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What Does Your Customer Really Want?

It's as important today as it was before the invention of ecommerce and the Internet. No matter what business you're in, customer feedback is one of the most important things you'll need to work out if you want your business to grow and become successful. To that end, the Internet has presented the online entrepreneur with a great advantage over his predecessor who could only rely on postage stamps, envelopes and the telephone to get an accurate feel for his customer. Today's business owner has the use of technology that makes getting a feel for what the general consumer wants almost instantaneous with technologies like email and pay per click testing. There's absolutely no reason in today's world for the business minded go getter to design a static web site that's got only what he or she thinks the customer wants on it.

In the Internet world, getting the necessary feedback is fast and a lot cheaper than the methods used only several years ago. In virtually minutes, it's possible to gather information from customers who bought from you-what it is they bought, and how much they spend, as well as whether they plan on coming back. This kind of data can be gathered and analyzed in house. There is no need to guess at what attracts customers to your site and what keeps them there. Almost all website hosting accounts include ways to track the statistics for your website such as which page is popular, how long they're staying on your website, what they like or dislike and so much more.

There's no reason not to build your site with the intention of adjusting at least the written content once you've got it online. ALM gives you the option of allowing you to change the content through an administration site at will. By following the visits to your site, you should be able to quickly adjust the written content to get a good idea of what works and what doesn't.

Other methods combine the new technologies with older more traditional methods. "Was this information helpful?" boxes somewhere on various sites should give a clear indication of how the site works. Some of these even go a step further and ask respondents to number their responses from one to ten.

Remember that you're trying to sell something when you start an online business. Following the trends, regardless of your personal opinions of them, can be a great way to keep your site on or near the top of the page rankings. For example, one of the latest trends is incorporating video into your websites. These short clips are on the cutting edge of what's popular today and they add an even more personalized touch to the other graphics and sound bites available to web designers. These videos often introduce the principles in the company or demonstrate part of the product line.

Pizza! Pizza!

Our Enterprise RMS (Relationship Management System) is an all encompassing Web based system designed for Pizza companies that have multiple locations. The system contains a main portal site (for the corporate Web site) and a separate Web site for each individual location. The system is designed for maximum flexibility in all aspects. There are no limits on the number of locations the system can support.

Click on the image below to see a live demo! Our graphic artists will customize the look and feel specifically for you!

The base system has an incredible number of features built in:

I. Content Management
A. Site Owners can EASILY update any text and format it accordingly on any page of the Web site. Parts of pages can be blocked to edits for the individual locations, entire pages or anything in between. Photos can be changed, new ones uploaded or old ones deleted.
B. Event Calendar- Special events can be highlighted to the site visitor in a typical calendar format. Events are easily created and deleted by the site owner.
C. Blog- Site owners can post a Blog on the site that is easily updated in real time.
D. Testimonials- Site visitors can post comments on their experience. The comments do not show up on the site until the site admin approves them.
E. Services: A default services page will be set up by the corporate entity and individual locations can choose which of these services, if not all will show up to the site visitor on their individual sites.
F. Job Listings: Each location has the ability to post job listings and receive form submissions with prospective employees.
G. Products listings: Default menus of products such as food entrée’s, merchandise, class sign ups or any other product can be set up in the system. Individual locations can then be allowed to choose from the default menu, which products they want to offer for their sites or the entire menu. We customize this area to the client’s exact specifications.
H. Promotions- Specific areas of the Web site can be set up to contain a default menu of promotions. These can be graphical in nature such as coupons or they can be shown in text. Site owners and administrators can simply click these promos on or off depending on their individual sites needs.

II. Communication Center
A. Message Board- A secure encrypted (not viewable to the outside world) Message Forum with unlimited categories and sub categories. Individual locations owners can use this tool to communicate with each other and discuss ideas etc.
B. Help Desk- This Help Desk feature will allow the site owners and locations owners to open trouble tickets. These tickets can be addressed by the site owners or for site bugs can be administrated by ALM.
C. Mass Emailer- This email system contains HTML templates that can be easily edited by the site owners/admins. The email can be sent to all customers in the database or to configurable partial lists.
D. Downloads Area- Site owners/admins can upload Pdf documents, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets etc. to this area for download by individual site owners/admins.
E. Users Guide- a comprehensive Users Guide for operating the system is customized for the client.

