eBusiness - Integration of websites with 3rd party applications

Recently I have spoken to two businesses that are interested in an eCommerce website. Both are established businesses running retail websites. One ecommerce website was more successful then other but the issues were identical. Rather than integrating the websites into the necessary third party applications someone was having to copy and paste data between two systems!!!!

The first point, in both cases, was that the "Someone" was a business owner, who no doubt has far better and more important tasks to be completing on a daily basis. It no doubt felt right at the time when they made the decision, after all, it is an important task that needs to be done right. The reality is that paying yourself £60k a year to do data processing is not good use of resources.

The second is the exposure to risk that can occur with a manual task. In one case it was the payment details, so that chance of getting card details incorrect during the process are slim as the banks have numerous checks to ensure the details match up. The other was account and order creation, which could result in incorrect orders or missing details. When the numbers are small the risks are less but as a business grows the room for error increases.

eCommerce & eBusiness should be about reducing manual overheads and the automation of processes to reduce the risk of error. Ok there is the chance that something can go wrong with the software, but with good levels of testing the risks can be reduced and with log files errors can be easily traced.

This rant leads us back into the use of Kaplan and Norton's strategy map, which I will pick up next time.

eMail subject line

I have seen some interesting result from a recent email marketing campaign that I thought may be of interest. Interesting but in reality not that surprising really.

The email was for a summer sale for a maternity company that I work with. The email subject line was set as "Re: Summer sale 50% off all clothing". On the face of it this appears to be a fantastic offer, but when reviewed against a previous email it inspired just slightly fewer people to open it (percentage wise).

Two previous emails produced better results using keywords in the title, in the cases in question "Maternity" and "Baby".

Relevancy is a key theme that plays a role here. We are bombarded with sale headlines from the hundreds of companies in our emails all the time. People are now switching off to a general sale and not surprisingly. Generally when I go to a sale it is all the rubbish that the store couldn't shift. Chocolate fondue sets was one mentioned by a top retailer recently.

Sadly the company in question doesn't have accurate data on which users have viewed particular items, we are therefore unable to tailor the emails to individuals. We can however use Google Analytics to show us what the majority of people are looking at but not buying. We can then use that for the basis of the next email, being sure to take out the customers on the email list that have purchased the product recently.

Future emails might therefore read Re: 50% in our summer sale.

I would obviously welcome your thoughts on this.

Customer Proposition Continued

Earlier in this blog I did start some ramblings about customer propositions and I thought it might be time to carry on where I left off.

Having identified our customers and segmented them, we have started to build propositions that should suit each of the segments or where segements over lap the propositions may suit more than one. It is then important to build up the messaging around that propositions.

The web allows you to easily deal with a number of different propositions, as it is realitively cheap to build 2 websites with slightly different branding to appeal to two different markets. This way you are providing clear messaging to two different groups without confusing either group.

A company that has built up the multi brand messages well, is N Brown a provider of fashion to multiple sectors. The following chart shows a breakdown of their brand propositions taken from a presentation by their CEO Alan White at the recent Drapers online fashion event.

The image lays out how the various propositions fit into the market. As a small business it is unlikely that we will be setting up quiet so many different propositions but it does provide a clear picture of how it can work.

In generating a customer proposition you need to look at a number of key aspects these are indentified as the following by Kaplan and Norton: Price, Quality, Availability, Selection, Functionality, Service, Partnership and Brand.

These are quite important as they will require an internal focus to ensure your business is set up to deliver them.

Online Fashion Retailing

I recently attended the Drapers Maximising revenue through online fashion retailing event in London. It was a well attended session with leading industry speakers. Before getting into the business end of the discussion, I must point out that their decision to serve sausage and mash at a buffet, with no seats, tiny table and only provide a fork was interesting. I managed to eat meal without spilling th e food across the floor, which is more than can be said for a previous visit to Bath University who now have an interesting red wine stain on their carpet.

A couple of key points that came out of the session:
1. It is critical that businesses pro-actively manage their online customer service. Some might say "We do this already." But are you aware of what you customers are saying about you elsewhere. Where as in the past a customer would tell 10 of their friends about a bad experience they can now tell the rest of the world. The larger businesses are now tackling this head on and offering a space for customers to feedback even if it is a bad comment. Ultimately this gets bad comments out in the open, but at least it gives the company an opportunity to respond positively. Starting a blog or forumn in a similar style provides customers with a great space to feedback and even small businesses can participate.

