November 15, 2008
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Advertising, Ecommerce, Marketing | Tagged: internet, customers, customer, product, home, people, information, web, page, personal, world, order, credit card, web store, site, shoppers, shopping, Ecommerce, secure server, graphics, secure, online business | 
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Posted by DodoLovesMe
November 15, 2008
Your Web site is here to serve your customers—not impress them. You job is to design a site and offer a shopping experience that gives consumers a quick, safe, and easy way to purchase something from your Web store.
So before you sit down with your Web consultant, and before your Web designer puts pointer to screen, be sure the 10 ways to drive customers away from your site are avoided.
That might be funny to you, but treating your customer with no respect will drive him away from your site for sure. And one sure-fire way to drive him away is to confuse him.
Keep your navigation simple. You’re there to sell. Customers are there to buy. Make it easy for them to find your products and buy them. If they can’t find what they want and order it in three mouse clicks, you run the risk of losing them. So, organize your site material logically from the customer’s point of view. Be sure to include clear directions for navigating the site from your home page. Remember that the home page of your Web store serves a variety of functions. It’s a map of your store, a welcome mat, and a marketing message all in one. Read the rest of this entry »
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Ecommerce, Marketing, Sales | Tagged: offer, business, customers, service, customer, Marketing, home, people, information, web, sure, page, personal, world, culture, design, america, away, running, writing, drive him away, product or service, web store, drive customers, framed page, site, store, drive, shoppers, address, several, shopper, merchant, frames, shopping, Ecommerce | 
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Posted by DodoLovesMe
November 13, 2008
If you plan to start a business where it’s standard procedure to collect payment before you provide your product or service to customers, you can skip this section. Obviously, most retail businesses conduct pay-as-you-go transactions: customers can choose to not use their own money to pay up front by using a credit card; however, their purchase then becomes more expensive with the subsequent interest charges if they don’t pay it off all at once. But that’s their problem, not yours. You still get paid up front. Read the rest of this entry »
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Startup | Tagged: business, customers, money, card, life, work, america, credit, american, credit card, bill | 
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Posted by DodoLovesMe
April 2, 2008
Because until you do, until you begin to take it seriously, until you give it the earnest attention it demands, your Prototype will continue to be the only thing it could hope to be under the circumstances—a crap shoot!
At GERBER Business Development Corporation, we have created tools for our small business clients to begin the often arduous task of making demographic and psychographic determinations, and how to position their Prototype in the mind of their consumer. The impact has been astonishing.
Small businesses that acted like small businesses when we met them began to operate with intelligence.
Their customers came vividly alive to them, often for the very first time.
Inquiry, the active solicitation of specific information, and controlled experimentation replaced the guessing, blind hope, and feverish busy work that preceded them. Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments » | Advertising, Business Management, Business Plans, Customer Service, Home Based Business, Marketing, Promotion | Tagged: business, businesses, central demographic model, customer, customers, demographic, prototype, trading zone, unless | Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
February 15, 2008
Only five years ago, most markets were dominated by a few leading companies, mighty icons with household names that seemed immortal. How quaint all that now seems. Today’s competitors are far more numerous, able, and fierce than ever before because they have to be: What used to be outstanding performance is now the norm.
A useful analogy is the sport of speed skating. In the 1980 Winter Olympics, American Eric Heiden accomplished an unprecedented feat—he won five gold medals Though it was unbeatable in 1980, twenty-five competitors surpassed Heiden’s record in Nagano, Japan, eighteen years later in the 5,000-meter race, and did so by at least 12 seconds. The gold medalist, Gianni Romme of the Netherlands, covered the distance in 6 minutes 22 seconds, eclipsing Heiden’s time by an unbelievable 40 seconds. For that competition, Heiden would not have even qualified. Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments » | financial | Tagged: companies, customers, heiden | Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
February 15, 2008
In an age in which customers are scarce, any company’s best practices seldom remain proprietary. Business models are shamelessly imitated with inner corporate workings becoming public knowledge. Best practices travel at Internet speed.