III. Reporting Center

A. Financial Reports- Customized, detailed financial reports that can be accessed by custom levels of User authentication. If the site is set up to conduct eCommerce transactions, full reporting on those transactions will be available. Reports can also be imported from another source should the client need to have reports on information from their current POS systems etc.
B. Site Analytics- Highly detailed reporting on site traffic is available using Google Analytics. Unique visitors by hour, day week, month, year are available as well as Search engine tracking, keyword tracking, browser tracking etc. etc.
C. Change Log- Detailed records of site content changes are kept to insure the security of the system.
D. Customized Reporting- Clients can request any type of customized reporting necessary for administrating their business.

801 Cherry St. Suite 1075 Fort Worth, TX.

This 40 story, 1,024,627 square foot building is the tallest in Fort Worth at 567 feet and is the city's largest office building. it was constructed on the site of the Medical Arts Building, by Wyatt C. Hedrick. It was designed by Sikes, Jennings, & Kelly Architects from Houston, Texas and Geren Associates from Fort Worth. The building has two distinct facades. The eastern side, facing Burnett Park, resembles the Bank of America Building. The western facade features the elevator core of the building as a design element. In order to construct this skyscraper, the Medical Arts Building, an 18 story early Fort Worth landmark skyscraper, was demolished. KDFW-TV (Fox 4) and WFAA- TV (Channel 8, ABC) have cameras located on top of the building to show views of the city during their newscasts. A major tenant is Burlington Resources. Worth National Bank occupies the bank space on the ground floor. They also operate a drive-thru motor bank on the first level of the adjacent parking garage. Alonti Deli is in operation on the retail level of the building located in the basement.

The Top 7 Reasons Why Your Customers Hate Your Web Site!

It’s boring! It looks exactly the same as it did 6 months ago and has no new content!
It contains incomplete information! They expect more details!
There is no interactivity! Your customers want to interact with you and they can’t! They want to purchase something from you when it’s convenient for them, not necessarily during your normal business hours! They want to see their order history, or maybe they want to send information to you and get information back from you immediately!
There aren’t enough images! “Pictures say a thousand words”. They want more photos and video!
They can’t find you! You need to provide cutting edge mapping technology to your location.
Your site navigation is confusing! They expect your site to be well organized.
They expect the latest technology! Can your web site alert your customers to breaking news by sending a text message to their mobile phone or post an alert to their computers desktop? Many of them want these technologies.

7 ways ALM can help you overcome these problems!

Our new CMS (content management system) is so easy! If you can use Microsoft Word, you can easily update your own site in minutes!
The site we create for you can have unlimited pages! 1 page or 1000, it’s the same price!
Our cutting edge eCommerce shopping cart makes it so easy for your customers to purchase from you; they will come back more often.
All of our solutions come with photo galleries that are extremely easy to update. We will also “Flash compress” your videos to add motion to your site!
Standard in all of our applications is the Google mapping API that is completely customizable for you!
We can design your site so that your visitors can actually drag and drop your navigation bars around on your site. This makes your Web site work more like desktop software that they are already familiar with!
If you can dream a feature that will help you manage your business, we can build it for you and incorporate it into a Web based solution!

Local Buyers “Invading” Local Websites

A recent study by the Kelsey Group confirms what most of us already know, but all too rarely think about: Seventy percent of all U.S. households now use the internet as an information source when shopping locally for products and services.

As America’s leading provider of market research and analysis to publishers of Yellow Pages, electronic directories and other local print media, the Kelsey Group knows as much about local buying trends as any research organization anywhere. Among other things, they use daily consumer surveys and statistical analysis to evaluate business, social, economic and technology trends that are changing local markets and forecast how those trends will effect local and regional businesses.

So when the Kelsey Group says that small businesses without a web presence are at a serious competitive disadvantage in today’s shopping environment, you can take that opinion to the bank.

The fact that consumers in 70 percent of American homes are now using the web to research products and services they intend to purchase locally, also puts a tremendous pressure on local and small-business websites of all types to increase both the size and, most especially, the quality of their online presence. Think about it for a moment. If you’re a local businessperson with a sporting goods, apparel, toy, drug, consumer electronics, or any one of a dozen other types of stores, you’re not only competing fang and claw with WalMart, Kmart and Target in the brick-and-mortar environment, you’re also going head to head with them online.

If a consumer in Your Town USA likes Walmart.com better than he or she likes YourSite.com, they’re more likely to get in the car and go to Walmart to make their purchase than they are to visit your store.

