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We bought a custom-made interior glass door from Lowe’s for $400 here in Hampton Roads, Virginia seven weeks ago.

It was supposed to be ready for delivery tw0 days ago.

Actually, it was supposed to be ready for delivery well over two weeks ago, but a store representative called to matter-of-factly let us know that the door we had ordered had fallen off the forklift in the manufacturer’s warehouse and was unfortunately damaged in the process.

The door, a special-order item, had to be re-made once again.

Okay. a marginal inconvenience…stuff happens.

We were assured that we would be contacted two days ago that the new door was ready for delivery.

That time frame came and went.

No call, no email, no door.

Lowe’s…hello! Where the heck is our door?

We’re already making payments on that non-existent door we ordered.  We called and couldn’t get an intelligent human being on the phone to give us a status report on that door.  Curious, isn’t it,  how store staff suddenly get deaf, dumb and mute when you demand customer service yesterday.

Email requests? Again, no response.

Where is that door we ordered?

Big businesses well-represented online and in their own brick-and-mortar stores need to realize that they can only jerk us, their customers,  around only so long before we post very negative reviews about their business practices on websites like epinions.com, my3centsworth.com, or ripoffreport.com.

Sad to say, those bad reviews tend to last forever once captured in the unforgiving universe of the world wide web.

Who cares?  We care – those of us who comprise that trifling group of money-wielding consumers who keep businesses like Lowe’s in business. They’ve got competitors out there (does Home Depot come to mind?) and they know it, but – and here’s the rub – their low-rung employees basically don’t give a hang about good customer service in these big box businesses.

Realistically. why should they?  They’re bringing home fifty cents, maybe a dollar or two, above minimum wage.  They have no vested interest in that business they work for nor ensuring customer satisfaction.  These employees are focused on clocking hours, not caring whether we get that custom-made door when we want it. They don’t care that we are already paying for something we haven’t received.

But you, as a small business owner, should care about good customer service.  Especially if a substantial amount of your company sales come from your business website.

You don’t need negative comments and reviews posted on consumer complaint websites.  Your prospective customers are destined to find them.  Trust me, they will.  I know…I’m one of them.

Internet users are Googling like crazy businesses like yours.  Bad reviews and customer complaints will be out there flapping in the breeze, endlessly.

Websites like Emarketer.com will tell you the real deal about having a good reputation with customers online:

More than half of all online sellers considered user-generated content either extremely important or very important to company strategy over the next year.

Your best best is to give each and every customer personal customer service, ensuring more customer revenue from them in repeat sales and conversion rates with new website visitors.

Yeah, it’s that important.

Web traffic is nice, but without that site-to-sale profit margin and strong conversion rate with new site visitors who  research and find negative reviews of your company online, your business is just another poorly-performing website that sits crippled by its own bad online reputation on the shoulder of the  World Wide Web.

I wouldn’t want to have to deal with that kind of  negative business reputation for the long haul.

Doesn’t  it make more sense to ensure that every customer who walks away from your business is satisfied, no matter what it takes?

Lowe’s could learn a lot from small businesses that can’t afford to jerk around its customers.

There are thousands of websites vying these days  for first page results on Google.

Do you know how to make your website one of them?

Everybody with a website  out there who has a clue about search engine optimization is practically doing linear algebra trying to figure out how to get that first page result on Google.

They’re juggling keywords, writing content that’s search engine optimized, twisting their websites this way and that so that they can attract potential customers.

Unfortunately, the rules seem to change constantly when it comes to search engines and for very good reason:  Your potential website visitors are learning to hone their keywords in searches as they’ve never done before.

According to SeoWhizz.net:

Searchers are becoming more search savvy and are beginning to search on specific terms rather than generic. For example, you may struggle to hit the first page for “search engine optimization” but will have a better chance of hitting first page for the keyword “search engine optimization services in London.”

How do you get your website search engine-enabled to hit the mark for first page Google results?

Essentially by optimizing each page with one keyword.  The main keywords for your website may be generic and not very specific, for instance “body building” or “getting fit” but neither of these keywords are going to bring internet searchers to the front door of your website with the millions of websites that are out there using the same keywords.

Instead, target each page in your site with more optimized keywords like, “easy body building in the office” or “getting fit in Indianapolis” which will increase your potential site visitors’ search engine results and naturally bring more traffic to your website.

Think in terms of those who are out there searching for a business like yours.  If you sell insurance, you want your potential customers using search engines to find your website and ultimately buy insurance from you.

If someone searching for life insurance in, say, Nevada entered in a Google search the keyword “insurance”, what are they going to get for results?  A huge search result including everything from a Wikipedia definition of the word insurance to insurance companies literally around the world.

But if someone entered into a Google search, “Life insurance companies in Nevada”,  that’s exactly what the search results will include – insurance companies selling  life insurance in the state of Nevada.