2. Free returns good or bad?
eCommerce businesses need to overcome trust issues in order to get customers to buy for the first time. Free returns provides an excellent means to show customers how good you think your products are. One comment was that it can even encourage larger order values as customers pick a couple of items thinking "I'll return those because I am not too sure". But as we all know once you have it in your hands it becomes difficult to send back, for many reasons. Worth noting - don't be afraid to be strict on your returns policy, if the product isn't in a fit state to be resold, send it back to the customer and explain why you will not refund. If you are worried about the impact of free returns why not give free returns as an offer.

Some great ideas. A more detailed summary of the key points will follow on MSI Commerce site.

Developing eNoise

The web provides a great way of generating some eNoise for your business. e-what I hear you cry.

The internet has numerous channels for interacting with your audience. An example would be a blog similar to this one where you can post you ideas and thoughts and allow others to comment.

There are many other similar outlets that allow you to generate a buzz around your company and many of them are free. Search for networking opportunities online and you will find hundreds varying in size from regional sites (business scene) to multi nationals such as LinkedIn.

Most are free to join and some will let you publish articles and general ramblings for free. I have recently joined a number of these as a means of generating some online activity for my site. Business Scene offers the chance for local face to face networking which can be a great channel for driving traffic to your website through your business cards.

Other ways for generating a community around your business include the generation of groups on sites. These are more appropriate for some businesses rather than others. An example would be Facebook, here you can generate a group and showcase your products and company.

As with any online activity there is an overhead associated with it all so you need to choose the one that is most appropriate for your audience, don't be afraid to ask your customers where they look.

SEO for small businesses

It has become clear over the last few months that SMEs really struggle with SEO activities. Although it all sounds easy it is very time consuming trying to make regular and worthwhile updates to your website.

I have found the same situation recently, as well as trying to develop the business I am constantly trying to keep the website up-to-date and make alterations as I go. 

As search engines require you to maintain a level of recency in your site it is worth ensuring that the site is developed with a number of key areas available for editing. 

At least one page if not all should be available for editing so that you can add new content to your site as your business develops. A static site may seem like a nice cheap option but it will cost you in the long run. Especially, if you have to go back to the agency to ask them to make changes. With the ability to edit at least one or more pages the facility to edit the following becomes more critical.

Page titles - these indicate to search engines what is going to be on the page that they are looking at. Make sure you can get into these to make edits to the titles otherwise it will be difficult to stay ahead of the competition if they are making changes.

Meta Descriptions - this is what appears in the search engine results page and is a users call to action. 

Meta Tags - These further allow you to flag to search engines what they are going to find on the page. Although these are now seen as less important (due to abuse) a consistent message across titles, meta  data and content is important.

Recently I was speaking with a company that didn't have access to these features as standard through their site and they were now looking at a large bill to add these changes. Make sure you get these as standard.

Google sites

It has been pointed out that the example link has been removed by the website. I wasn't aware that this occurred. Are you happy to proceed without having seen this?

Software development projects can be a tricky business at the best of times, but if you throw in a virtual team, some time differences and possibly different cultures and there is definitely some cause for concern.

The following can be applied to any business project and is more about making use of ebusiness activities rather than software development.

Projects require a massive amount of communication depending on the number of stakeholders involved. The bigger and more complex the project the greater the number of stakeholders. Equally the larger the project team. Developing communication within the project team is critical and ensuring everyone has all the communication can be a challenge. If the project is over an extended period there is a danger that one member of the team may leave or be off sick. It then makes it difficult to get new project team members up to speed.

Recently I have used Google sites to overcome these issues, providing a free collaboration space for developing your project it offers small businesses a great way to communicate as a team.

In my case all project documentation has gone on to the site and designs for websites are uploaded as pages. This then ensures that everyone is working from the latest documents, plus you can add comments or questions against screens or documents. It is key that all questions that would usually occur in emails are captured in the site. This provides a stored conversation that other or new team members can reference at a later date. It also prevents side conversations occurring. The whole thing is searchable which makes it easy to find things and like a wiki people can add to it as they like. (Although various admin rights can be granted)

The project team have liked it as a collaboration tool and the consensus is that it has really helped with the communication. It also notifies people when changes occur so no one is left in the dark about updates to the project.

You don't have to use Google there are other options, but as an out of the box solution it has worked well so far. I will probably start to use the same function to collaborate with clients in the near future as we operate an open and honest policy.