Ten tips to avoid irritating your online customers

Want to complete the sale and have your customer return for more?

Here are a few tips:
1. Don't hide the price until the last minute
2. Do make it clear whether VAT or your local sales tax is included
3. Don't add heavy charges at the end for delivery
4. Or add booking and administration charges (especially per ticket)
5. Do offer a free returns policy so people can try before they buy
6. Don't offer next-day delivery, use a carrier who can't guarantee that and then tell your customer that it's out of your hands and they'll have to wait 9 days before they can make a claim for a lost parcel
7. Don't continue to offer next-day delivery on your web site when you know that your depot is knee-deep in snow and nothing is moving
8. Don't accept the sale, then send an email telling the customer they will now have to stay in between 9.30 and 5 the next day to sign for delivery
9. Do describe your products and services clearly and honestly
10. Do offer to respond to customer queries promptly, and then do it

It's amazing how many organisations, large and small, think they can get away with not following these guidelines, and blame the customer for not reading the small print!

Making your promotions work harder

When you're advertising, leafleting, sending out direct mail - what do you suggest the reader does next? They could just give you a call, or you could give them a web site address for further information. That could be your general web site, or you could put together a special page - a landing page - that relates to your promotional campaign. How helpful would that be to encouraging sales?

Say you are offering special prices for your products or services for a limited time. You could:

• Add a page to your web site called www.xxxx.com/specialoffer or something similar
• Put this URL on your promotional materials as a "call to action" for more information
  

Use this special page to:

• Give extra details about the offer and prices (very important that you expand on you said in your direct mail or advertising - don't just repeat yourself)
• Clearly and obviously explain how to book or buy
• Provide a link to your main web site to explain more about your business
• Include any relevant approved comments from current customers
  
• Provide links to any other relevant sites - perhaps product suppliers, good review sites or anything else that gives your customers a fuller picture about your offer
• Gather together any data sheets, case studies and more that you can provide as downloads in pdf format
• Provide a Frequently Asked Questions section
  

By focusing on a particular offer and giving your potential customers answers to their likely questions you'll raise customer satisfaction and the likelihood of making a sale, as well as doing no harm at all to your professional credibility.