So you have a customer that you thought you were doing everything right for. You bent over backwards to make sure that their systems were working. You went beyond the bounds of your normal service and they left without a word!

The scary part is without a word. You had no idea they were not happy. The silent customer is always the most dangerous. If they are not communicating, you cannot solve their problems. I have noticed a tendency for these silent customers to believe that you the supplier is phsychic. You have got to get them talking, in fact get them downright rowdy.

Complaints department

Imagine you run a take away. You have all the local businesses ordering their lunches. Imagine you upset one of these customers. This customer is a regular that spends R 25.00 three times a week. What if they left without saying a word? What would you lose?

Thats simple math, take R25.00 x 3 = R 75.00 a week. x 50 weeks = R 3750.00 a year.

If you lost just 10 customers like this a month, you would lose 120 customers a year.

Thats R 450 000 a year that you would save if you were complaint concious.

In a survey in the USA it was found that major companies lost 50% of their customers over 5 years. We have already in a previous article discussed the cost of retaining a client vs getting a new one. All customers have a point of no return. They get a little unhappy bit by bit. Then the straw that breaks the camels back and they are gone. If you think all your customers are happy, you are deluded. Its a basic fact of life.

The strangest part is that unless you are really small and know all your customers by name, you cannot measure this attrition. A study of a bank found that they had as many accounts a year later as they had at the beginning of the study. What they failed to measure is how many silent customers moved to another bank.

You may be gaining as much as you are losing thus no alarm bells are ringing. If you look at your customer, you may find they have become bigger and richer, but are not spending that wealth at your business. If this is the case you are losing. Its math. If your clients are spending less with you but more with your competitor you are losing.

It does not matter how good you are, there is always room for improvement. Best of all is you can get your customers to help. Get them complaining, Make it easy.

If you make it difficult to complain, The money you are spending on getting new customers is wasted. If its easier to go away than complain, customers will leave.

When doing Traffic analysis you have spotted the term bounce rate and wonder what this means and how you can use it. A simple bounce rate explanation is. I came, I didn’t like, I left. In essence Bounce rate trafficc is traffic that did not stick around long enough to look at anything else on your website.

Using Bounce Rate to improve your offering.

First things first, we need to know and understand that a bounce rate of 50% is not abnormal, A bounce rate of 40% is considered very good. I have seen bounce rates as low as 28% on a single traffic source, and as high as 100% for another.
You cannot expect to please every visitor that comes to your website. It is just not feasible. Question: How can I use Bounce Rates to improve my offering?

How good is your traffic analysis?

Google Analytics gives you a whole lot more data than you can use as a beginner to studying your traffic analysis. The most important in my mind is Bounce Rate. When drilling down in my statistics I look at the bounce rate for many reasons. The most important is that I can tell from the bounce rate what people are liking and what they are not.

Bounce Rates are easy to understand.

Lets look at a specific. I study my overall traffic patterns and see a 49.6% bounce rate. What this means is that 50.4% of my traffic is reading more than one article. This is huge, So at least 50% of my visitors like what they see and stick around to read some more.

Understanding Bounce Rates

Looking at the figures above I can extrapolate the following, We have a 507 visits, 1044 pageviews and a bounce rate of 46.94%
so 47% of the visitors visited 1 page only. so 238 visitors visted only 1 page, that means 269 visitors visited the balance or 806 pages or an average of 3 pages each. so that 2 pages per visitor is actually a lot better.

Drilling down to traffic sources and then to referral traffic gives me the following data.

Traffic Analysis

Just look at that bounce rate from Stumble upon. Its obvious that I am pleasing the visitors from Stumble Upon so using Stumble Upon as a social network is working for this site. Look further down the list and you see where we are doing well and where we are not. If the bounce rate from a particular source is high, we need to do one of two things.

Stop using that particular network to market or Find a way to make that network a little more excited about your offering. Tweak articles and test them on that source. Improve the rate a few percent and tweak some more.

If you need some help with analysing your website, maybe marketing help, maybe even getting a site designed, Just contact me, lets talk.

I said this a year ago. As long as the clique at MUTI control what everybody reads, MUTI will suck. Sadly MUTI was for a time a better place. The downvote was brought back with the anonymity OK I was wrong here, I found the moderation link and found the same people downvoting my stuff as a year ago. Already the Clique are downvoting anything that they don’t like.

So sorry, South Africans are negative people, They will not allow something to either drop off the page naturally, They will kick it in the teeth before anyone else can see what their opposition are doing.

Sadly MUTI is not a South African social network but the reserve of the so called “A” list bloggers. This group that keep writing articles stroking each others egos are not making the SA blogosphere a better place.

Jail4Bail The most talked about spam or is it?

The Jail4Bail campaign has upset some folks and I feel for them. Just because its a good cause does not mean that we should be bombarded in social media. There is a point of over exposure. Make no mistake if this had been an email campaign with as many mails been sent, the campaign would have been labeled spam.

