July 6th, 2008
As a small business owner it can be a challenge developing a customer proposition, as the easy answer is - we want everyone’s business. Personally I have decided that I want to focus on SMEs and in reality it is mostly the SEs that I can offer the most benefit to.
In order to be a viable option to this group, low cost solutions is a key point. Previously I have worked for a business that offers its services to small businesses at £86 an hour. The result is that many of the small businesses don’t have any work done on their sites.
Taking this part of the customer proposition there are a number of my internal processes that need to be managed in order to maintain low cost – ie production, or in my case development. The best way to keep this cheap at the moment is off-shore. It is very difficult to compete with the resources offered from other parts of the world. With a strong pound it means good value resources can be acquired in the likes of India, Eastern Europe or Mexico.
Developing a virtual team is relatively easy these days and the internet offers access to a wealth of developers and businesses across the world. The use of business tools is vital to keep things on track. Recommended tool include:
- Collaboration area. This is somewhere to capture all your project information. Emails are ok, but if you have more than a couple of people working the project it can quickly get out of control. People missed from emails, information captured in emails but no where else. An online site allows all the information to be stored in one place and searched at a later stage. See my previous notes on Google site.
- Messenger service. Skype or MSN Messenger a quick and easy ways to communicate with team members. Quick questions are fine, don’t try to hold long conversations though. People don’t type that quickly and creativity is best done in a call.
- VOIP - Small businesses can easily afford access to VOIP services and they provide cheap calls to all parts of the world. If you want really cheap ie free, get a headset and use skype. The people you are working with will need the same system.
- Screen sharing - Have you ever had that feeling that someone isn’t seeing what you are when you are trying to explain something over the phone. “Its next to the green circle” ” What this red line?” “No, below the redline” ” What the picture?” “No, to the …..” sound familiar. For a small fee per month you can remove these issues with a screen sharing application. GoTo Meeting is relatively cheap and can remove hours of “No, below that”.
So now I have my team based in 3 different locations it doesn’t cost the earth to communicate with them. The operations side of the business is run with cost in mind allowing me to deliver great value services at prices designed for SMEs.
Posted in eBusiness, strategy maps | No Comments »
July 3rd, 2008
Recently I have spoken to two businesses that are interested in an eCommerce website. Both are established businesses running retail websites. One ecommerce website was more successful then other but the issues were identical. Rather than integrating the websites into the necessary third party applications someone was having to copy and paste data between two systems!!!!
The first point, in both cases, was that the “Someone” was a business owner, who no doubt has far better and more important tasks to be completing on a daily basis. It no doubt felt right at the time when they made the decision, after all, it is an important task that needs to be done right. The reality is that paying yourself £60k a year to do data processing is not good use of resources.
The second is the exposure to risk that can occur with a manual task. In one case it was the payment details, so that chance of getting card details incorrect during the process are slim as the banks have numerous checks to ensure the details match up. The other was account and order creation, which could result in incorrect orders or missing details. When the numbers are small the risks are less but as a business grows the room for error increases.
eCommerce & eBusiness should be about reducing manual overheads and the automation of processes to reduce the risk of error. Ok there is the chance that something can go wrong with the software, but with good levels of testing the risks can be reduced and with log files errors can be easily traced.
This rant leads us back into the use of Kaplan and Norton’s strategy map, which I will pick up next time.
Posted in business objectives, business strategy, e-business, eCommerce, online strategy | No Comments »
June 24th, 2008
I have seen some interesting result from a recent email marketing campaign that I thought may be of interest. Interesting but in reality not that surprising really.
The email was for a summer sale for a maternity company that I work with. The email subject line was set as “Re: Summer sale 50% off all clothing”. On the face of it this appears to be a fantastic offer, but when reviewed against a previous email it inspired just slightly fewer people to open it (percentage wise).
Two previous emails produced better results using keywords in the title, in the cases in question “Maternity” and “Baby”.
