About a week ago, my husband and I started an interesting conversation about promotional advertising, websites and customer service. There were a few things that stuck out at me and I wanted to share them with you as helpful tips to think about in your promotional, advertising efforts on your website and how it affects your customer service. The discussion centered around different frustrating scenarios where the companies or businesses failed to deliver on simple processes resulting in no sale for their company. I hope these help you be sure your processes for promotion and advertising are solidly in place so you don’t lose possible sales for your business.
Is your call to action set up properly?
When you set up your call to action (the action you request your potential customer to make when interested in getting more information from your business), do you have all the steps in the process set up to ensure a pleasant customer experience. Too many times, companies just think the customer will just tolerate certain missteps in a purchasing process. Sometimes, people will look over certain things, such as lengthy phone menus or sloppy customer relations. However, sometimes, this is just the thing that makes the person not use your services and goes to the next company in your industry.
Teresa’s example: My husband was reading an article in an industry magazine for floor machines and they had a toll free number to call. He called and when he got on the phone, he talked with 3 different people…3 different people and still they didn’t have the knowledge about the floor machine he was looking to purchase. They weren’t able to give him enough information about the product, so he looked elsewhere to purchase the product.
Does your navigation make sense?
Especially on product centered websites, it is important not to make the customer try and search too long for the products. In this fast paced world, people are looking for things all the time and if you don’t make it user friendly and easy to navigate to find products on your site, people will leave. This is when a focus group is a good idea to go in and use your navigation and produce feedback for you.
Teresa’s example: My husband had been given a company recommendation for some floor products and tools he was looking for to use on a job. So, my husband, (well I actually did it) went on the website and was trying to find these products. He had to look through several different menus on the navigation bar to try and find these products. He wasn’t sure where they would be located because they weren’t in the obvious places on the site (like tools and products). He was on the website for about 15 minutes trying to find these products but couldn’t find them. He tried in a category called equipment and he did find them on this page (don’t know why they chose this category).
Do you show pricing?
If you sell products or really even services, the pricing is an important part of the sales process. Now, I know there will be some who may disagree with me on this one. And I do believe there are exceptions to this rule, however, especially if your main focus is products, don’t forget to put your prices on the page. For business owners, you are going to be looking at the prices so you can make place for it in the budget however, if you do not provide the pricing, the business owner will move on to the next company.
Teresa’s example: Too often than not, when I am looking something up for my husband on a website from the floor cleaning industry, they do not include the prices—-WHY NOT???? This one does not make sense to me. Of course, this is done so I will make a phone call but then I find someone who doesn’t know about the product…so then I get nowhere.
It is unfortunate some companies don’t take the time to really look at these advertising and promotional processes to ensure the important details are in place to help their potential clients to purchase from them.
Be sure you take the time to invest in your promotional and advertising processes to ensure your potential consumers become your clients.
If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:
- The A B C’s of Customer Service – How to Keep Your Customers and Gain New Ones
- Should You Crowdsource Customer Service
- Solopreneur Strategies for a Down Economy
Get Your FREE 21-Page Internet Business Idea Guide
Enter your name and email below and we’ll send you our unique 21-page guide chock full of Internet business ideas – for free! Your information will be kept private, of course.
Jim Pearson has spent more than 25 years helping small and mid-size businesses find solutions to their business problems. He specializes in sales, marketing and rapid revenue growth and has helped hundreds of companies make more money.
Gene Culver has more than 15 years of diverse business experience across the music industry, telecom network marketing and business coaching. His specialty is helping individuals with marketing, their internet presence and lead generation.
I think you’re right about making prices obvious – not only on a website. I just ran a full-page ad in a magazine which showed 10 products. I did not put the prices. Now, I’m getting calls from people who want to know the price. Next time I’m putting the prices in all of my ads.
I do a bit of webdesign on the side. Im still torn about whether or not its a good idea to post rates. I notice that some designers do and some don’t. I think I might get more business if I did, but on the other hand each job is so unique that a flat rate might be detrimental.
What are your thoughts?