Now, if that searcher hones that Google search to a greater degree, for instance conducting a search for ” life insurance companies in Reno”, guess what that search will involve? You guessed it:  Only those insurance companies selling life insurance in Reno.

Remember:  Business websites are only successful if they attract online searchers who turn into serious buyers.

If you don’t have pages on your website that are keyword focused, you’re destined to lose a lot of online business. Internet marketing is all about understanding from a scientific point of view what makes search engines work in your favor.  Without that edge where search engines are concerned, the bottom line is that your website is going to suffer by literally getting lost online in terms of potential customer searches.

You can have the prettiest website filled with nothing but exquisite content, but if that website doesn’t appear on the first page of results for potential customers on Google (you can stretch that to the second or third page of results, but first page is certainly best), odds are that customers will ultimately buy from another website that appears in search engine results that don’t  include your website.

So keywords on each page of your website are, well, key to getting your website listed high in search engine results.  Focusing every page of your website optimized with specific keywords will increase your search engine placement and inevitably the sales reaped from your site.

How do you accomplish that?

First, by listening to your web designer who knows his or her business in terms of creating a successful website for you based on specific keywords.  Too many business owners tend to be so attached to their own misguided vision when it comes to building a website that they don’t understand the designer has the professional know-how to make those websites successful in terms of search engine results.

Second, by letting the web designer’s content writer who should be (and with today’s sophisticated search engine technology simply must be) highly educated about search engine optimization, compose the kind of content that will ensure high search engine placement for your website.

That means allowing the content writer to take the information you provide about your business and transform it into successful search engine optimized text /content for your website.  That writer knows what works and what doesn’t, skillfully inserting keywords into website content where they are needed for high search engine placement.

If you submit the near equivalent of a book for your website’s content construction, it isn’t going to work toward the success of your business website.  Less is definitely more from your knowledgeable web designer’s point of view and your content writer.  Give permission for the abundance of that content to be included in a menu designation such as Articles or More Info.

Your business represented by that website will profit so much more in the end if allow your web designer and content writer to lead the way in helping you to not only achieve the Google first page results you need for your business but the profits your business deserves.

They know what your business website requires to be a success…trust them.

Got a question for Debi Ketner, Nextfly.com’s  professional internet marketer and search engine optimization specialist? Email her at dketner@nextfly.com.  You’ll get an answer in a future blog post.

You can read her here each week ….share your thoughts!

Expert professional web design.  Search engine optimization.  An exorbitant budget thrown at pay-per-click advertising, email, banner and embedded website ads.

You know what?  All your efforts as a business owner promoting your business online amounts to basically diddly-squat if you don’t serve your website customers when they need you.

My own experience with less than gratifying website customer service in a time of need occurred just this last week.

A lady near and dear to my heart died in northern Minnesota. She was the grandmother to two of my sons.  We as a family wanted to send a meaningful sympathy gift to family members from the East Coast where we live.

Rather than sending flowers, we opted for a food gift.  A meaningful food gift.

There’s a website for just about everything, right?

And there is.

We surfed all kinds of food websites and ultimately decided on one designed specifically for sympathy food gifts. I won’t say which one here, but if you do a Google search for sympathy food, you’ll find it front and center.  ‘Nuff said.

That website has such a convincing sales pitch that we just had to go for it.  The food might seem a bit pricey at first glance, but they actually phone your recipient and schedule an appropriate delivery date that coincides with their needs during such an intense period of bereavement.

It’s a very caring website.  However, we had never placed an order through this website before and wondered day after day, visiting the website and our account information, when the food gift would be delivered.

An inquiry was sent through the website’s customer service form.  No answer.  Another inquiry was sent a couple of days later.  When still there was no response, I located the email address of the CEO for this company on the website and emailed my complaint.

Good customer service?  Maybe it didn’t seem as such initially, but the CEO emailed me personally and called my home twice to apologize and ultimately offered a full refund – even though the food gift was delivered to my recipient less than 24 hours previously.

I declined the refund.

Despite the fact that customer service representatives working the website had not responded to my email inquiries, the man in charge did.  That says a lot when I’m doing business online.

It tells me that business has the kind of integrity that compels the head of the business I submitted my order to online to go to such lengths to contact me and try to make things right.  He offered a full refund of an order that was a little bit more than $100 that had been delivered that very day because he wanted me to have enough faith in his business to become a repeat customer.

He didn’t have to go that far.  You know as well as I do that most online businesses will simply offer an apology (if you get any kind of apology at all) and toss you a discount on either the original order or one you might make in the future. A full refund after the order was delivered? Admit it, that’s practically unheard of these days in the world of e-commerce.

I’m downright shocked by the treatment I’ve received as a customer of this website.  If only other websites would follow suit by doing the same. What a great online shopping experience we would all come to enjoy in the process!