Relevancy is a key theme that plays a role here. We are bombarded with sale headlines from the hundreds of companies in our emails all the time. People are now switching off to a general sale and not surprisingly. Generally when I go to a sale it is all the rubbish that the store couldn’t shift. Chocolate fondue sets was one mentioned by a top retailer recently.
Sadly the company in question doesn’t have accurate data on which users have viewed particular items, we are therefore unable to tailor the emails to individuals. We can however use Google Analytics to show us what the majority of people are looking at but not buying. We can then use that for the basis of the next email, being sure to take out the customers on the email list that have purchased the product recently.
Future emails might therefore read Re:
50% in our summer sale.
I would obviously welcome your thoughts on this.
Posted in Google Analytics, eBusiness, eMail marketing | No Comments »
June 19th, 2008
Earlier in this blog I did start some ramblings about customer propositions and I thought it might be time to carry on where I left off.
Having identified our customers and segmented them, we have started to build propositions that should suit each of the segments or where segements over lap the propositions may suit more than one. It is then important to build up the messaging around that propositions.
The web allows you to easily deal with a number of different propositions, as it is realitively cheap to build 2 websites with slightly different branding to appeal to two different markets. This way you are providing clear messaging to two different groups without confusing either group.
A company that has built up the multi brand messages well, is N Brown a provider of fashion to multiple sectors. The following chart shows a breakdown of their brand propositions taken from a presentation by their CEO Alan White at the recent Drapers online fashion event.
The image lays out how the various propositions fit into the market. As a small business it is unlikely that we will be setting up quiet so many different propositions but it does provide a clear picture of how it can work.
In generating a customer proposition you need to look at a number of key aspects these are indentified as the following by Kaplan and Norton: Price, Quality, Availability, Selection, Functionality, Service, Partnership and Brand.
These are quite important as they will require an internal focus to ensure your business is set up to deliver them.
Posted in eCommerce, online strategy, strategy maps | No Comments »
June 17th, 2008
I recently attended the Drapers Maximising revenue through online fashion retailing event in London. It was a well attended session with leading industry speakers. Before getting into the business end of the discussion, I must point out that their decision to serve sausage and mash at a buffet, with no seats, tiny table and only provide a fork was interesting. I managed to eat meal without spilling th e food across the floor, which is more than can be said for a previous visit to Bath University who now have an interesting red wine stain on their carpet.
A couple of key points that came out of the session:
1. It is critical that businesses pro-actively manage their online customer service. Some might say “We do this already.” But are you aware of what you customers are saying about you elsewhere. Where as in the past a customer would tell 10 of their friends about a bad experience they can now tell the rest of the world. The larger businesses are now tackling this head on and offering a space for customers to feedback even if it is a bad comment. Ultimately this gets bad comments out in the open, but at least it gives the company an opportunity to respond positively. Starting a blog or forumn in a similar style provides customers with a great space to feedback and even small businesses can participate.
2. Free returns good or bad?
eCommerce businesses need to overcome trust issues in order to get customers to buy for the first time. Free returns provides an excellent means to show customers how good you think your products are. One comment was that it can even encourage larger order values as customers pick a couple of items thinking “I’ll return those because I am not too sure”. But as we all know once you have it in your hands it becomes difficult to send back, for many reasons. Worth noting - don’t be afraid to be strict on your returns policy, if the product isn’t in a fit state to be resold, send it back to the customer and explain why you will not refund. If you are worried about the impact of free returns why not give free returns as an offer.
Some great ideas. A more detailed summary of the key points will follow on MSI Commerce site.
Posted in customer service, eBusiness, eCommerce | No Comments »
June 11th, 2008
The web provides a great way of generating some eNoise for your business. e-what I hear you cry.
The internet has numerous channels for interacting with your audience. An example would be a blog similar to this one where you can post you ideas and thoughts and allow others to comment.
There are many other similar outlets that allow you to generate a buzz around your company and many of them are free. Search for networking opportunities online and you will find hundreds varying in size from regional sites (business scene) to multi nationals such as LinkedIn.