I agree with Wezzo, I too didn’t have a clue what the campaign was about. I just saw Jail4Bail every time I opened Twitter, Every Time I went to Muti there was yet another Jail4Bail campaign. I am rather curious as to whether the social media spamming made people aware of Autism, Whether it got people sending their SMS’s. In fact the South African social network is pretty limited. I would even say incestuous. Everyone that “counts” is known, in fact most of them are continuously writing articles about how great their mates are.

Wezzo said The Jail4Bail campaign is social media spam.

To be honest I didn’t really know what the Jail4Bail campaign was all about, I still don’t. I knew it had to do with someone locking himself in a jail cell and only leaving if a certain amount had been raised for some or other cause. The ground breaking concept didn’t excite me enough to read up more about it.

The Biz Community article was more about Rafiq Phillips than the cause. This is great marketing for Mr Phillips who as we all know is super connected, but is not much use for Gerhard Pieterse. I have not seen any reason why I should support the cause, NO data on what autism is and how it differs from any one of a million other causes. Its all about the marketing of the cause. Why should I care?

Gerhard Pieterse, the executive director of Autism Western Cape, has committed himself to voluntary imprisonment as a fund-raising exercise in support of autism. With the goal of reaching R1 000 000 in raised funds, initially, the marketing of Jail4Bail has been much as you would expect: using traditional press releases, and relying on conventional media to spread the word.

To be frank, A well designed website with all the data, The reasons I should care, focus on me and the benefits of me getting involved in the campaign, less on the wonderful marketing opportunities offered by web2.0. Why should I care that Jail4Bail is using web2.0 as a marketing tool to market web 2.0. If Mr Phillips was as slick as he is painted he would have known that he would be accused of spamming the networks. He would have varied the coverage and used a larger footprint with less invasive methods.

Using web 2.0 is not abusing Web 2.0.

What is more important a unique visitor or a repeat visitor? Most web developers are going to say the former. They are wrong and heres why. Unique visitors are browsers or lets call them window shoppers. They are in the mall, they are strolling past your display but are not asking any questions, The wife may say to the husband, Oooh thats nice, the husband may reply, Yes very cool and then they move on.

It’s up to you to make your offering interesting enough to get them to actually enter the shop and ask the questions. “How does this work? How much is it. In order for these prospects to ask the questions you need credibility. So Unique visitors are harder to provide for than repeat visitors.

Repeat Visitors may still be window shopping, but most are looking for solutions, looking for information. When I view my statistics I am always happy to see more repeat visitors than unique visitors, I am most excited when those repeat visitors add to the conversation.

Repeat visitors already know what you do. It costs eight times as much to convert a new visitor to a customer as it does to retain an existing customer. Repeat visitors already have a relationship with you. You don’t have to prove yourself to them over and over. If you use this correctly, the more time they spend on your site, the less time they hava available to spend on your competitors website.

So you are asking, “Why should they come back to my website? They have already seen it.” Now you are starting to ask the right questions, Why should they be coming back. Most websites are about me me me, not about the customer and you are right, there is no point to returning over and over to be met with the same information, That About Us page, The who are our customers page? Why should they care?

Here is the secret, Who knows more about your industry than you? Start giving the seekers information. Your customers will never know enough. Lets have a look at the furniture manufacturing industry as an example. Technology moves on, New items are launched daily. Lets imagine you supply gear to the industry. You are a Wholesaler or retailer of spray painting equipment.

Devilbiss launches a new spraygun. You are the first to know, You do an article like the one on Router Bench. The article is nothing special, its basically a commented copy of a news article from another website. Please note if you do this always reference the site you got the news from, It is only polite. You are now supplying useful information to a portion of your clients. Who else are your clients could you find news that would interest them?

Do they now have a reson for coming back? Are you adding credibility? I thought so? Why would they not come back over and over again?

Now the thing is in order to do this you need a totally updatable website, Call Guy on 013 745 8337 or just email me from the contact page if you need help with doing this.

If you are supplying good information, many of your visitors will want to keep in touch. Are you giving them the opportunity? This is one of the best and cheapest tools to use to corner the market. If you are not collecting email addresses off of your website you are losing possible custom.

Having said that getting the data is more than just sticking up a form, people are loathe to part with their details if you are not answering that question, Remember “Whats in it for me?” If your website gives you credibility and authority to the subject you are promoting it is just a little easier. You will notice I use some encouragement. Not only do I supply pretty good information about my subject. I am willing to give you a free report “10 things to do to improve your website ranking today” if you give me permission to send you a weekly tip on improving your website marketing.

Once you have the clients permission and their email address you can turn your site into a wonderful marketing machine as long as you don’t overdo it. Remember the rule “What in it for me?” If the permission is abused or misused, it will be punished with an unsubscription.

Things not to do with these addresses.
1) Send daily special offers
2) Send weekly special offers.
3) Send overly self promotional material.
4) Send pages of adverts from other people.
5) Send weekly newsletter with no value to the reader.
6) Send daily quotes or jokes if thats not the offering.
7) Send religious messages if thats not what was signed up for. Send cute “sparkly friendship messages” that were not requested.

