In the previous section we understood the process of building a website for maximum usability and customer appreciation. Building a website, alone, does not guarantee success. A website should always be coupled with efficient and effective back office and support services. These are essential for order fulfillment and customer service as well as for attracting new customers and retaining your present subscribers with interesting offering and services.
This section discusses in detail setting up some of the significant back office and support services.Setting up a password protected administrative interface is essential as this allows you to manage and administrate your website as well as the data in your web application. The best way to manage the textual content is through the use of a Content Management System, which is discussed later on in this section. Some of the features of a good administrative interface are:
This feature would enable you to view your website after you make changes to it, without having to leave the interface. In some cases, you are required to log in to your administrative section to make changes and then log out to save and view the changes reflected in your website. This should be avoided. The administrative interface should be such that you can preview changes from the interface itself.
The administrative interface to your web application should have a feature that allows you to retrieve, manage and process customer orders securely. Your application could either just provide you a list of the current orders with relevant details or you could build functionality to process orders online and also perform analysis of orders received such that it can provide valuable insights to your business. If your customers have ordered products that get delivered after some time, you may even like to provide your customers the facility to view their order status and track the delivery schedule.
Access to the customer database should be provided from the administrative interface. You should be able to manage your email lists as well. Editing and managing customer profiles and accounts is a vital function that will be required in membership websites. You should be able to add, edit and delete customer accounts, manage and maintain customer records and billing statements. You can also have provisions to temporarily disable customer access for specific customers and open up the access again.
If you are managing a subscription site with extensive customer activities and transactions/billing, you may need to view details of customer accounts and track their usage status. This may also be required as part of your customer support and help desk services, if they have questions related to their account. You may have set up your site such that when a member signs up for a subscription, there is an approval stage. The interface should prompt you for each new sign up and should facilitate you to process the request and grant approval (or denial) expeditiously. Auto responders would also be required as an interim message from your side.
Your site has also to store customer’s user names and passwords. The passwords may either be selected by your customer or your site may have an auto-generated password at the time of accepting a sign up. Generally, autogeneration of password facilitates a sort of authentication and verification that your customer is indeed genuine user of the email address provided. In case of paid websites, this may not really be necessary. In any case, your site must provide a facility to your members to change their password and for providing them information about their username and password if they forget their password. All these functionalities should be built in within your customer database management module.
The administrative interface should also have in built features to allow you to back up important files pertaining to your customers and products. You must plan for service interruptions and business continuity as appropriate for your size of business and criticality. Efficient and disciplined data back up and restore facility must be part of the administrative system of your website application. You may also need a facility to purge data from your database after a specific time interval, otherwise your database will just grow and may become unmanageable. You should notify your customers if some of the data they have stored on your site is going to be purged at a specific time interval, allowing them to copy it to their system if they wish to.
Websites are great tools for one-on-one marketing and customizing information flow per user. Your website should allow users to identify themselves to the site, and help them personalize their online experience.
Once logged in, users should get their very own home page, which summarizes all the information that is important to them. They can customize the page by setting up their profile, and by adding important information and categories from the site to their home page. Whenever there is a change in content of their interest, they can be notified by email. They can also set a list of new information or product categories to watch. They can store a hot button or quick access link on their home page and thus quickly access the content or section that they generally access.
Your website should be such that it allows easy administration and flexible policies to be created for large volumes of content. Visitors can be restricted to certain parts of the site. The website itself should have the ability to set up restricted-access zones, using a security system. This allows the administrator to restrict users to a particular zone just by placing one restriction at the top page of the hierarchy. All other pages inside that page are automatically protected. This means that you can easily create a restricted access or members-only area on your website that only a selected set of users can access.
A content management system is the tool that allows you to easily and quickly update content on your website. A content management solution gives you complete control of your own content. With the use of e-commerce and email functionality included, you can administer all content through an easy-to-use web-based interface. Updating content is simply a case of making changes, and submitting them with the click of a button.
