Clue: You never defined goals for your website up front.

Problem: You may have ended up with a cookie cutter website that may not meet the needs of your business.

Solution: By identifying your objectives and goals of or your site in the beginning, you define not only the best structure of your site but also how to measure the performance of your website and marketing efforts.  Are you trying to capture customer leads? Are you simply creating an online presence and want to provide basic contact information? Are you trying to sell something? Obviously, these are very basic questions

Clue: You are not capturing key customer information like an email address.

Problem: How will you communicate with them in the future? Your online business much like any other business is only as good as the information you are sharing and the information you are capturing from your customers and visitors. Collecting basic
Solution: Online forms that feed into a CRM, Customer Relationship Manager, tool allow you to capture information and then segment your customers and create specific campaigns aimed at delivering a relevant offer to them directly. Relevant communications are key to developing trust in the new relationship and moving it to the next level.

Clue: You do not have automated responses to customers based on their activity on your website.

Problem: Customers are submitting a request via your contact form or purchasing products from you for a reason.  If you do not have a system that responds quickly to that request, you are missing a key opportunity to deliver exceptional customer service and you make them wonder if they picked the wrong company. 

Solution: Having a quick automated response is key in making sure they know that you have received the request and are working on it. Even an automated notice shows that you have received the request or purchase and it is not stuck in their slow dial-up connection. In addition, order confirmation and notices on the status of an online order are not nice to have, they are mandatory. It keeps the customer up to date on their order and shows you appreciate their business.

True story: I had to purchase a product that wasn’t available in my local hardware store. I placed the order for the $7.35 item and waited.  I finally got an order confirmation page but never got an email. I waited a day and still nothing. I ended up having to call the company, who didn’t pick up the phone, and then email their “support”. Finally 3 weeks later it showed up. I never received an order has shipped email or any confirmation of the order. The result, I will never purchase from them again.

Clue: You are not tracking website analytics

Problem:   If you don’t know how you are performing today, how will you be better tomorrow? Analytics provide critical decision making information around what is working and what is not working on your website.

Solution: First, make sure you have your goals already defined. (Refer to Clue #3) Once you know what you are trying to accomplish with your website, you can determine what information you want to track and record to help identify the performance of those objectives.

You can use an analytics tool to measure website traffic, unique visitors, refers, page visits, search terms and keywords conversion rates and much more. A good analytics tool will provide the most basic information such as number of visitors to your website all the way to tracking the conversion of visitors to purchasers if that is one of your objectives. It provides valuable information and data that is imperative to understanding the performance of your site today and how to optimize it for even better results tomorrow.

Clue: Using multiple systems to manage your online business

Problem:   You use one tool to manage your website content, another to maintain your email database and send email campaigns, a third to capture orders and sell products online and a fourth to track and measure analytics. You are having to learn and manage multiple systems and paying premiums for each of their individual functions. In addition, you are missing multiple opportunities to cross sell, capture key information and consolidate your efforts making your online business segmented and dysfunctional.

Solution: Consolidate into a single system that provides all the functionality needed to manage all aspects of your online business in one platform. You learn one system, pay one bill and are more efficient in your overall online business initiatives. All activity that a customer performs is recorded in one system and you have the ability to segment your customers based on any and all of that information. Remember #4? The more relevant the better!

Example: You use a shopping cart and a separate email marketing tool.  If someone purchases a product in your shopping cart, their communication preferences and information is not recorded in your email marketing system. In order to market to them in the future, you need to load them into the other system manually. How many people have you missed or how many have not opted in to email communications that you are now sending to?