People are becoming masters at imitation. If you don’t have a good idea yourself, you can always knock off someone else’s product. An imitation is not necessarily an exact copy. You use details to create a difference: the look, the product extension, the packaging—anything that can make the other company’s idea look less new And this is easier than it used to be. If once you could hold on to a secret formula for years or even decades, now it’s a matter of months or days before your competitors catch up and replicate it. Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments » | Business Management, Business Plans, Franchising | Tagged: best, best practices, companies, company, customers, du, du pont, pont, practices | Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
February 13, 2008
The new market leaders know that the greatest constraint on today’s customers is time—more critical even than money. The broader choices, the constant stream of innovations, and the pace of contemporary life conspire to crowd people’s schedules. Whether you’re in the market for a CD player for home or a new supplier of components for your company, you don’t have time to evaluate every option, consider every shred of information, and explore every contingency—even though it would probably be useful to do so.
Time is a flexible commodity: We willingly spend more of it on some activities than on others. A busy manager for whom every minute counts will happily spend hours on thegolf course, but an easygoing person with time to chat will hang up angrily on a telemarketer who calls at dinnertime. Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments » | Advertising, Business Management, Business Plans, Customer Service, Marketing, Promotion | Tagged: advice, buying, choices, customers, matrix, others, people, person, time, time and effort | Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
February 13, 2008
Imagine a modern Rip Van Winkle waking up from a twenty-year sleep, He would surely be amazed at how the world has changed: He would be bewildered by new technology, bowled over at the speed and clutter of life in 2001, dazzled by the sheer abundance being thrust at him. The torrent of new products, goods, services, ideas, and innovations vying for his attention would be shocking.
How would he react? I suspect, like people through the ages in suddenly changed circumstances, Rip would reset his bearings from his old perspective before cautiously testing the new water. Like a child who clings to a teddy bear well into adolescence, or a lottery winner who repaints the old house, he would cling to the familiar and be slow to embrace what is new. Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | Advertising, Business Management, Business Plans, Customer Service, Marketing, Promotion, Sales | Tagged: companies, customers, just, rip, us | Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
February 13, 2008
Again, for these customers the amount of time demanded is crucial. They prefer to get the house remodeled all at once, rather than spread the project over several years. Once they take the leap into a new computer system or an e-mail provider, they don’t want to think about upkeep or other hassles. In fact, the less they have to think about their system for any reason, the more content they will be. Constant reminders and offers of new bells and whistles will be resented unless they require little, if any, time and effort, like AOL’s automatic upgrades that simply take over the customer’s PC and feed themselves into the system. Of course, not everyone is averse to change. For example, the customers represented in the top of our change axis are ripe for it. Far from savoring stability, they are motivated by the promise of new possibilities. Their problem is the opposite of preserving the present; they are figuring out ways to tap the future. They want as many options as possible and are more than willing to spend time making them. Not that it takes them very long to decide; on the contrary, their needs are so pressing that it is hard to describe them as patient folk. Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments » | Business Management, Business Plans, Marketing | Tagged: customers, suppliers, time | Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
February 13, 2008
With all the demands on our time, it’s not surprising that for the most part, most of us value our routines and aren’t about to embrace every conceivable new possibility that comes our way.
We’re willing to examine options when we’re excited about a new product or service, or frustrated by what we have. But if we’re enjoying our current condition (or disliking alternatives), we will be in no mood to change, much less spend any time listening to a sales pitch. “Give us more of the same, and don’t bother us with the newfangled stuff,” we say. Like the worker who prefers his familiar job to the uncertainties of promotion, we resist any unfamiliarity. We would rather spend our time preserving and building on what we have than exploring what we could be doing instead. Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments » | Customer Service, Promotion, Sales | Tagged: customers, time | Permalink
Posted by DodoLovesMe