Most are free to join and some will let you publish articles and general ramblings for free. I have recently joined a number of these as a means of generating some online activity for my site. Business Scene offers the chance for local face to face networking which can be a great channel for driving traffic to your website through your business cards.
Other ways for generating a community around your business include the generation of groups on sites. These are more appropriate for some businesses rather than others. An example would be Facebook, here you can generate a group and showcase your products and company.
As with any online activity there is an overhead associated with it all so you need to choose the one that is most appropriate for your audience, don’t be afraid to ask your customers where they look.
Posted in eBusiness, marketing | No Comments »
June 11th, 2008
It has become clear over the last few months that SMEs really struggle with SEO activities. Although it all sounds easy it is very time consuming trying to make regular and worthwhile updates to your website.
I have found the same situation recently, as well as trying to develop the business I am constantly trying to keep the website up-to-date and make alterations as I go.
As search engines require you to maintain a level of recency in your site it is worth ensuring that the site is developed with a number of key areas available for editing.
At least one page if not all should be available for editing so that you can add new content to your site as your business develops. A static site may seem like a nice cheap option but it will cost you in the long run. Especially, if you have to go back to the agency to ask them to make changes. With the ability to edit at least one or more pages the facility to edit the following becomes more critical.
Page titles - these indicate to search engines what is going to be on the page that they are looking at. Make sure you can get into these to make edits to the titles otherwise it will be difficult to stay ahead of the competition if they are making changes.
Meta Descriptions - this is what appears in the search engine results page and is a users call to action.
Meta Tags - These further allow you to flag to search engines what they are going to find on the page. Although these are now seen as less important (due to abuse) a consistent message across titles, meta data and content is important.
Recently I was speaking with a company that didn’t have access to these features as standard through their site and they were now looking at a large bill to add these changes. Make sure you get these as standard.
Posted in SEO, eBusiness | No Comments »
June 3rd, 2008
It has been pointed out that the example link has been removed by the website. I wasn’t aware that this occurred. Are you happy to proceed without having seen this?
Software development projects can be a tricky business at the best of times, but if you throw in a virtual team, some time differences and possibly different cultures and there is definitely some cause for concern.
The following can be applied to any business project and is more about making use of ebusiness activities rather than software development.
Projects require a massive amount of communication depending on the number of stakeholders involved. The bigger and more complex the project the greater the number of stakeholders. Equally the larger the project team. Developing communication within the project team is critical and ensuring everyone has all the communication can be a challenge. If the project is over an extended period there is a danger that one member of the team may leave or be off sick. It then makes it difficult to get new project team members up to speed.
Recently I have used Google sites to overcome these issues, providing a free collaboration space for developing your project it offers small businesses a great way to communicate as a team.
In my case all project documentation has gone on to the site and designs for websites are uploaded as pages. This then ensures that everyone is working from the latest documents, plus you can add comments or questions against screens or documents. It is key that all questions that would usually occur in emails are captured in the site. This provides a stored conversation that other or new team members can reference at a later date. It also prevents side conversations occurring. The whole thing is searchable which makes it easy to find things and like a wiki people can add to it as they like. (Although various admin rights can be granted)
The project team have liked it as a collaboration tool and the consensus is that it has really helped with the communication. It also notifies people when changes occur so no one is left in the dark about updates to the project.
You don’t have to use Google there are other options, but as an out of the box solution it has worked well so far. I will probably start to use the same function to collaborate with clients in the near future as we operate an open and honest policy.
Posted in communication, eBusiness, projects | No Comments »
May 21st, 2008
The other day I was speaking to a website owner about their disillusionment with their current ecommerce website and supplier. Don’t get me wrong it was doing the job and selling products over the internet, but now that business was growing they were uncovering the true cost of going with a sizeable agency. As a small business they had recognised the need for an ecommerce website but on reflection they hadn’t asked the right questions.