You spam your list at your peril. If they asked for a weekly marketing tip, thats what they want. Yes a marketing message is expected, but a marketing message with nothing for the customer is not.

I am sure this advert should be banned for being awful, What do you scheme?

It is cruel to white South Africans and dogs and cats.

The following factors are important when planning, creating or renovating your website. Do you have a purpose, Have you considered

1)Revenue Generation.
How is your website going to generate the revenue needed to sustain it, something I find interesting is that people talk about exposure when they should be talking about results.

2)Data Collection
What data do you want to collect, How are you analysing the results, the benefit to your bottom line.

3)Information Source
What Information are you supplying, How pertinent is it to your market and how valuable a resource is the site for your customers.

4) Distribution
Is the site distributing the information that you are making available? How succesful are you at targeting your prospective client base. In thois regard how many repeat visitors is your site getting, How many new ones that never return?

5)Reconstruction
How easy is it to give your site a makeover? How much information will be lost in a major upgrade?

6)Feed Back and Complaints.
Can your customer use your site as a communication point to tell you that they are disatisfied? Are you able and willing to solve your clients problems transparently?

7)Fan Club
Are your fans visible, can they tell your other customers how great you are, How well you did the job for them?

8)Communication
Can your customer find you, communicate with you and get the help he wants.

If your site does not do these things, you have to question, why not? The watchword is show me the money. Which company, Organisation or person would spend a R 1000.00 for no return? Questions would be asked and pinkslips issued. Yet most companies from the smallest to the largest will spend from R 5000 to a R 100 000 on a website that will not generate any return.

I am not talking about e commerce, or web site sales. I am talking about websites that do not meet a purpose. I am talking about websites that will never be seen except by a select few.

Even Schools, charities and hospitals can use there website for making money. There is no reason for a website not to generate revenue. If there is a way to do that, why are you not? Its not what you say, its how you say it. A Website is not about the design, Lets face it a wel crafted site that gets no feet is a failure.

Getting your message across is not about telling people what you want them to hear, Its about finding out what they want to know. Two way communication is always superior to one way communication. Remember your customers needs keep changing. Imagine you have a hardware store. This week you have a special on bolts and nuts, I don’t need them so an opportunity may be lost when you send me your special offers. There is no benefit to me from your communication, If I receive three communications like that in a row you have lost me.

One of my clients runs a tyre shop. His average customer sees him every 18 months. No more no less, Should his customers receive a special offer on tyres every month, they would start ignoring the emails. Gary needs to find out what his customers would like to see in a regular newsletter? What would you as a car owner like to get from Gary, How about safety tips? What about motoring news? you tell me, I have a comments section below, Give me your opinions.

Heres the thing, there are a million order takers out there selling goods and service, not giving any help to the customers, I know you have dealt with a company that doesn’t care. Lets just think. Your bank? Your telcoms supplier, your local bottle store?

Sometimes you know you are the second choice, Your company is not the biggest, doesn’t have the advertising budget. I say you don’t have to be number one. Keep plugging at your second position and eventually the number one is going to stumble. When that happens you are right in position to move in.

Remember not every opportunity is a sale opportunity, Frequently the other bloke got there just before you, has a better price, a better sales patter. Maybe they have been dealing with him for a while. People don’t like change. Imparting good information make you credible, trustworthy and their desire to work with you will increase as you become relied on for useful information.

Your website is the ideal tool for supplying this information. It is the ideal situaution to become a credible expert in your field.

Guy has been building websites and helping customers with internet marketing since 1996. If you want any more information, Just call Guy now.

Most of them are anyway. Facts are that 90% of websites are a cost to the businesses and not an asset. If your website is invisible it is dead, costing you money and is in fact even worse than that non performing salesman you hired a few years ago.

Most people go online to get information, but what do you see at most websites - A portfolio… See the problem? Most advertising fails because the customers want information and help. The majority of communication fails to do just that. My question here is why should the customer care that you have a mission, a vision and a Black empowerment policy. Do these things deferentiate you from your competition?

Your website should be about the client not about me me me. This is the main reason that websites fail to give results. The client wants you to communicate with them, supply them with information and help. Do you think that a Guest Lodge website with pictures of beds is any different to any other guest lodge? Are you really selling bums in beds? OR are you selling something else?

You need to be talking about the client not about YOU. If you are talking about YOURSELF, Nobody cares, seriously no one gives a crap. If the website does not answer the question, “Whats in it for me?” for the client, it’s definitely not worth the time of the client.

A good website does..
Give information and build credibility
Builds the brand and allows you to earn off the brand
Builds customer loyalty
It allows communication, clients should be able to use it as a suggestion box.
It solves problems
It is a salesman and should do the job.

Show me the money!!! Which of you would spend R 10 000 on advertising and be happy with no results. I am guessing that spending the money with no result is only in the realms of fantasy and the ultra rich. Having a website may be fun but the costs are visible. If they are not paying for themselves websites are waste of time and money.

Care to learn more? Get my free ebook, 10 sites that support your website and make it profitable now, Just subscribe to my list and you will get it in your mailbox at no cost.

If you want a free consultation about your website call me now.

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