The Content Management System is a password-protected administration system that allows you to update and add content to your website instantly. If you are an information-based website you can add news, articles and pictures. If your site is selling products and services you can add new products or edit the pricing or description of existing products. It also allows content archiving and purging, which is vital for back up purposes.
Content Management systems allow you to set up different users such as administrator, publisher, editor, and author. The author would be responsible for writing new content, which can be sent to the editor or the manager for approval and editing. Once edited, this content is sent to the publisher who again approves the content and publishes it directly on the website.
Apart from these you can completely manage and maintain your customer records and information. You should always select Content Management solutions that are customized to your website requirements. This would allow many options to be included or added at any time to your website management needs. For instance, if you require comprehensive traffic statistics or if you are looking to send out email campaigns these options can be added without affecting your workflow and with no downtime to your website.
If you are looking to evaluate Content Management Systems that are available in the market, you must select one that matches well on the feature list that you need. Do not select software that caters to multiple authors and multiple stages of approval, if that is not the process applicable to you. You may choose to use commonly available systems such as Microsoft’s Front page to manage your site design as well as content or you may choose systems that have a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor and allows persons who do not know HTML programming to update content on your site.
Other features that you could look for in a Content Management System are:• Comprehensive Administration Interface - This administrative interface would allow you to handle much of the site maintenance, thus minimizing ongoing expenses for the website. Using this interface, you can add, modify and remove categories, indexes, subcategories, manufacturers, products and customers.
• Collaborative authoring of content and content building and provisioning - Several authors can contribute to your site content and their material can be written directly using this system so that it can be logically positioned in folders that reflect the site map. Another benefit is that consistency of format can be ensured through this use.
• Processing workflow – You can set an editing and approval workflow, if you have multiple content contributors and editors. A good system can provide you meta data to keep track of each piece of content as to which system user has authored it and which user has edited it and when. It can also provide the facility of version management and roll-back in case you wish to revert to an earlier version while editing a piece of content
• Separation of content from the graphics interface or template – This feature allows you to make changes in content without any change in the graphic look and feel of the page and the navigation and menu bars. A person can quickly update the content without making any changes to the “design” elements on the page. Moreover a good system also allows you to change the template for an entire section or even the entire website just by a single change rather than going to each page of your website and making the changes on each page. This is achieved by storing the content (text) in a database and associating each content piece with a pre-defined template.
• The use of a simple editor facilitates making changes by using a normal word processor type of features – no need for knowing HTML tags and doing a lot of precision cut paste directly on the code.
• Automating the publishing after all approvals and previews have been completed, without the need of performing FTP to the web server. This quickens the update process. You can, of course, set the schedule such that a specific change will take effect on the site at a pre-determined time.
The importance of the Content Management System is greater in content and information sites, particularly paid sites. The need for providing fresh and frequently changed content is vital and you need software that makes this process smoother and fully controlled by you rather than by your webmaster.
Email Auto-responders and remindersThe auto-responder is a program that automatically sends a reply with a predesigned response to any email address that sends email to you. It is also often called infobot, autobot, auto-mailer, or responder. Auto-responders are great for confirmation messages, much like your answering machine on the telephone. .
The auto-responder allows you to capture the email addresses of your visitors; so you can build your own opt-in targeted mailing list. The auto-responder will automatically extract the prospects name and use this information in your followup messages. With this marketing tool you can send personalized follow-up messages. If you personalize an email message, your prospect is twice as likely to buy from you.
You can sell your products 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with the help of an auto-responder. You can send your sales letter as a part of any automated response to anyone, anywhere in a matter of seconds with no work on your part.
Following up with your prospects could mean a 50% increase in your sales. Your potential customers may simply forget about your initial message or they simply may have a bad day; for that reason, it is important to follow up with your prospects at preset time intervals after sending your initial message. This is achieved with auto-responders and reminders. A reminder informs your customers about new products or leads them to new content that the customer might be interested in. You can configure your auto responders with business rules to select from incoming mails or your address book, choose appropriate messages based on specific conditions or filters, and also set the time interval when such reminders have to be sent.
