Don’t Advertise Your Email Address

23 Feb 2010 07:42

To avoid losing potential customers, consider NOT advertising your email address. Why would I advise that? Because most small business owners are too busy to answer their email quickly.

The longer an email goes unanswered, the greater the chance that your prospect will form an UNFAVORABLE opinion of your business.

Has This Happened to You?

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a moment. You visit a web site and get excited because the site makes it clear (especially if I designed it!) that they have exactly what you are looking for. You have a question, though, so you send an email on a Monday morning and wait with anticipation for a reply…

4 hours later, there’s nothing in your inbox. At 5 PM, you check again, just in case…nothing. You check before bedtime, on the chance the business owner works crazy hours…nothing…

You wake up Tuesday morning and check again…nothing…and your irritation begins to build. You check again that night…nothing…more irritated.

You check again on Wednesday and Thursday…nothing and nothing. You think to yourself, “What’s wrong with these people!”

Finally, an answer arrives on Friday, but you had already moved on to a competitor. You called a similar business on Thursday afternoon (their website didn’t offer an email option), got your answer and made a purchase.

The sad fact is, the scenario I just described happens all the time! When I made a commitment with my lingerie business to answer emails within 1 business hour, customers were shocked (they told me so) at the speed of my replies and they rewarded me by making a purchase and becoming a loyal customer.

Let Your Customers Know When to Expect a Reply

Unless you’re ready to commit to checking AND replying to your emails a minimum of once a day (preferably every few hours), either don’t advertise your email address OR let your customers know when they can expect a reply (and put this information next to the email address).

By Doug | Posted in Small Business Tips | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Is Your “Fancy” Website Design Costing You Customers?

28 Jan 2010 11:31

If you showed up at a business meeting dressed like a clown (literally like a clown: With a 3-foot wide wig, a red rubber ball nose, polka dot jumpsuit, makeup, giant shoes, etc.), how much of your sales pitch would be absorbed by your prospect? Would you even get to finish before you got kicked out the door?

Too many small business owners pay money to have a “clownish” web site built that may actually be costing them business. A “clownish” web site:

  • Uses a garish color combination, or too much color.
  • Is stuffed full of gratuitous animation or buttons.
  • Uses too many font styles.
  • Is difficult to read.
  • Probably has misspellings and grammatical error.
  • In general, just has too much going on.

Why?

Because the business owner and/or web site designer failed to emphasize the most important thing about a small business web site: The information.

When a customer comes to your web site, they are looking for information about your business. If your web site design gets in the way of that information, they will get annoyed and hit the Back button. To put it bluntly, customers don’t care about your dumb design.

The design, or appearance, of your site should support the content and it should be consistent with the image you want to project, but aside from that, it needs to stay out of the way of your customers.

If you’re worried your site might be a clown, contact me for a free review.

By Doug | Posted in Small Business Tips | Tagged | Comments (0)

Learn How to Use Online Search

23 Jan 2010 22:43

I can find (almost) anything in a matter of seconds, or minutes for more complex requests, using Google Search.

Learn to use search effectively and I guarantee you will save time AND money by:

  • Finding the lowest price when shopping online.
  • Finding the best online service to meet your business needs.
  • Finding out what your competitors are up to.

For search tips, start here: Google Search Help.

By Doug | Posted in Small Business Tips | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Store Your Passwords Online

23 Jan 2010 22:39

Yes, it sounds scary to store your passwords on the internet, but it can be surprisingly secure and way better than these three common solutions:

  • Writing your passwords on a piece of paper (prone to theft, destruction and loss, and it’s not convenient if you don’t have the paper with you).
  • Storing your passwords in an unencrypted file on your computer (also prone to theft and destruction, and it’s not convenient if you travel).
  • Using the same password on every site. Some sites will not store your password securely. If it’s stolen, a hacker will check to see if your password works at other sites, with depressing consequences if that works.

There are multiple online services that will store your passwords, but I have personally used and can recommend the following:

  • PassPack — Be sure to read all about it before signing up so you can reassure yourself that it’s safer than your current method of remembering passwords.
By Doug | Posted in Small Business Tips | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Use Email Center Pro for Customer Service

23 Jan 2010 22:32

It’s common for an online business to publish one email address for customer service. However, what do you do if more than one person in your company is responsible for replying? Forwarding messages back and forth is messy and you have no easy way to monitor what is being written in your company’s name.

The answer is this online service, which is free for small accounts:

It works like any online email reader, but it has features for multiple users. You can assign emails to certain employees, monitor the whole conversation and create canned replies that everyone can use.

By Doug | Posted in Small Business Tips | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Manage All Email with GMail

23 Jan 2010 22:28

If you’re already using GMail, but you have other email accounts, consider letting GMail handle those accounts, too.

You’ll get all the same benefits of using GMail (access from any computer, central storage, search, etc.) and you won’t have to deal with another email program. You can choose to send mail from any of your linked accounts and GMail is smart enough to choose the correct account when you click the Reply button.

To get started, click Settings in the upper right corner of your GMail page, then click Accounts and Import. Look for the “Send mail as” and “Check mail using POP3″ sections and click the “Learn more” links for instructions.

By Doug | Posted in Small Business Tips | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Read Your Email Online

23 Jan 2010 22:17

If you’re currently downloading your email into a desktop email reader like Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express, then you know how inconvenient this can be when you travel or have to use another computer. In addition, unless you are religious about making backups, you stand to lose all your email if your computer dies or is stolen.

When you let an online service (like Google’s GMail) handle your email, you can read/write from any computer and your messages are stored on Google’s servers.

By Doug | Posted in Small Business Tips | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Dump Microsoft Office

23 Jan 2010 06:07

Consider replacing Microsoft Office with OpenOffice.

  • It’s free
  • It looks and feels like Microsoft Office
  • It opens and writes Microsoft Office file formats

Most small business owners depend on Word and Excel for routine business chores, yet only use a tiny fraction of the features. If this is you, you’ll love the FREEdom of OpenOffice. For Mac users, I recommend NeoOffice (which is based on OpenOffice).

By Doug | Posted in Small Business Tips | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)