You can have a slick website filled with state-of-the-art graphics, the most innovative marketing formulas in place, up- to-the-minute search engine optimization techniques putting your business website on the forefront of search engines across the internet.  If you don’t have top-notch customer service attached to that website, you can forget becoming a lasting success.

Customers you disappoint – especially if your website caters to those who are hurting and bereaved, those counting on you for their weddings, anniversaries, birthday celebrations and other memorable occasions – these are customers who are destined to bring serious harm to your business reputation.

In my case, the CEO of the sympathy food website I ordered from knew how important it was to get in touch with me and make things right and he did.

Will I buy from this website again? Absolutely.  I know they will deliver what they promise in the future simply because of the CEO contacting me as he did, promising me that such an oversight in customer service wouldn’t happen again.

That kind of assurance goes a very long way in terms of customer service when you’re dealing with people through a business website.

Got a question for Debi Ketner, Nextfly.com’s  professional internet marketer and search engine optimization specialist? Email her at dketner@nextfly.com.  You’ll get an answer in a future blog post.

You can read her here each week ….share your thoughts!

As the New Year was rung in, I caught up with the Nextfly’s Answer Frog and managed to twist his arm enough to get him to answer a few questions about web design for 2010.

Me: Hey, frog.  What’s your take on web design for the new year?

Frog: It’s all about resolutions, darlin’…resolutions.

Me: New Year resolutions? How do they matter when it comes to web design?

Frog: Sheesh, lady…it’s all about learning from past mistakes and making websites even better for the new year!  You can’t rely on what seemed ‘okay’ or ‘good enough’ before.  You’ve got to realize your own mistakes and make those websites better, slicker, more efficient and competitive for the future.

Me: And what kind of resolutions are you referring to…specifically?

Frog: All kinds of them!  Mainly the stuff that professional web designers know but amateur website builders and new website owners seem practically married to when they’re bringing their businesses online.

Me: For instance?

Frog: For instance, all the frilly stuff.  Forget the junky and fancy stuff. Stick to regular fonts and colors that are easy on the eye.  Let the user know what the website is about in 10 seconds or less.  If the site takes too long to load, guess what? That user is outta there!  If you’ve got audio files on your site, let the visitor start it – don’t have it running automatically.  Nobody wants all that blah-blah screwing with their focus.

And don’t use pop ups. Every human being on the planet hates those.  Use anchor text on links, not vague “click here” links – that’s bad all the way around.  And don’t underline normal text to aggravate visitors to the site thinking it’s clickable text.

Me: I’m guessing here that you’re just getting started…?

Frog: Started!?!  I could go on for days!  Like, don’t make visitors like me register on your site. Some websites love to do this to their visitors. Just plain don’t - unless there is a very good reason for it which there never is.  Anybody with a shred of internet awareness knows that these registrations are really meant to give you a potential advertising base.  Or a mailing list to sell to other companies.  Or a marketing cross-section for your company’s analysts to, well, analyze.

Don’t focus on what you might sell me tomorrow.  Give me what I want today which is,  a nice easy way to buy your stuff when I want to buy it without having to jump throw hoops by registering to get it!

Me: You sound a little cynical.

Frog: No, I’m a lot cynical.  Remember, I-am-a-frog.  I am considered ‘food’ to a number of predators out there.  Birds, lizards, snakes, fish and other mammals love to eat frogs.  If  business owners thought about their websites as if they were “frogs”, they would understand the predatory business of the Internet in general.

Me: Sorry, you’ve lost me a little there.

Frog: Geez, do I have to draw you a picture here? I’m saying that putting your business website in the context of being a frog, you realize that competing website businesses are actually predators that will eat your business right up in sales and profits if you don’t do everything you can to put your own best game out there with that website.

So don’t scrimp. Don’t think you’re saving money with a cheaply designed website. All you’re really doing is shouting, “Hey, predators! Come and feast on my stupidity…my website is a nice tasty frog just waiting to be eaten!”

Me: Thanks, Frog.  Your comments have been most enlightening.

If you have a question or a problem for the Nextfly.com frog, ask him a question through me and he’ll give you the real skinny on web design, search engine optimization, internet customer service, e-commerce – whatever it is you need to know!

Putting your business on the internet can easily become one of the most profitable decisions you ever make.

Consider how strong internet marketing is perceived to be in Computerworld.com’s article, “Forecasts project online sales of $215B to $335B annually by 2012″:

Online retail sales in the U.S. are expected to grow about $20 billion to $30 billion each year for the next five years, reaching somewhere between $215 billion and $335 billion by 2012, according to two recently released reports on e-commerce.

And yet, it’s a slippery slope you face as a business owner.  The website you’re building could easily become one of the biggest, most expensive mistakes you ever make – if you don’t create your business website from an educated vantage point by professionals who know the intricacies involved in e-commerce.

This means in plain English:  Home-made/amateur websites won’t give your business the online presence, search engine placement or slick user-friendly, state-of-the-art ‘visitor to customer conversion rate‘ that a professionally-designed website can.

