What Have you Done for Me Lately, Web Designer? Welcome to the Advent of New Web Advertising
Did you have your website built or revamped last year? Has it been longer than that? If you’ve been looking around and putting two and two together, you’ve probably figured out it’s missing some pretty significant upgrades. Have you noticed “Like” or “Like us on Facebook” suggestions everywhere from physical media to websites? Just 12 short months ago, there was no such thing. How about those QR codes you see stuck on the bottom of posters and on magazines and newspaper inserts? Those little black and white squares offer people a chance to hop on your website with a simple scan of their smart phone.
If you don’t have either of these features associated with your business, it’s time you ask your development team, “What have you done for me lately?” and it’s time to integrate those features into your web-marketing plan.
What can the Like button and QR code do for your business? Certainly help you keep up with your competition and offer you a lot of credibility. How so? According to Entrepreneur magazine, Americans spent over $3.4 billion on mobile shopping last year. The same study indicates that spending on mobile phones is expected to reach $163 billion in the next four years.
How much of that should be your piece of the pie?
Additionally, consumers feel confident when spending with a company who has a strong likeability factor on Facebook. Peer approval places you eons higher than self-promotion and is truly priceless in the world of advertising.
Remember, when seeking a web developer to brand and promote your company, it’s important to look beyond brilliant designs and understand exactly how the company can work with you. Your presence on the Internet should keep up with the constant evolution of the web and the ways your customers use instant media to find your company and spend with you.
If your social media and web design firm hasn’t offered you these vital features, talk to them about it or start interviewing other Internet design companies. Your business cannot afford to be in the wrong hands!
We’re happy to answer any questions, any time. We can also help you link your Twitter account into your business so you can tweet breaking news, company specials, fun quips, announcements, and more. We can do the same with Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and many more!
Many thanks for your readership!
~Your Atlanta web development professionals at Your Design Online
A Review of Western Union: Service and Customer Service
Given my interest in companies that provide excellent or dismal customer service, and my tendency to provide feedback on the same (to improve companies we frequently do business with, and also to recommend — or warn — our friends and family), I must share about my experiences with Western Union. Not one experience, or a small handful of experiences, but literally, every transaction I have with WU leaves me frustrated with WU as a service provider, and the fact that there are few, if any, reliable services for transferring money internationally.
So when prompted to provide feedback, I took the opportunity to give it, no holds barred. I honestly hope that they take these suggestions into consideration, but frankly, what are the chances? Here’s a response via a web survey about my most recent transaction:
“OMG, i CANNOT STAND using Western Union, but am forced to because of convenient locations for the receiver. every aspect of interaction with your system, from the automated entry, to dealing with a disinterested live person verifying the info that your automated system has just verified, to attempting to contact live chat support when the live agent disconnects before providing the complete MTCN #, is pure torture.
So here are a couple tips from a guy who specializes in usability in technology and in keeping things simple:
1) i enter my information using the automated system, which agonizes over double-checking that i know how to enter my details via a keypad. here’s a tip: once i enter my Gold Card #, how about skipping the automated readback, and asking me for my birthday, or some other identifying information, easy to enter. again, skip the automated readback. if the birthday matches the information on my Gold Card #, assume i know what i’m doing and skip the remainder of the verification questions.
2) since i’ve confirmed my identity, DON’T have the live agent repeat every question to confirm i am who i am. if your system of transference of the data from the automated section to the live agent is unreliable, get a new system. i can make specific recommendations towards systems that handle this without error, and without frustrating your regular customers.
3) we regularly send money to the same people. i’ll bet many of your customers do. how about storing the contacts so we can simply provide a name, without the extra location data every time we place a call.
4) you have my email address on file. how about assuming that i would like a copy of the transaction data emailed to the address on file, so i don’t have to contact support when the live agent disconnects in the middle of reading the MTCN #.
5) contacting live chat support to get information that the live agent failed to provide, the window tells me I’m #3 in the queue, and that my typical wait time is a minute and twenty. Cool, i can handle that. But sixty seconds after my estimated wait time is over, the window times out and asks me to request email support. Really? I should have the option to email support, but what if i want to wait that 60 additional seconds to connect with a live agent? i had to connect to chat four times before i could actually get to someone.
6) i would love to use the website for our transfers, but don’t get me started on the issues we’ve had there. not to mention that transactions performed via the website, a system which is FULLY automated and requires no human interaction, costs $40, while a phone call, which uses an dinosaur of an automated system, plus taking several minutes of a live operator’s time to verify the same information i just entered, costs only $15. i’m not a tightwad, but the difference for the amount of time spent is just nonsense. human capital is more costly than technology — your pricing logic makes no sense.
summary: the easier you make your systems for your customers, the easier your systems will be for your agents, the less time they will spend per call, and the less frustrated your regular customers will be.
given my experience with Western Union, i half expect this comment field to be cut off after 50 characters, so nobody from WU may read this far, but it will be in print on the web, if you should care to read it. the moment a company comes along and provides a service that can feasibly replace Western Union for money transfer, i’m game for a switch.”
E-commerce: Cart and Checkout
What is e-commerce? Technically, it is a subset of ebusiness or electronic business with the core definition of it being about buying, selling, and exchanging of goods and services online. Have you ever bought something on the internet that you paid for using Google checkout or PayPal or your credit card? If so, then you just participated in the so-called ecommerce. More and more people are embracing ebusiness; we know as Your Design Online has been busy developing and designing several of these Virtual Storefronts, mostly for B2C (Business-to-Consumers) and B2B (Business-to-Business) websites.
Making awesome websites can be a piece of cake for YDO, but we spend a little more time polishing the focal point of creating these ecommerce sites: the checkout user experience.
Have you abandoned a shopping cart before? Well most of us probably have. If it’s a bad credit card, there’s nothing we can do about it but as far as simplifying the ordering and checkout process – that’s where we come in. A good ecommerce website must have a simple yet effective checkout process which is exactly what we want to achieve for our clients.
While different ecommerce websites have unique requirements, take YDO in and you are sure to have a nice mix of a wonderful web design and better conversion rates for your products.
A little something that ecommerce website owners and web designers must read: Fundamental Guidelines of E-Commerce Checkout Design