Auto-responders should be personalized and designed in such a way that they include the following information:• They introduce your business to the prospective customer
• List out special offers for members
• List out benefits of joining your website
• Compare your product or service with your competitors
• Give testimonials of existing customers
• Welcome letters for new members
• Thank you messages for new orders
• Order confirmation
• Acknowledgement of a query or a receipt of payment from your customer
• A reminder when their subscription or free access period is about to expire.
Your customers should be given complete access to customer billing records and statements on the website and through emails. Ideally a statement should be sent every month and after every order placed. A customer should be able to access the customer billing area. This should give a detailed view of his/her payment options and detailed history of all transactions made.
The customer bill should include a bill number, payment amount, name of product or service, or if it is just a membership bill – membership status and type of membership, payment mode and other details. Information on how to contact a customer representative in case of discrepancy should also be provided.
You may have different levels of membership available at your site and your members may switch their category and graduate to a higher level of membership mid-way through a subscription period. Your application should provide them appropriate set off of the subscription amount for the unexpired period and use this as set off against the new payment. If you charge members for specific usage or download, then customers would like to see the details of the charges in the form a billing statement. You can either use appropriate packaged software for such customer billing and account management, or you may need some custom development to achieve efficient management.
In order to develop a good relationship with your customers, you must provide them with quality customer service. Let them know that, should they have any questions or problems, they are free to contact you. Provide them with all of your contact information to make the process simple. Even if you can't personally assist them, make sure that you have a good customer support group ready to help. Reply to their support requests as quickly as possible and assist them until the problem is resolved.
Customer service is one of the most important factors in determining your customer's satisfaction. Even if you have a great product or service, if your customer support isn't good, your sales will suffer. Good customer service is perhaps the most important way to build your credibility with the customer. When you are doing your entire business online, building trust and credibility is the most important factor. Prompt customer service can make the difference.
For every dissatisfied customer, you can expect to lose one hundred new customers. Why? When one customer has a bad experience with your company, you can be certain that they'll tell everyone they know about their bad experience. It will travel through the grapevine and ultimately cost you sales.
Follow-up with your customers and ask them how they like your product or if they have any questions. This is a great way to not only provide good customer service, but to also obtain feedback about your product. By listening to your customers, you will know exactly what they want, what they're having problems with and how you can develop a better product.
By following up with your customers and providing great customer service, you are creating a life-long relationship. Satisfied customers are more apt to purchase your new products in the future. Treat them with the utmost respect and go above and beyond the expected.
Your customer and support service should include:• A 24 hour toll free number
• Email support that is quick and efficient
• Online chat support
Before the clients purchase anything from you they will probably ask a few questions regarding any concerns they have about your product(s) and/or service(s).
During the first few weeks of business you will experience similar questions constantly resurfacing. You would be fairly well advised to put this regularly asked for information on your website to reduce your administrative workload. Your interested parties will be happy to get the answers to their questions answered immediately; and you didn't even need to lift a finger.
Providing a detailed FAQ (frequently asked questions) page on your site is the first level or Tier-1 support that you are providing to your customer. Have a detailed FAQ page that tries to offer clear explanation of your policies and rules, how the site works and what are the most common problems that customers may face and how they should tackle them. An online help document that provides what is known as context sensitive help (help relevant to the action being taken by the user) provided either through an indexed help document or through friendly pop-ups or blurbs/tool-tips at the right instance can be particularly helpful. Besides, these will really reduce the need for your costly support time.
If you have members spread over vast geographic areas, for example you have customers in Asia, Europe and the Americas and if you have large number of members who undertake frequent downloads from your site or interact frequently with your site, you may have to start thinking of mirror sites (servers) and databases. A mirror site is a replica of your site, hosted on a separate web server with synchronous connection between the two. Some of these servers can be located at data centers nearer to your different customer bases. Thus when a person is interacting with your website, he/she can be redirected to the appropriate mirror site. This distributes visitor load increasing efficiency and providing a superior customer experience.
