Manning the Store
When you have a retail store, or any office space that customers come to, someone is there to greet them. In the retail business, someone may even ask the visitor if they need help with anything. A cashier or a clerk is always there to help them find what they need, to help them buy what your store is selling. Is anyone manning your online store?
Your online store does not necessarily have to have products with a shopping cart, your web site is your businesses store front. Many businesses use their site as their only store front. It is a competitive market, of that you can be sure, every sale is important, if you could give every prospect the kind of attention they would get at a brick and mortar store your sales would increase. The number of people visiting your site does not increase, you would simply sell to more of the people that come in and out of your store. Online Marketers call this a better conversion rate. The standard Retail conversion rate in 2004 was 2%. Our customers web sites see anywhere from 1% to 5%. When we are done with the campaign they are rarely less than 2.5%. In many cases we don't do anything specifically or technically to the site to change that, what we do is train the mind set of the online retailer.
There are several key stages of success along the way when you are on the path to a dominant online presence. Most manifest themselves in a more technical in nature, such as "treat each page of your site as a website of it's own", another might be when you realize you can estimate the intentions of a visitor based on what they searched for and present to them a website that speaks to that need. We feel the most important stage is when the customer realizes how different their site would be if they treated it the way they would a real store.
Greet your customers, use a chat program to help a few of your employees to monitor the site and initiate conversation with those prospects that visit your site. Have quick responses ready for the most common questions visitors have when they call or chat with you. Be prepared to take the sale all the way through the cycle, a good set of documented tested procedures can keep things running smoothly. Most of all, treat every visitor to your site with the respect you would if they walked into your store. They are there for a reason, they are looking for what you offer.
Adam Yax is CTO of http://www.phonenixsynergy.com which provides internet marketing in Phoenix, AZ. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adam_Yax |