In other words, a website generating serious sales for your business!

Web design has become an intense science

Ten years ago, we were all able to get away with crudely-fashioned websites.  We were basically hanging a shingle out on the internet and that website was ‘good enough’ just the way it was.

Since then, the internet has grown, matured and advanced exponentially in terms of what works and what doesn’t, specifically when it comes to internet presence and search engine placement.  The internet is an intricate science all its own now that a hobbyist website builder can’t compete with by any stretch of the imagination.

The bottom line is, don’t make these mistakes when you are taking your brick-and-mortar business to the Web:

*  What you consider to be a plethora of great content for your website is – let’s face it – probably crap.

You know those websites you land on when you are surfing in search of that “something” you need/want/plan to buy and you encounter clunky, slow-loading, text-ridden sites that make you think, “I’m outta here!”

Sure, you do.

Don’t let your business become one of them.  A professional web design company will sift through the stuff you think you need on your business website and hone it down to what’s critically important to drive sales toward your business and not inadvertently drive customers away because of  a huge amount of  ‘crap’ content.

*  What you think is “pretty and cool” on your website like Flash and JavaScript programs, animation, pop-up windows and other nifty website gadgetry is, again, probably crap.

A professional website designer is going to urge you to go with the KISS theory in terms of your website:  “Keep It Simple Stupid.“ In other words, less is more in terms of professional web design.

Where an amateur website will be filled with clutter and all sorts of Flash and animation that will literally drive prospective customers crazy due to excessive download time or website folderol they just don’t want to pay attention to, a professionally-designed website will give your business presence online  a flawless, high-performance approach from start to finish.

And you’ll profit from that sleek simplicity in the end.

*  What you might believe is good navigation for your business website is most likely also crap.

Designing effective navigation on your site should be left up to what a professional web designer thinks is best to optimize your business website and its keywords.

Remember, a professional web design company knows what works and what doesn’t in terms of successful website navigation and ultimately ‘visitor to customer’ conversion for your business.  Your website’s menus, for instance, need to be keyword compatible for search engine spiders to crawl for better placement.  And yet, you’ve got to be careful that your menus aren’t spamming search engines.  A professional knows how to give your website effective menus and site navigation that is search engine compatible and user friendly for your potential customers.

Therefore, the navigation on your website needs to be near perfection. Without the help of a professional web designer, you are essentially shooting in the dark with a homespun website and its navigation which may or may not give you, or your prospective customers, the results that are needed.

Can you risk an over-the-top website built by an amateur that motivates your prospective customers to buy from your competitors vice a website that’s build on quality, efficiency and performance by a web design professional?

The wrong decision can easily cost you more than you might want to lose in today’s e-marketplace.

Contact Indianapolis Web Design’s development consultants for a free comprehensive quote on giving your website the expertise it deserves to achieve a strong revenue stream for your business.  These guys can also help you re-design your existing website to give it the state-of-the-art internet presence it needs to enable your business to successfully compete online.

Kathy, a regular reader here, contacted me saying she was thrilled with all of the link exchange requests her business website was getting from other websites.

Especially now, just before Christmas.

These other companies must really love her business website, right? she asked.  They must think  her professionally designed website is so popular and so fabulous that they want to give their own website customers the chance to visit her site through a link on their page.  Right?

And if she were to give them a link in exchange to their websites as they requested, that’s only fair…right?

She also forwarded to me one of the many link request emails she has recently received.  It read:

I saw that you link exchange with other websites, so I was wondering if you would like to trade links with my sites.  If you would be willing to exchange links, please use the following:

What followed were a half dozen websites with links and descriptions that Kathy was expected to add as links on her website, like all the other recent link request emails she’s received that included a promise at the end of the email:

Please let me know where you added my links and your website info so I’ll add your links to my pages as well.

Nice enough email, polite enough request…but:  Kathy’s business website doesn’t have any outgoing links, let alone those designated as “reciprocal.”

So to answer Kathy’s question asked three times, “Right?”  The answer is, “Wrong.”

Reciprocal link exchanges are NOT good search engine optimization techniques

First big red flag: Kathy is (as you may be) the recipient of form letter emails sent out randomly seeking reciprocal website link exchanges from other website owners who don’t know any better than to try to participate in these exchanges themselves.  If they were well informed, suchs senders would have clearly seen on her website that she doesn’t maintain an area for links to other websites.

Second big red flag: None of the website links in these emails she’s been receiving for reciprocal  link exchanges have anything to do with the content nor the merchandise that’s available on her business website.

Travel agents and handbags?  Real estate and basketball shoes?  Technology news and cell phones?  Not even close. Kathy’s website promotes self-help books and classes.  Period.

To agree to such an incongruous link exchange will not help your website business.  It could, in fact, damage it in terms of search engine placement and even get you banned altogether from Google, which analyzes the sites that link to your site and vice versa.