Clustering is required when the transactions with your website are critical and your site has to be on its toes all the time. Clustering provides you with redundant web server and database server, such that one functions as a back up if the other one fails. It also helps you to distribute your server load between two machines.
Depending on the traffic to your site, time sensitivity and wide geographic reach, clustering may or may not be required.Bulletin boards
Adding a professional looking easy to use web based bulletin board to your site is simple. Web boards allow you to create your own discussion groups, interact with your customers, friends, or associates. Adding a bulletin board to your site is inexpensive.
A bulletin board is an online discussion forum where your customers, friends, or associates can ask questions and post answers, have a discussion, etc. It is an excellent asynchronous method to build interactivity into your offering.
A bulletin board would allow you to have a support forum where customers can assist each other with the use of your product, or, if your site is focused on something like music, visitors could discuss their favorite artist or song. Having a bulletin board can make your site more useful to customers or just every day web surfers.
Bulletin board enhances interaction. It can also be a good way to promote wordof-mouth publicity. If a customer likes your product or service, he/she is very likely to spread the word. A bulletin board is also a great way to allow your customers to keep coming to your site
Many websites such as download.com offer inexpensive and multi-featured bulletin boards. These are not too big in size and can be downloaded and installed on your website easily.
An automated recharge facility can be useful for paid membership websites. This facility automatically recharges a customer account at the end of a membership term. For instance, if a member opts for a one-month membership, with his consent, his account should be automatically recharged for another month at the end of the term.
You should make sure that while the member signs up, he is given the option of automatically recharging his account. The terms and conditions for automatic recharge should be clearly mentioned.
Instructions on how to cancel automatic recharge should also be provided. To encourage your customer to recharge his/her account, you should offer a discounted membership rate. This would increase the possibility of retaining your old customers.
There are paid websites emerging online everyday to the tune of many hundreds. Some survive, some don't. Of these new businesses, many are one-person bands. Some are partnerships as well as a handful of others have formed a company with the view to operating 100% online.
The part which makes or breaks a business like this is the website management and maintenance. Don't assume that once the site is online, your work is completed. If people are to return to the site, it will need to have fresh content in order to make the site "sticky". Since this is the most important part of your online business it is very important to be able to keep the administrative tasks to a minimum.
A well maintained and updated website is very important to attract customers. An attractive and user-friendly site makes the visitor interested. But if the site contains out-dated information or links that do not work, customers are unlikely to inquire for your products or service. For this reason, testing, as discussed in the earlier section should be an intrinsic part of your maintenance process. You should frequently test your site for any inconsistency. Also make sure that your website is up and running at all times.
Make sure your payment systems are intact and that your customers do not have any problems while enrolling with your website. Here are some other tips for maintaining your website.
It's such a drag having to delete all the crap email messages that first of all you never requested; and secondly that are so ridiculously untargeted that the sender obviously has absolutely no idea what he's doing. To these people it's quantity not quality that's important.
One of the great additions to the modern day respectable email program is that of filters.
Instead of sifting through unwanted emails that have been bulk emailed to you, you may choose to have your email program trash everything that comes to your email box without your email address in the "to" field.
Professionalism means as much today as it ever did. How many times have you got the same follow up letter from the same company repeatedly? Even if the company has a great product, this can be very off-putting. The task of grooming your mail list is boring but necessary.
The task of removing duplicating entries by hand should be avoided. It is a function that can best be done electronically. It is too tedious to pass on to another person to do. It's quite likely that many will be missed. Make sure that:
1) New members have been added to your list2) Un-subscribers have been removed from your mail list
3) All requests are automatically deleted from the server when completed.
It saves embarrassment, increases professionalism; and in the long run will assist you in becoming more successful.
The ultimate in automation is when all automated functions can be preprogrammed to be carried out at regular intervals with an in-built scheduler. You can go on holidays and have everything carried out for you in your absence as if you were sitting at your terminal for the duration.