Is your website a magnet, pulling visitors in with best practice components that make it search engine and user friendly?
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Though the finer points and priority can be argued, interactive experts generally agree what a website should have to draw more unique visitors that translate into customers.
1. Keep your website fresh with new content.
2. Maintain best practices for search engine optimization.
3.Provide easy linking to social media activity.
4. Include obvious and duplicate avenues for your visitors to contact you.
Is Your Website a Magnet? Inventory will help you gauge how well your website is set up to to build an on-line presence for you and your business. Each quick section gives insights into next steps for growing that presence by making search engine and visitor friendly changes that will empower your website to work harder and smarter.
Presented for WomenTIES in Albany, NY, last month, the graphic to the left visually depicts these components.
It’s a quick and simple review of the interactive power of your website. You may find a few take-away ideas for changes to make that will boost your on-line visibility and the credibility of your website. If not, congratulations. You’re doing well. Keep up the good work!
I’ve been a Panera Bread fan since they came to town in 2004, long before I was meeting clients regularly in their perpetually busy storefronts. These days, I go to Panera two or three times a week to meet up with colleagues and clients, taking advantage of easy-to-access spacious booths, free wi-fi, hot coffee, delicious pastries and healthy, well-priced salads, soups and sandwiches.
A St. Louis based company started in 1981, Panera gets it right on so many levels that it is no wonder they made Business Week’s 2010 list of top 25 “Customer Service Champs”. But what makes me a raving fan is the Panera Rewards program.
Panera has the easiest, least annoying customer rewards program on the planet. (Disclaimer: I am a total crank about rewards and coupon offers that make you jump through hoops to get a ‘deal’. Make it simple, or forget about it.) Here’s how it works: sign up on-line, show your card when you buy and get free stuff. That’s it. And if you don’t have your card, they look it up for you so you get credit for purchases every time you buy. They tell you when you have earned free stuff and tell you when the offer expires. I don’t have to keep track of paper coupons, % off amounts, bonus limits, anything. All I can say is ‘aaaahhhhh!”
So why aren’t other companies following that model? The E-A-S-Y model, in case you weren’t catching my drift. I recognize that not all products can be offered for free as easily as a $1.80 cup of coffee or $2.75 Cobblestone Sweet Roll. But the concept is still valid – make your customers love you by making it easy to love you. Sending me a birthday e-mail for a free pastry is a smart and simple example of growing the love - thanks, Panera!
From a marketing perspective, the take away is Panera makes a positive impression by being remarkable outside of the direct sales process. They provide simple, easy incentives to stimulate frequent purchasing. They looked at rewards programs from the customers’ perspective and streamlined the process. No hoops to jump through. No coupons to remember. Lots of places have good bread and pastries but no one is rewarding frequent buying quite as simply as Panera. That’s enough to bring me back again and again.
One final story. In yet another brilliant example of customer service focus, Panera impressed a client group I met with recently by showing up unannounced with free cookie packs and catering menus for each person in the group. Panera employees were obviously paying attention, realizing we were in a business meeting and made a point to connect in hopes of gaining our business in the future. Very smart. Very easy. I’ll be back for my free pastry very soon.
There are two kinds of people in the world.
1. Get it done people
2. Get it right people.
One is not better than the other. Both are necessary. In work. In life. In everything.
Companies need this balance. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a company of 150 or a corporation of 150,000, you need get it right people who painstakingly attend to detail so that your products and services shine above others. Always. People who are wired to get it right. Even if it kills.
But getting it right can’t kill the company. You also need get it done people to keep things moving. People wired for ‘good to go’. People who know when it’s time to pull the trigger, make a decision and live or die by that decision.
As a small business owner, the trick is to know who you are. Then the harder thing is to find others of the opposite persuasion to balance your style. That may be employees, a consultant, an outside agency or an advisory board. Whoever you are, find people to balance your style.
Get it right AND get it done. Your company will thank you.
 I recently spoke with a colleague I assumed knew about Google docs , a great collaborative tool that makes it easy for people to share files and track changes on-line. After all, I thought, Google conquered the world with its ever-growing set of internet based tools and products. But I was wrong.
Then last week, I was surprised to learn a web developer friend didn’t know about Skype screen sharing, a collaboration service offered by the company most well known for giving the world free internet calling.
In yet another conversation, a colleague introduced me DropBox, a new way to share files from desktop to desktop without using e-mail. I’d never heard of it, but now it is downloaded to my desktop and is a much used tool that has saved me tons of time and frustration.
These examples point out that we still need each other in real time, voice to voice interactions to share new information as we help each other work and live better. As long as we’re talking, there will be ways to stay on top of what’s new in the world of interactive collaboration and communication. So, it goes both ways.
If you share documents, web pages or files with people you work or live with – and who doesn’t from time to time? – check out these free tools to make on-line life easier. And then call a friend to tell them about it.
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