Don’t do it.

Link Exchange:  Don’t compromise your website or your business

Years ago, link exchanges between websites was a well-established, promote-worthy way to do business.  Today? Forget it.

You can thank all of the unethical webmasters out there who practiced such devious practices with websites in years gone by setting up link farms and/or selling links that search engines have had to seriously come up to speed and exact an extremely decisive protocol in terms of what qualifies and what doesn’t in the way of ranking pages.

When you exchange links like this, the websites you link to must be ones highly relevant to your own websites, content and keywords. For instance, cell phones and designer handbags have no relevance with a website that markets windows or carpeting.  Or self help books and classes.  To exchange non-relevant links this way would only decrease your own page rank and the other site’s ranking as well.

And even if you are on a level playing field with other websites, you don’t want to engage in a link exchange. You want websites with similar content (and preferably higher page rank) to link to your website without you having to reciprocate a link back.

If you are seeking links to your website, you must approach websites that have a lot to do with your website in terms of relevance – including keywords and content.  Even then, it’s kind of a losing game because search engines aren’t crazy about “exchanged” links at all. They prefer incoming links from other websites with a higher page rank than yours and not your sites linking directly back to them.

Think of exchanged links as kind of “negating” each other in terms of link juice. Your sites and the other sites receive nothing beneficial in terms of page rank or search engine placement.

Try focusing instead on outgoing text links to authority websites within your content that are relevant to your website’s keywords and content.  Search engines will then crawl your site with their spiders and consider your site to be worthy of higher page rank and placement.

Develop some unique, quality content other sites want to link to

Create something original, something attractive for other websites to naturally want to link to.  The more original and unique that “something” is, the more other sites will want to connect through a link to it.

For example, Brett Beck, owner of Indianapolis Web Design created a website called the Psychic Love Doctor years ago which offers insightful  information, services for hire and a popular free instant intuitive reading page.  Other websites can link to that page, which adds in the long run to that website’s genuine  page rank and popularity through those incoming links.

Do the same with your own business website.  You don’t have to prostitute your website through the lure of “exchanged links” or god forbid, link farms selling you a backlink, which won’t do you a bit of good in the long run and more likely harm your website in the long run.

Get linked with relevant directories.   Just not too many. You want to pick out the best ones that have higher page rank and leave it at that. Too many directory submissions and search engines will want to punish you for it. Confine your business website to a few quality directories.

Attach a blog to your website and write regular quality content.  Give other websites a reason to link to your site because you are so good at what you do.  The more you put yourself out there via blog content, the more the public will find your business website through their own deep searches and ultimately buy from you.

Strong internet visibility and profit…That is what it’s all about, isn’t?

Got a question for Debi Ketner, Nextfly.com’s  professional internet marketer and search engine optimization specialist? Email her at dketner@nextfly.com.  You’ll get an answer in a future blog post.

You can read her here each week ….share your thoughts!

At one time or another, as business website owners, we’ve all been smitten with one social networking website or another.

Facebook.  MySpace.  Twitter.  Stumble. Digg.  LinkedIn.  Bebo.  Blee.  Blah.  Bleu.

You know what I’m sayin’.

There are so many out there that you start feeling as if you are either pimping your website through these social outlets (hyped by these outlets to be specifically designed to promote oodles of sales for your online business) or blathering like an idiot trying to keep up with them all.

Truth be told?  You can’t keep up with them all and still maintain a decent business website that’s up and running efficiently and coherently.

Especially if you are trying to add new content to your website through a blog.

Website blogs take time, effort and a lot of thought.  After all, what you are putting out there through that blog is going to sit on the Web until time immemorial – unless you decide to delete it.  But for all intents and purposes, blog posts literally become an important potential customer portal for your website business when visitors hit deep pages of your blog from their own search engine results.

I’m not finding from my own experience that the same positive results are possible with social networking.  I expect a lot of readers to disagree with me (or maybe not) but the time involved with social networking and the low conversion that comes from a result in the way of  good solid leads or outright sales for a website business?  Basically a serious deal breaker.

No profit for your business website from social networking

You can have fun with social networks.  You can fool around with social networks.  But it really doesn’t come close to the kind of  visitor-turned-customer conversion rate you can achieve from search traffic.  And from that search traffic, as opposed to social networking, you can gain a considerable amount of customer retention by closing that first successful sale.

Myself, I love Twitter just because it’s a fun application for, well, having a little fun.  It isn’t going to make any business rich, not by a long shot.  Those who participate in social networking aren’t looking to actually “buy” something, they are in the market for some entertainment.  And that’s not all bad. If you provide them with entertainment via Twitter or another social networking website, it lends a little toward your own business branding.

But you won’t reap profits from it.

That’s the reason why people who come to your website through keyword searches on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing and land on a blog post you’ve made in the past or your own website page content are landing on your website because they are driven to buy because they are seeking a solution to a problem or have a need they want to satisfy.

