Posts Tagged ‘customer)’
Improve Your Website for the Best Customer Experience
Website visitors are often very busy people. He or she cannot hang around for any number of seconds waiting for your page to appear. If you’re not able to make this process fast, many of your visitors will go somewhere else. As crazy as this sounds, it is perfectly true. You have only a few seconds to keep the attention of the average web user and it goes without saying that you need to optimize your site so that it displays as handily as possible. Keep in mind that there are still some people out there who use dial-up connections!
There are numerous ways to go about this, but to start off with you could do worse than kit yourself out with a special Firefox plug-in called YSlow. This useful add-on is utilised in association with Firebug, and it will let you to see the load time of any particular page you’d like to check. It will provide you with a detailed score and a rather handy analysis, to give you some pointers in the right direction.
Firstly, really scrutinize your page and make sure that everything contained therein is absolutely essential. We all like to have a visually appealing website, but is all that “flash” really necessary? Gernerally, flash graphics take a long time to render and you should try and avoid embedded sound files as well.
If you are going to include multiple images, make sure that they are re-sampled and optimized for web display. It makes no sense to have a very high definition image as the file size will take a long time to open. Use online image optimizers to help you. Essentially, always include height and width tags within your image specification. If you don’t, the browser will wait before loading the image to see how it fits in within all the other content on the page.
You should try and use CSS sheets as often as possible. These essentially set a theme for a page and will greatly improve the site loading time. The browser will simply have to look for the external file for relevant styling and formatting, instead of having to interpret each tag over and over again. This makes a huge difference in the amount of HTML code for your page and consequently the amount of time the browser takes to interpret this and display it.
Tables are generally the enemy of a fast loading page. When you need to include tables, it is best to use CSS coding to create the columns on the page using the
Artistic use of whitespace is not appropriate and you do not necessarily need line breaks between your HTML code either. Try and condense the coding as much as possible.
Remember, remove anything that you don’t absolutely need and if there is a lot of information “below the fold,” you should probably split it up into more than one page. Sometimes less is more!
Adam Toren, Co-Founder of Young Entrepreneur, specializes in maximising the profitability of failing businesses with his own unique ‘bottom line’ method. Adam, along with his brother, have established, bought and then sold on an assortment of companies in recent years. At present, they own and operate a very successful publishing company and variety of online businesses.
Creating Long Lasting Business Relationships
Have you ever had the misfortune to be in troublesome situations where you couldn’t terminate your arrangement with a supplier even though there were recurring delays in their usual deliveries? This sort of situation arises because of the relationship which they established with you over the period of your working relationship.
As anyone involved with business coaching knows, strong and long lasting relationships are the pillars of small businesses, on which rests the complete structure that makes most of these businesses successful. A new business may not have plenty of money, a solid infrastructure, or world-class products and services, but it can still sail through this competitive business environment and sustain itself – with strong relationships.
A small business going after a high level of success in this business environment should pursue all sorts of working relationships, not just with customers, but also with its employees and business associates. Business partners are usually fairly different from each other in their personal approaches towards business, so we should always develop different ways of effectively dealing with each one.
- Customers – The wants and desires of the customer are the fundamental purpose for the existence of any business or company, and as the process of selling to a new customer involves quite a bit more expense and effort than selling to a current one, then why not let your current customers know that you really value them – by staying in touch, and regularly asking for their feedback.
- Tailoring your approach to individual customers is a great idea – as no single customer is the same. Maintain a thorough record of your customer’s previous purchases so that you can promptly remind them about any item or service which they might have overlooked, or even something special which they might not have thought of without your assistance. Delivering reminder emails, personal calls, or pleasant greetings can all make an extraordinary difference in the way your customers see you and your business. In addition, presenting complementary gifts, discount certificates, and loyalty bonus rewards will help inspire customers with the feeling of being truly recognized and valued.
- In-house employees – The employees of any business are essential for the attainment of any significant degree of long term success. It’s important that these employees – primarily those with deserved merit, be regularly shown appreciation for their accomplishments and performance in the business. Business gifts, awards, acknowledgement bonuses, birthday gifts, seasonal and festive gifts all play a very important role in keeping your rising stars motivated and focused. As you’ll learn in management training, these gestures of the company generate a sense of belonging in the employees, which will prompt them to identify with the company and feel a sense of personal loyalty, keeping them with the company for a much longer period of time.
- Business Associates – Business associates consist of individuals such as suppliers, distributors, and advertising agents, as well as any other people who derive a similar measure of profit from a given enterprise. These are the people who sustain the business, helping it to thrive with regular supplies, deferred credits, discounts, advertising, etc. Utilising promotional gifts, loyalty rewards and appreciations are some of the tremendous ways of expressing gratitude to any of the business associates, as all of these gestures will convey to them the valued position they hold in the eyes of the company.
The key to being successful – whether in a small business or a large company, will always be a carefully built solid foundation, along with mutually beneficial business relationships with each of your associates.
Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of the L2L Group, specialising in providing Executive Coaching, Training and Consultancy Services to Businesses across the Globe. Want to learn more about these business success strategies? Get Alan’s popular FREE Business Pack today!