Business
More often than not, web hosting is something that clients have already set up when they contact me. As a result I have to work with many hosting providers and learn how to navigate their admin panel and many quirkiness.
I ran in to a very bizarre WordPress error this morning following a brand new installation on one of Blacksun‘s server. Certain area of the web admin turned up blank pages. I did a quick search on Google and thought that this error may be due to a wrong php.ini setting.
Looking at Blacksun’s website, I found the contact number to their technical support really fast, called, and was greeted by a human voice in less than 2 minutes. I explained the situation, she looked at the error files and confirmed my initial thought. Instead of putting me on hold and leaving me to talk to her manager, she simply took my contact details and told me to call back. Have you ever had technical support call you back? I wasn’t going to hold my breath.
No more than 20 minutes later, a voicemail was delivered to my phone. The error was fixed and my site is now working perfectly. That’s the best customer service I’ve encountered in a long time.
As food issues tend to become more and more newsworthy, it’s nice to see independent bloggers take it upon themselves to spread their opinion and concerns.
LocalDelicious.com is a new blog which aims to get the scoop on local food in and around the Lower Mainland. As more and more people try to eat locally produced goods, this blog aims to provide tips and advice on where to find the best markets, products, events and books.
More info about local food, recipes ideas and gardening can also be found by visiting the Edible Vancouver blog while the Earth To Table blog is a collaboration between chefs and farmers that promotes logical, sustainable, righteous, and above all, delicious food.
Not enough time to follow blogs… No worries, twitter is another great a way to get the lowdown on what’s going on in the food industry. You can follow three of these bloggers on twitter @LocalDelicious, @Edible Vancouver and @Earth_to_Table.
I was in India a few weeks ago on a yoga holiday and did not spend any time blogging, reading blogs or even thinking about it, but I did have a quick peek at a newspaper and during our stay in Delhi and Chennai, I kept my eyes open to see any signs of computer firms out-sourcing Indian expertise.
I usually get one or two unsolicited emails from companies in India advertising their services, so I thought I might see signs of this. I usually don’t pay attention to these emails other than take a look at the company’s portfolio and archive them. This trip being my first time in India, I wasn’t sure what to expect; big business parks, men in suits, laptops everywhere…? I saw numerous signs for computer classes, but no business parks or men in suits which would be dumb anyway, considering the weather. Most of the office buildings I saw were old and falling apart like the majority of Indian houses, temples and monuments, but perhaps I simply wasn’t in the right neighbourhoods or even the right cities.
During my short stay in Chennai, I read a piece in the Chennai Chronicle about how a group of twitter followers now get together on a regular basis to exchange ideas. I’ve also read and spoken to people who deal with Indian companies on a regular basis, so they must be around and India is most definitely booming and taking advantage of new technology.
I also came across a funny “businessman kit” in our Chennai hotel. I’m usually used to sewing kits and shower caps, but a businessman kit, that was new to me. On closer inspection, I discovered that it contained a couple of paper clips, three rubber bands, a safety pin and a few pins…. Not sure what kind of businessman would need this.
No matter how small or large your business is – even if you only manage yourself – defining and fanatically executing your unique and differential “customer experience” is often all it takes to get you from “survive” to “thrive”.
Learn about what it takes to build a thriving brand through building an outstanding customer experience.
Inspired by John DiJulius, the king of world class customer experience.
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A few days ago, while under the weather, Darren thought about the future of Soap Operas. This reminded me of something similar which I consider to be out of date. I’ve often wonder why charitable organizations insist on calling me at home to ask for money. Personally, I just treat these organizations the same as telemarketers. Tut, tut you say..I know, I know, but I just don’t like being disturbed at dinner time and thus refuse to donate to anyone who requests by phone.
Raising money is tough, but the Web seems to be a pretty effective means. I’m just wrapping up the most wonderful book I’ve ever read called “Three Cups of Tea“. At the end of the book, the authors lists how we can continue the work started by Greg Mortenson and how we can help. Of course spreading the word about the book and letting everyone know that they should read it is the best way, but visiting their website and the charitable organization’s website, are other ways to get further information. Additionally, by following the link on their website, all purchases of the book and all other Amazon purchases will generate 7% of proceeds to the Central Asia Institute. Kudos to Amazon!
Other organizations have made it quite easy for users to create profiles and raise money. Just a few weeks ago, a friend mentioned that he was participating in a 24 hour yoga relay to raise money for kids suffering from Aids and HIV. He simply sent an email, I clicked the link, inserted my credit card details, and now my name and contribution amount appears next to a thermometer on the charity site. Easy as pie.