So why would you want to waste your own precious time with social networking when you are primarily focused on generating new sales from your website?

Realistically, you wouldn’t.

Build up that blog, beef up your own website content and keywords.  Get both your blog and website as search engine optimized as possible so that your business website ranks high in search engine results so that you don’t have to mess around with trivialities like social networking.

It’s nice if you have the time to dilly-dally on these sites, but if you don’t, your own website can become your best internet “calling card” generating new business for you from for those conducting keyword searches and your own deep pages accessed during search engine searches.

A proven fact in terms of success.  I rest my case.

Celebrity meltdown!  Squeaky-clean image-maker Tiger Woods is pretty much going down in flames these days.

Turn on a news channel or visit a celebrity gossip website and you’re gonna get Tiger Woods infidelity” juicy juice” the instant you do.

So what do you do when you are business owner and suddenly find yourself in an emergency website meltdown reputation-wise?

Maybe your webmaster demanded a raise and you refused, he then went public with information about your extra-marital affair to discredit you and your business.  Or your most successful salesman who appears in ads for your business all over the place is picked up and charged with molesting minors while out on sales calls.  Or heaven forbid, the court of public opinion fingers you for a serious crime as a business owner that you clearly did not commit.

Do you pull up stakes to cut and run with your business after all the years of hard work you put into it?  Do you put up a huge, expensive campaign demanding justice to try to weather the storm of such bad publicity?  Do you change your name and the name of your business, hoping to re-brand it in the middle of such controversy and scandal so that your business doesn’t go belly up in the process?

Seriously:  What do you do?

First and foremost, you don’t shut down your website, you don’t pack up your business and flee in the middle of the night and you certainly don’t hit a fire hydrant and a tree with your Escalade at 2:30am!

What you do is:

*  Put your customers first.

John S. McCallum who writes for the Ivey Business Journal says:  “Everything in one way or another in a business begins and ends with a customer.  No customer; no business; simple as that.”

He’s right.

So make it a point to contact your customers via email or snail mail – place personal phone calls to your best customers if necessary – and let them know that regardless of any legal tangles you find yourself in through your employees or even your personal life, none of it involves the quality of your merchandise or the services you offer.

* Choose to either ignore the hit on your business’s reputation or aggressively confront it.

Ignoring erupting scandal has worked for many successful businesses in the past.  They simply moved on smartly by continuing their online presence and conducting business as usual.  After all, the media and online commentary outlets lose interest in a small scandal when an even juicier one comes along – usually within a week or two.

It also doesn’t hurt to promote your business in a  forward fashion during such a period with paid search engine placement to enable you to bring new customers into your marketing equation – those customers outside your immediate area who are unaware of the difficulties you are coping with and want to buy your products and services.

If instead you choose to confront the situation, do it in a big way and shortly after, let it go.  As Brian R. Salisbury writes in his article, Five Key Ways to Protect Your Company’s Reputation:  “First, under all circumstances, follow the three-part Golden Rule of crisis communications.  Tell it first, tell it all and tell the truth.”

So put your side of the situation out there on your website within the proverbial “10 to 15 minute” window you have available to you for a first public response.  Give that response plenty of essential keywords about your business to enable search engine spiders to pick up on it and give it excellent placement in search engine results.  It doesn’t have to be a front-page item, just an item well placed on your website.

Lastly:

*  Ultimately, let it go.

It’s time for life to move forward.  It’s time to get your business website back to a place of prospering.  Once you’ve let your customers know that your company is still intact and focused on excellence, once you’ve marketed your company online with a new approach – for instance, using paid search engine placement for your website to continue to attract new customers unaware of the scandal you are coping with, you will soon find your business back on solid ground.

Yes, you should be concerned with your company’s reputation, on and offline, always – regardless of whether scandal ever comes a- knocking on your front door.  Christian Smagg wrote an excellent article on the subject of online reputation and dealing with the various aspects of scandal that can seriously disrupt and harm a business, Managing your online reputation.

Scandal is a lot like a hurricane.

It comes in a rush and very soon after, it leaves.  What’s left?  People focused on  clean-up and rebuilding.  And after a little time passes, the hurricane itself becomes practically forgotten.

You can do the same with your business website, enabling your company to successfully weather the Tiger Woods-like scandal it suddenly becomes engulfed in.

Debi Ketner is a professional internet marketer and search engine optimization specialist.  Read her here each week and share your thoughts!

What makes a business website’s design successful these days can seem extremely subjective in terms of what’s new, popular and trendy.

Not to mention how focused on performance your web designer’s vision may be in terms of such frills.  Some are, some aren’t.

For all intents and purposes, your business website is exactly that:  Subject to the whims of new innovations,  internet customer inclinations and on top of both?  Search engine fussiness.