As a small business you know you need an ecommerce website to keep and attract customers and grow revenue. The problem is with no previous experience of owning a website what questions do you ask. It would seem fair that with no experience going to a large agency would solve these issues. However the sales people at an agency are focused on the sale and may not cover the implications of some of their costs. As a client you may well be focused on their current client list and the lure of emulating some of those existing clients.
Here are a few questions that you may want to consider asking. The following provides more eCommerce supplier questions.
- What is the cost per hour of future work? Ok you may have paid £15k for the market leading website, but what happens when your business grows and you need to add a best seller list to the category page. What if the cost of this addition is £1000 or it may stretch to £2000 depending on your requested functionality and the hourly rate of the agency. The big one, and it will hit all businesses that grow, is the integration with other back office systems this could be anywhere from £3000 upwards and can cost nearly as much as the original site. Consider how much this will eat into your profits for the year. The link above will show some typical pieces of functionality and services that you may want to enquire about.
- Is the cost of hosting fixed or does it rise with an increase in usage? If it does rise with usage what is the cost per Gb. Sadly with many hosting solutions there is a quantity included in a base price but once you go over that there is a charge per Gb. Now consider that as sales go up, so will the number of users browsing the site. This variable cost based on sales can feel like the agency is taking a percentage of your sales. It therefore pays to work out what it will cost you per month as sales rise or worse what happens if sales don’t rise in proportion to the numbers browsing the site.
- How many clients will my account manager be dealing with? The main reason for going to a large agency is that you feel you will be reaping the benefits of their experience and you would hope to get some advice for free. What happens if you account manager has 20 clients that they need to deal with? That’s less than a day a month, take into account holidays, admin, sickness and you are probably down to half a day and if that is spent selling you a £2000 best seller list then you aren’t maybe getting the value you had hoped for.
- Can I access my customer data? Ok you may get orders sent to you, but what other questions might you have about your customers. What have customers added to their basket but not purchased? Where do my registered customers live? How many people have registered but not ordered? What products have customers viewed but not purchased? What do people search for on the site? All of these are very valid questions and can provide valuable information that will become critical if you want to grow your business, but can you get it? Or will it cost you?
I hope this has given you some insight into the sorts of questions that you need to ask. What you need is an agency that can understand you marketing issues and provide solutions, not one that sells you an website. After all you can buy an ecommerce site for £99 a month over the internet.
Posted in buying a website, eCommerce | No Comments »
May 16th, 2008
A recent experience of pay per click advertising has shown the benefits of tracking customer activity from a number of sources.
If you take out some online advertising you will get built in tracking to show you clicks, cost per click and impressions, plus more stats than I have time to mention here. However what happens after users have clicked through to your site is your responsibility. Therefore as a minimum it is advisable to have a free tracking tool like Google Analytics (GA) on your site and where possible ensure that server logs are switched on and are available to you as required.
I had set up some advertising and allowed “content match”, as you would assume that large companies are on the ball with who is displaying their adverts and you would hope that they are getting the best for their customers. I was wrong as it turns out.
There were several distribution partners that display adverts in directory style websites and if you actually look at these sites they have very little in common with some of the adverts they display.
The adverts I had produced were carefully worded to target specific customers including a price that should keep those looking at the lower end of the market out of the site in question.
Luckily Google Analytics clearly shows where people have come from how long they were on the site and which pages they navigate through (Document on how to find this out to follow). With an average time on the site of less than … well zero seconds it was obvious that someone was taking advantage.
Having referred this to the advertising company, they then asked for server logs. If you are unfamiliar with these they involve thousands of line of code and look like something out of the Matrix films, but buried deep with in them is confirmation about pages opened and the time on the site.
The issue has now been referred to a fraud team. A couple of points have come out of this:
- Make sure you have a form of site tracking on your site, even if it is an information site.
- Review the data, especially if you have PPC advertising on the go.
- If you think something looks suspicious do check it out and do report it to your PPC company.
Posted in Google Analytics, PPC, Pay Per Click, eBusiness | No Comments »