Fortunately, there’s good news as well as bad in the Kelsey Group report.

Let’s read Kelsey’s conclusion again. Carefully.
Seventy percent of all U.S. households now use the internet as an information source when shopping locally for products and services.

Long about the middle of that sentence we see two crucial words: Information source.
That 70 percent isn’t necessarily using the web to decide where to buy products. In a vast number of cases they’re using the web, to get information on what to buy and why product A will work better for them than product B.

Fortunately for small-business entrepreneurs, big-box store websites generally do a fairly miserable job of providing any information beyond the barebones descriptions printed on product boxes. And they provide absolutely zero information that will help anyone except totally generic consumers decide what to buy.

Two quick examples: Neither Walmart.com nor Homedepot.com offers any real guidance to help people decide which of the many snow blowers they offer is best suited for dry, dusty Montana snow and which aren’t terribly good on powder but are excellent for the heavy, wet snow common on the East Coast.

Staying with seasonal products, some air conditioners are engineered to give peak performance in hot desert climates; others work best in hot, humid conditions. National chain websites don’t tell consumers which is which, local appliance store sites can — and should. Though it may not be immediately apparent, the fact that a huge number of local consumers are turning to the web for information is of incredible benefit to savvy local businesspersons competing with big chains.

What keeps local TV and appliance vendors, for example, in business when the same products are available in big box stores for less money? Nine times out of ten, there’s two one-word answers to that question: Expertise and service.

Some chains, think Circuit City and Best Buy, do make an effort to have their “sales” people memorize a line of technological patter about the various products they’re selling. But such information is generally sketchy at best and, at worst, totally compromised by which companies are offering the best “spiffs” (extra commissions on specific models the companies are trying to unload) on any given day. Then there’s Walmart, Costco and all the lesser “marts” and “co’s.” Try and find someone there who can intelligently explain the pros and cons of plasma vs. LCD flat-panel HDTV. The “try and find someone” part is often difficult enough, the intelligent explanation part is almost always impossible.

Consider the difference at a local consumer electronics/appliance store. Yes, the prices are somewhat higher, but the staff is educated, they know their stuff. If they didn’t, they would have gone out of business years earlier.

And they’re a lot less likely to sell you an inferior product just to pick up a fast 20- or 30-buck “spiff.” Dependent, unlike chain stores , on repeat customers and word-of-mouth advertising, their imperative is selling you what will work best for you, not what will make a few extra dollars for them. With more and more retail shoppers turning to the web for their preliminary product research, local businesspeople are now able to establish themselves as their community’s real specialists in their fields online as well as in their stores.

Adding well-written professional content — articles, blogs, extended product information — to local sites elevates local businesses above chain stores. It gives customers confidence in the merchant as well as the merchandise.

To go back to the HDTV example, a blog discussing technology, programming, surround sound, room lighting and all kinds of consumer questions that are never answered on BigBoxStore.com can drive customers away from Walmart and into local stores. Similarly, a local garden products retailer can use a website to win customers away from the chains by including regularly updated articles on local climate and growing conditions.

One of the really great things about adding more quality information to a website is that it’s one of the few business moves you can make that has absolutely no downside. Unlike buying more newspaper advertising or radio spots, adding pages to a site generally costs nothing. Even if you don’t feel comfortable with your copywriting ability, acquiring customized web copy from a service like GetWebContent.com is relatively inexpensive.

You don’t even have to worry about providing too much information. The more questions you answer online, the more new ones consumers will think of. Best of all, the new questions will more advanced — much more impossible for a big box store clerk to answer — than the original ones.

Imagine Customer A, a true newbie, looking at a 56-inch TV in Costco. The four-line information tag says “Dolby Digital sound.” After a great deal of effort, Customer A lassos a clerk and says “that Dolby Digital there, is that the same thing as surround sound?” The clerk, not knowing or caring if the set’s surround sound is dependent on external speakers, says “yes.”

Not a complete answer, but more or less correct.

Now consider Customer B, who’s studied HDTV 101 on your website. Customer B goes to Costco, lucks into an employee, and says “Does this set support 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 surround sound?” Look for that person, Customer B, to leave Costco, shaking his or her head, and drive straight to your showroom.

The morale of this story is simple: A huge percentage of your potential customers are already taking a close look at your site’s content, maybe you should join them.