As a website business owner, it’s as if you are caught up in a battle between advancing web design technology just because it’s “there”, trying to second-guess potential customers’ wants and needs while also working with a web designer attempting to appease the demands of those wretched search engine divas.

Namely,  Google, Yahoo and Bing. (As if you didn’t know!)

Your web designer may or may not be experienced enough to guide you through the briar patch of what’s appropriate for your website.  He or she may have a lot of slick answers and quick come-backs to the questions you pose in the design process. He or she may ask you what you want on your website and not offer any professional advice on what works and what doesn’t on the Web.

In every business, let’s face it, there are going to be those who don’t give a hang about excellence – they are too busy trying to turn a fast buck.

Serious mistakes can be made in the building or re-designing of your website

How to educate yourself?  Start by evaluating other websites.  Surf the internet like crazy and visit every kind of website that even remotely seems connected to your type of business.  Take note of what you like, take note of what you don’t.

After all, you as a website visitor to these sites are essentially a potential customer.  Your initial impression of these sites will give you an educated, first-hand impression of what works and what doesn’t in terms of web design from that perspective.

A few tips galloping out of the starting gate to make your website successful:

1. Concentrate on the KISS theory (Keep It Simple Stupid). The more you go with simple concepts for your website, the better your results will be. Your customers love simplicity. They want simplicity when they are visiting your website. They look for it and thrive on it.  Your online search engine marketing strategy begins with simple selling techniques and a website that is keyword focused from start to finish.  What more do you need?  Think KISS any time you find yourself duped into believing you should complicate your site with some of “this” and “that.”  You don’t.  Less is definitely more when it comes to successful web design.
2. Slow loading, time-wasting Flash website intros do not equal good sales technique. Think about it:  When you visit a website with a Flash intro on its homepage, do you wait for it to load and actually take the time to watch it?  Your website visitors intent on buying something from you don’t have the patience for it, either.  I admit that I don’t and immediately hit the “Skip Intro” link when I’m surfing as a seasoned internet shopper seeking to make a purchase – now.
3. Website music and sound files are a serious No Go. We all love music.  On a website? Not! Music is distracting and annoying when visitors don’t have the option of pointing the mouse and clicking it on themselves.  Brett Beck, owner of Nextfly.com (Indianapolis Web Design) educated me on this many years ago about my own business website when I wanted to add music to my consulting business website.  He said emphatically, “Forget having website music.  People just don’t like it.”   I now agree completely, mainly because I don’t like it myself whenever I visit a website.
4. Automatic pop up ads are the equivalent of junk snail mail. Nobody wants to deal with it. Your site visitors will instantly click that X to close these pop ups without reading them or they already have their browsers set to block them as a matter of course.  Why? Because they can’t stand pop up ads!  If you want your visitors to join your newsletter list, give them a decent place on your site to join it. If you have a special offer, put it also in a decent place where it can be found. Don’t turn your site visitors off from the get-go with a pop up ad that gives them reason to bounce from your site before you’ve even had a chance to share your wares and services with them.
5. Bad site navigation because you want something “pretty.” Your site’s potential customers aren’t looking for “pretty” – they want solid navigation that takes them where they want to go on your website to decide whether or not to make a purchase from your business. Poor navigation can literally destroy your website’s visitor-to-customer conversion rate. Adding breadcrumbs – providing navigation that allows your visitors to backtrack their steps through your site’s pages to get where they were previously – effectively keeps them involved with your website. Without good navigation, forward and backward, you will inevitably find potential customers bouncing from your site before you ever had the chance to sell them on your products or services.
6. Listen to the advice of your web designer and follow it. You wouldn’t want an electrician to come into your place of business and haphazardly slap wires together simply because you thought it would be cool to have 18 different office machines dangerously overloading one receptacle. You’d want him or her to advise you on safe electrical usage in the office from a professional point of view.  And you’d listen to that advice.

The same professional ethic holds true in web design.

Yes, you can theoretically cluttter your business website with every kind of technological innovation in terms of bells and whistles and somehow muddle through in terms of your business.  You can insist on having your way, even when your website designer insists that you are making poor choices for that website and the overall image of your business.

But why would you, when a good, quality web designer will carefully guide and advise you as a result of expertise achieved from years of experience. Not only because it’s his or her business to know how to effectively build your website and promote strong e-commerce for you through that site, but the reputation of that web design company is also associated with your site.

That web design company wants to be proud of its work.  Your web designer wants to be proud of the work he or she does for you.  If your website looks cheap and cheesy, it makes that web design business lose business.

The best tip of all is to learn from the mistakes other websites make.

Once you feel educated enough on those mistakes, get in touch with the consultants here at Indianapolis Web Design. They create websites locally, nationally and globally with the kind of professional expertise your business genuinely deserves.

Indianapolis Web Design offers a free, no-hassle consultation on your business needs in establishing a strong internet presence and e-commerce solutions that will enable your business to thrive on the internet.