My friend Karis, sent me an email just a few minutes ago telling me about the Animal Rescue not getting enough daily clicks on their website to get free food donated to rescued animals. I’m not sure logistically how this works, but simply by clicking the link, the site is able to raise money. This kind of button as been used on many charity sites.
These methods of raising money seem pretty good to me. Do we still need “telemarketers” calling us at home?
When building websites, I am given all of the website content, but more often than not, the privacy policy is not part of this document. As a result I end up looking at the current site and copying the existing text or searching the web for inspiration and writing something brief for the client.
If you are collecting any type of information from your website, such as email for a newsletter or comments on your blog, then you should have a privacy policy in place. But what do you put in there?
Continue reading »
Online customer service is not as hard as you think. It’s not quite as simple as smiling when someone enters a retail store, but you certainly can convey that your business is focused on meeting customer needs.
Websites have been around long enough that it’s easy to compare and see which ones make it easy to do business and which are causing their customers grief. Try it yourself. Go to a few sites you have never visited before and see how easy it is to locate specific information. Then go to a few of the rock star online retailers and see how they do the job.
There are a lot of rules to good online customer service. Here are a couple of my favourites.
- First stop, create a site that is easy to use. And I don’t mean easy for you or your coder. I mean it needs to be dead easy for your site visitors to use. Frankly, even if you’re the one building it, your opinion doesn’t matter nearly as much as your prospective visitors’ needs do.
- Make sure there is a way to contact your company available from the home page and every other page in the site. And don’t bury it in text at the bottom! Make it bright yellow if you have to, but make it stand out. Often this is done somewhere in the top right quadrant of the page and many site visitors look here first.
- If you’re selling online, let people know the price before they input their personal information. Would you pull out your credit card and ring through a purchase before you know the price in a bricks and mortar store? Many site visitors will opt out of the selling process if they have to provide their personal data before seeing the full price of the product, including shipping.
In a nutshell, make it easy and you’re more likely to make the sale.
I may have mentioned this before, but what I like about a website is that it can do a lot of stuff for you. For instance, you don’t actually have to talk to people in order to speak to them.
Liz from Market Navigators tells the following interesting story:
“I’ll never forget the first time it happened to me. I got a call from a woman asking about my entrepreneurs marketing program, wanting to sign up. I’m pretty good with names, but I didn’t recognize hers, so I asked how she’d found me.
Turns out someone had referred her, she checked out my website, and decided to buy. Just like that.
I didn’t have to explain, meet with her first, sell her on the value…none of that. The website did it all for me.
That was easy! Hmmm, I think I’ll give that online sales guy a raise…”
Have I ever mentioned that what I like about websites is all the stuff they can do for you?
I saw a commercial a while back where a fellow arrived at the office first thing in the morning, put a fake steaming cup of coffee on this desk and then left for the day. All day long that cup sat there steaming. Everyone who stopped by his office to speak with him assumed they had just missed him. They thought he’d be “back in a minute” meanwhile he was out having fun, enjoying the sunshine.
A website is a little like that. You don’t actually have to be there, to be there.
Following a link from Mhairi’s blog, I discovered Freewebs and thought I would give it a go. Freewebs is a service similar to what Geocities used to be like before they were purchased by Yahoo (they now charge a fee for their web building services). Freewebs allows you to build your own site using one of their templates for Free.
I normally wouldn’t encourage anyone to use a tool like this for setting up a company website, but if money is indeed tight or if you just want to have a website to display images of your toy collection, then why not?
Signing up to Freebwebs was simple and easy. I managed to sign up, create a 2 page website (including writing the terrible fake copy), insert and resize an image in just 30 minutes. The result is not great, but I’ve seen designs built in Frontpage which are way worse.
Their templates left me a bit uninspired and although their site mentions that they have over 300, most of them are identical, except for the different banner image and colour scheme. Once my template was selected, their interface was easy to follow and I simply started typing away. I added another page and inserted an image. I even added a really naff butterfly effect to my second page. I’m not sure why anyone would want this, but with just the click of a button, butterflies were fluttering on my webpage.
Overall I think that Freewebs is great. Their interface was easy to use and with a bit more time and effort, I think that you could create a decent website. I would certainly encourage anyone to try Freewebs first before signing up with Geocities or other companies who charge a monthly fee for the same thing.