Posted on: December 30, 2011 by Jordan Hardy
It is important to provide exceptional customer or client services from any business. In my experience, whether I was managing an art gallery during college or directing a marketing agency in recent years, client / customer service is always important. In this economy, many businesses have improved their customer service out of necessity just to stay competitive. Other businesses, such as The Walt Disney Company where I worked as a manager earlier in my career, maintain a high level of customer service no matter what.
Here are some thoughts I’d like to share today in regards to providing excellent customer service:
- Provide excellent customer service primarily so that customers want to return and also refer friends. Providing customer service primarily to reduce customer complaints, stay competitive, and gain viral networking should be secondary reasoning.
- Treat yor employees extremely well, providing monitoring, guidance, goals, and coaching. Employees who have guidance and goals to look forward to will serve customers better.
- Ensure that you and your employees treat customers as you’d want to be treated. This is easier to say than do.
Above all, ensure your team understands how to be patient. When a customer has had a bad day, a line is long, or a shift is extended too long, an employee may have their patience tested. It is very important to grow tolerance so that at all times customer service is maintained. For employees who haven’t experienced difficult customer service situations, role playing can be very helpful.
Posted on: December 27, 2011 by Jordan Hardy
My favorite project management tools are easy to use, powerful, scalable, and offer a wide range of uses. Project management can be managed effectively offline, on your computer, or with mobile devices. This article focuses on my favorite project management tools which can be used online.
- Basecamp is used by millions of people, and is easy-to-use with a simple user interface. Basecamp offers a dashboard, file sharing, to-do lists, milestones, message boards, time tracking, project overview, and comments on messages.
- ZOHO Projects includes both online collaboration and bug tracking. Zoho Projects also features task management, time tracking, Gantt charts, calendars, project chat, project wikis, and document management.
- Tom’s Planner is online Gantt chart software. Tom’s Planner allows users to drag and drop as they collaborate on Gantt Charts online.
- Teambox is widely used by companies. Teambox offers conversations, task lists, files, time tracking, and social tools.
- DeskAway is excellent for team collaboration from small to large businesses.
Beyond these five, there are many more project management tools I’ve used and enjoyed. To select the best tool for your particular uses, I recommend testing these and any other possibilities.
Posted on: December 26, 2011 by Jordan Hardy
Here are five tips I’d suggest to help increase sales on your eCommerce Website. I’ve got a lot more eCommerce tips to post in the future. Enjoy!
- Leverage Facebook to help your eCommerce performance. Set up a Facebook storefront, linking to your own eCommerce store products on your domain. Good examples of Facebook storefronts include Best Buy and Lady Gaga. Let users comment and use Facebook Share, Like, and Reviews APIs. Use the Insights Dashboard in Facebook to track eCommerce integrations for specific pages, Platform apps, and/or Websites.
- Improve your masthead (the horizontal graphical section at the top of your eCommerce Website). Include your primary and toll free phone numbers, a search box, free or reduced shipping offers, and utility links.
- Incorporate live chat. Live chat can provide additional opportunities to sell products and your brand.
- Use a clear navigation system which doesn’t overwhelm users. Built well, a terrific Website navigation helps both users and search engines, serving as the Website’s foundation.
- Use plenty of relevant photos and one or more unique videos on product pages. As they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words”!
Posted on: December 25, 2011 by Jordan Hardy
You may be building an eCommerce Website with standout software such as Magento, Zen Cart, VirtueMart, osCommerce, or BigCommerce. Or, you may be considering a terrific CMS such as Joomla, Drupal, Expression Engine, or Interspire. It could be that you seek to build a blog with one of the best options, including WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, Movable Type, Squarespace, or Tumblr. Beyond these, there are hundreds of platform options. For sure, not one solution works for all companies.
While researching the best option for your business, I suggest choosing the most scalable platform. That way, as your business grows, you can add navigation layers, modules, features, content types, and technology. I find it also important that a Website solution provide files hosted on your own server. If this is possible, you don’t have to worry about their downtime or what happens if they go out of business. You’ll own your pages, and can migrate content if needed in an emergency. Another preference that comes to mind is having extremely flexible and editable templates. It can cost quite a bit of money to design new templates, so the ability to edit existing templates is a big plus in some cases.
Posted on: December 23, 2011 by Jordan Hardy
Sometimes large businesses opt to use Flash or extensive imagery on their Website. This is usually to easily get the exact look or animation they want at correct dimensions. There are often problems I find with this strategy:
- Flash and images are not as SEO friendly as integrating more real copy. Although search engines can read alt, title, and other tags, content is key.
- It is not always possible to copy text from Flash, and impossible from images. Even though there may be print options presented to users, some browsers may not display them or have images and Flash enabled.
- Sometimes Flash can be buggy, not integrating well with other elements.
- Flash is not as crawlable by search engines as many other coding techniques.
Here are some Flash and imagery best practices from my experience:
- I find Flash best utilized for animation on individual pages or set sized locations on pages.
- I don’t find Flash useful for full Websites or extensive interactivity.
- Images are ideal to show imagery, not to replace copy.
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