A fantastic special offer is available now on website design and hosting.  Jump on it!

Debi Ketner is a professional internet marketer and search engine optimization specialist.  Read her here each week and share your thoughts!

I can’t say that we’ve ever been faithful TigerDirect.com customers.

Truth is, we’ve only sporadically bought from this website in the past.

This particular holiday season, we were so smitten with one of the pre-Black Friday offers on TD’s website that we just couldn’t pass it up.

The ordering process itself was a breeze.  The evolution from purchase point to transaction completion couldn’t have been smoother.  Email confirmations and shipping/tracking info?

Flawlessly executed.

The problem?

The merchandise arrived the day before Thanksgiving.  It’s delivery immediately reminded us of the reason why we only sporadically buy from TigerDirect.com.  Specifically, the careless way that purchases from this company are delivered.

In this instance, the box containing the HDTV we ordered was simply left on the stoop in the rain. Unattended, unannounced – there it sat for anybody to come along and snatch up with the box quickly getting rain-soaked.

And yet, TigerDirect.com clearly states at the top of its website list of reasons why customers should buy from them:

We treat every customer with respect. We consider every transaction of critical importance.

If that’s true, then why don’t they insist on quality delivery practices from their shipping agents like UPS?

Effective business websites have to be focused on achieving a web design that sells.  Sure, having an impressive website and a line of great products is all it takes to reel in customers who buy what you’re selling.

Competitive sale prices?  You’ve got them.  An easy to navigate website?  You’ve got that, too.

The question is, once you’ve successfully sold that customer, collected payment through your site and provided expedient email confirmation of the sale, does your supplier or shipper somehow drop the ball and cost you future business from that customer in the process?

That is the question.  One you must be sure is always – always – answered in the negative.  It’s important.  No, it’s downright crucial to the repeat conversion rate of your website’s business.  In other words, those who return to your website, feel a certain amount of faith and loyalty to your business enabling them to buy from you again and again.

Tiger Direct, a technology-based mega-player which has ranked among the New York Times “Top 25 Online Retailers” does a serious disservice to its customers when it insists on its website, “our success has been built on a simple principle: take care of every customer like they were a member of our family.”

Such a promise sets a customer up to expect nothing less than top-notch service from start to finish.  In cases like mine, the shipping company negates that promise by dumping an expensive HDTV on the stoop and simply leaving it there.

I’ve since heard from other TD customers who had the same experience with their purchases from this website in the past.

End result? Customers like us stop buying from businesses like TigerDirect.com.  Even after complaining to the company about such shoddy delivery practices, my own experience the day before Thanksgiving only confirms to other customers that things haven’t changed. The real message the company is sending by not ensuring better shipping service is, “We have so much business, we just don’t need yours.”

Don’t let TigerDirect.com’s blunder hurt your own website business.

Check up on your shipper’s customer service practices constantly. Remember, the sale isn’t complete until that merchandise is in the hands of your customer. You still bear responsibility for that merchandise properly getting from Point A to Point B, which directly bears on the trust factor attached to your business to encourage future sales.

A great website offering tips on building wealth and entrepreneurship, written by a married couple who are degreed professionals, advises that when customer service connected to your shipper goes awry:

When things go wrong and your customer is angry, take advantage of the situation and make things right. Don’t make excuses and take responsibility! After all, the reputation of your online business is defined by how you deal with adversity and unfortunate circumstances rather than how you handle day to day operations.

How do you check up?  Easy.  You send your customers an email survey after delivery for them to fill out and return to you.  Ask them to rate and give details about delivery of their orders. Read these surveys and follow up on substandard delivery service detailed in them.  Contact the shipping company and like any customer, demand better service!

Then follow up with your customer via email – call personally, if necessary – and offer decent compensation for the delivery negligence involved – definitely not free shipping on his or her next order!

Make it good and make it count:  Fifty percent off a future order.  A gift certificate worth more than a couple of bucks. Something substantial that tells your unhappy customer, “Yeah, we really do take care of every customer like they were a member of our family.” (Are you getting that, Tiger Direct?)

Whatever you do, make it a point to contact the shipping company you use and let them know you won’t tolerate such carelessness and threaten to take your business elsewhere if it continues. Follow through on that threat if you have to.

Expert website design is certainly priority number one for your business.

Site navigation, an easy online ordering process and a quality product equally share critical importance.  However, it’s just as vital that those who bring your merchandise to your customers represent your business with the right level of respect and professionalism from the truck to the door.

Think about it:  When the shipping company blunders, your business blunders. You inevitably lose precious future for the future.  Can you honestly afford to risk such losses?

You owe it to your business and your customers to ensure that they receive nothing but top-notch customer service, even when that merchandise is delivered.

Debi Ketner is a professional internet marketer and search engine optimization specialist.  Read her here each week and share your thoughts!