintain the credibility it is necessary to deliver on the assurances each element provides. Be sure to update policies and contact information regularly. Follow through on all guarantees promptly and cheerfully. Review the security procedures on a regular basis to be certain they are still adequate for the task.
With proper implementation and due diligence, each of these elements will establish and add to your online credibility.
Keep your site innovative and fresh
It is important for you to keep bringing back your customers and your prospects to your site, again and again. If they find nothing new every time they visit, well, they will just stop coming, If you are running a periodic subscription site, you must realize that it is not enough to have customers sign up once – you want them to continue their membership. Membership renewal is a strong signal that your site is delivering value. Dropouts, on the other hand, are telling you that you are not doing such a good job.
Introduce new and innovative features in your site from time to time. You may run a new survey and provide the findings on your site. You may run a contest or special scheme. You could organize web casts presented by specialists or vendors. You could even organize face-to-face events – professional or leisure – to promote a community feeling in your members. Providing news summaries or vendor evaluation reports or articles on new developments in your field is a very effective way of keeping your website fresh and pulling visitors to it again and again.
You may also consider repurposing your web content to suit the changing tastes and preferences of your target market. Move with the time. You have to be on your toes in the content or membership business. Its not a business area, where you can sit back and relax after you have launched a great product. Always take a long-term view of your business and build up on your success, step-by-step. ‘Making a quick buck’ is good for junk sales copy and that is where it remains.
Scaling up
If you are keeping your site innovative and fresh and are enhancing its value, your custom will grow. When you see that the number of customers is growing, its time to bring out your stage II business plan. May be you had begun with a single subscription level for members, where all members were treated alike and had the same privileges. If your membership has become sizeable, consider offering levels of membership – a Premium or Platinum membership where the customers pay something more and get access to more valuable content or privileges. You could offer them discounts to certain books, training sessions, and events or organize their networking with peers or other business owners. You could offer them special one-on-one training or guidance sessions.
Finally, when you notice that traffic to your site has increased beyond a certain level, it is time to think of scaling up in more senses than one. You may need to arrange for more web space or move to a better hosting environment. You may have to upgrade your web application to maintain or improve performance. You may also need to upgrade your back up and restore facilities. You are lucky that you have to handle growth pangs!
Recommended membership and subscription site resources
VisionGate - provides the best solution for operating a profitable, feature-packed member site without spending thousands, hiring programmers or taking weeks to launch.
|
