All Ecommerce Takes Is Common Sense

Most reliable web hosting companies have systems in place that can minimize the amount of spam you and your customers receive.

If you feel so inclined, you can hire a consultant to research your market and find out how to increase your chances of success in the world of ecommerce. You could attend some classes, read some books, register for seminars or subscribe to several trade mags to stay on the cutting edge. Or you could forget all that and spend your time, money and effort where it matters most by simply adhering to the only rule that counts in any type of commerce both online and off: Give you customers what they want and shield them from what they don’t want.

While that may sound simplistic, you would be amazed at how many ecommerce owners miss the mark. Consequently, an understanding of that common sense rule can put you light years ahead of your competition.

So what’s the best way to find out what your customers want? Ask them. Many savvy site owners have transformed lemons to lemonade by simply treating customer complaints as suggestions. The complaints may represent a need that you have not been fulfilling or a service that you don’t offer, but should. In many ways, complaints are blessings. If your customers bother to complain they are offering you a chance to fix what’s wrong instead of just never doing business with you again.  If complaints are dealt with quickly and efficiently, you can emerge a hero.

Because the internet has the potential to be impersonal in nature, online customers need to feel some sort of personal bond with their retailers. One way this can be influenced is by the writing style you use in your site text. Your text should give your customers the impression that you are communicating directly to them and that it’s “all about them.” Be absolutely sure that your first paragraph speaks clearly and directly to their needs, because if it doesn’t they probably won’t stay on your site long enough to read the second one.

In journalism this is called the “lead” (in songwriting it is called the “hook”). In any event
Your first paragraph determines how much time people will spend with you. Quickly let them know that you understand their problems, concerns or basic needs. Keep the quality high. Give them confidence that if they keep reading they’ll find the solution or product or service that they are looking for.

If there is one thing your customers are NOT looking for, it’s spam. Also known as “unsolicited bulk email,” spam has spun out of control across the internet despite our best efforts to keep it at bay. Ferris Research estimates that the cost of spam to the United States economy is in excess of $10 billion per year when you take into account consumption of computer resources, help desk personnel time and lost worker productivity. When Intermedia NET launched its SpamStopper service, it cited 2006 research which estimated that spam represents “over 66% of all email sent, and more than 10% of lost productivity.”

The federal anti-spam laws have barely scratched the surface of the spam explosion.
As Scott Chasin, former technology director for anti-spam company MX Logic put it: “Predictions of the impending death of spam are premature. While significant advances in anti-spam technology have made it possible to relieve email users of much unwanted commercial email before it hits their boxes, spam still makes up the majority of all email traffic- imposing a significant burden on the internet and on the effectiveness of email.”

What’s the best way to protect your customers from spam? Talk to your web host. Most reliable web hosting companies have systems in place that can minimize the amount of spam you and your customers receive. Even so, there are some things you can encourage your customers to do that will help them from becoming spam targets including:

• Never buy anything through a spam email. This just encourages spammers to send more spam and confirms that your email address is accurate so they can sell your email to someone else.
• Never reply to unsolicited spam and ask to be unsubscribed. They’ll just ignore it anyway, and it confirms for them that your email address is accurate, which just keep you on the list. (This does not apply to legitimate email newsletters and mailing lists. Many of them use automated unsubscribe lists at the bottom of their emails and you can use this to get off of mailing lists.)
• Check to make sure that your web hosting company has anti-spam technology.

It all boils down to the fact that if you don’t make your customers happy, your competitors will be delighted to pick up your slack. Meanwhile your disgruntled customers will probably share their unpleasant experience on your site with other people- lots of them. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, put it this way: “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” And that’s not a chance any of us can afford to take.