Tips For Effective Web Sites Customer Relationship Management, 5/00, features an article by Michelle Delio that recounts 10 key elements every successful commercial web site must address.
1. Make It Sticky: “Stickiness” is what causes people to come back to a site frequently. Make sure your log analysis allows you to determine how long each visitor stays at your site, how often they return and what drew their attention.
2. Make It Easy: Let visitors find what they need and do what they want easily. Don’t structure information in a way that only makes sense to insiders.
3. Make It Private: Post privacy policies that detail what type of information is being collected and how it will be used. Ensure information security.
4. Make It Easy: The point is to turn prospects into customers and customers into loyal clients by giving them the information they need in an easily navigated format. The site should be designed to gently lead people to where you want them to go.
5. Make It Personal: For a crash course on how to make it customer friendly, spend some time at Amazon.com, the site that attracts 1/3 of all Internet shoppers. Amazon President, Jeff Bezos advises, customer service is most important thing in any business and even more so for online ventures, because “customers have more power online.”
6. Make It Work: Careful site management engenders trust.
7. Make It Strong: Call centers and fulfillment services are the most vulnerable components of the Internet selling chain. Ask, what effect will the doubling of normal traffic have on your response rate, levels of service and shipping service?
8. Make It Professional: Jupiter Communications recent research finds that 46% of all web sites sent a service oar product query via e-mail failed to respond within 5 days¾if at all¾or did not have contact details on their site for customer queries. Implement multi-channel automated strategies to retain existing customers and attract new ones.
9. Make It Win-Win: The ability to act fast on data gathered is what differentiates an e-business from a corporation that simply has a web site. Design the process so well that customers will feel grateful when you give them opportunities to add items to their shopping cart.
10. Make It Interactive: Leverage the strengths of the medium. As Amazon’s Bezos says, “if you can do everything that you’re doing offline, then why are you doing it on the Internet?”
Essentially, it’s all about creating trust, something that is in dwindling supply in today’s culture.
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