Running an eCommerce website comes with its toll of responsibilities. One of the most important ones is website security.
Not taking all the necessary steps to keep your eCommerce website as secure as possible can have very serious consequences on your business.
As a general rule, there are 3 main elements to eCommerce website security. You should make sure you’re on top of them: (more…)
In the United States, Post Office employees have a bad reputation. They’re notoriously unfriendly, cold, hostile and unhelpful. It’s hard to avoid feeling frustrated when you have to deal with arrogant staff – be it an employee of the Post Office, an abusive police officer, or a flight attendant who’s running his own little power trip on the passengers.
But then I ask myself – wouldn’t you also become angry, frustrated and bitter if you had a crappy job at a crappy organization? The work environment and the context you create within your company plays a major role in your staff’s happiness and professional satisfaction, which in turn is crucial to make your customers happy.
The Post Office doesn’t have a good context that would allow its employees and agents to thrive and be happy. And the atmosphere of bitterness spreads to the customers who don’t receive friendly customer service. If only you could be nice to people, they would put up with long waiting lines, complicated rules, and even expensive service! If the clerk apologizes for the wait and take the time to provide good customer service, that would make all the difference.
It’s so important to create a great company context where the members of your organization can strive and be happy. (more…)
When you go to a restaurant, what makes you enjoy the food is not just how good the food is. It’s the whole experience. What makes you come back again and recommend the place to others depends on much more than the quality of the food.
Tasty food and good wine will surely help. But the food is not enough to create great customer experience and to build a successful restaurant. The design of the place, the decoration, the tables and chairs, the music, the wait (or lack thereof), and in general all the elements that create a special atmosphere will have a significant impact.
Most of all, the restaurant’s staff will affect the success of the business more than any other factor. But for whatever reason this is the one thing so many restaurants don’t pay enough attention to. And that’s too bad. Often staff hiring and training is done too quickly in the restaurant industry.
The food tastes that much better when the staff is friendly, knowledgeable, and personal. What you want from your waiters is to be passionate and proud about the food they serve.
The same goes for most products and services. It’s not enough to have the best product in the world – you have to provide a great experience for your customers. Awesome customer service, flexible return/refund policy, and easy shopping experience is as important as the product itself. (more…)
“User success rates on e-commerce sites are only 56%, and most sites comply with only a third of documented usability guidelines. Given this, improving a site’s usability can substantially increase both sales and a site’s odds of survival.” From Did Poor Usability Kill E-Commerce? by Jakob Nielsen.
He also writes that “E-commerce sites lose almost half of their potential sales because users cannot use the site. In other words, with better usability, the average site could increase its current sales by 79% (calculated as the 44% of potential sales relative to the 56% of cases in which users currently succeed).”
While building Noam Design and helping other businesses take off, I’ve learned a thing or two about entrepreneurship and about developing a business. Here are 6 mistakes I find particularly hard for entrepreneurs to avoid: (more…)
“Just knowing you have the time helps you make the time.” Extract from another great post by Jason Fry.
Every interruption cuts your work day into a series of work moments. 45 minutes here, then a meeting. A hour there, then a conference call. 20 minutes until someone taps you on the shoulder or calls your name across the office. These events kill productivity.
Most of these interruptions are experienced at a micro level. They’re experienced during a day. But I’ve found the same thing holds true on a macro level. If you stretch your time scale out to weeks or months, a day trip here or a couple days away there has the same effect: It kills productivity. A couple days away a week is like a few meetings a day — it makes it hard to get anything meaningful done. An interruption is an interruption.
[...] knowing I have a clear schedule for many months has shifted me into a pleasantly productive mindset. I’ve gotten a ton done so far this week. There have been some projects I’ve been meaning to start for a while, but with future travel hanging over my head I couldn’t get into a groove. I’m back in a groove.
It’s a good reminder of the power of an open schedule. Just knowing you have the time helps you make the time.
From The pleasure of an open schedule By Jason Fried of 37signals. (more…)
It doesn’t really matter how much time you spend on something, right? The outcome is what matters. The results. Then why most service companies bill their clients by the hour? Is there a better way?
On the other hand, we know that businesses who charge their clients based on scope restrict themselves to working within stiff boundaries – which doesn’t work in a creative industry.
So is there another way? The solution we found here at Noam Design is to stop taking on client work and focus on our products instead.
So we’re not charging by the hour: it doesn’t matter how long it takes us to develop a Magento template or a CMS template! Time isn’t a factor when determining a product’s price. Quality, usefulness, and market demand are more important.
We’re not charging based on the scope of work either. Sometimes a product requires a huge amount of work, revisions, adjustments, etc while other products are developed in a breeze. All that is quite irrelevant though – only the end result matters. Is the product useful for our customers? Will someone get a good value by buying it? Do people need it? These are the questions that matter more. (more…)
No matter what your line of business is, there are always competitors. If you think your product is so unique that you have no competitors… well it’s time to wake up!
Many business starters try so hard to differentiate their product or service from the competition that they end up believing they have no competition. In fact, maybe it’s better that way!
The thing is that focusing on the competition too much will not help you create a great product. Don’t concentrate your efforts on how you can beat the competition by doing better, more, less, or different. That’s a waist of time. Worse than that, it interferes with your ability to create a great business.
It’s best to ignore the competition and focus on what matters: your product and customers. Which audience are you targeting? What problem are you solving? What’s the best way to solve that problem for your target audience? What is necessary and what is not?
So ignore the competition. Create your own thing instead.
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When starting a business, you often have to juggle between tasks and roles. One day you’re the project manager and the next you’re the billing department guy. Of course that’s totally fine – and you should be proud of taking care of so many different things. If you’re a one man show – enjoy it while it lasts and promote yourself as such.
But as time goes by and your company grows stronger, you’ll want to focus on what you do best and enjoy the most while delegating the other tasks to people who are a better fit for them. (more…)
If your company’s offering is unique – your language should reflect that uniqueness and be original as well.
In fact that could be a great way to check if your business (or business idea if it’s still just an idea) is solid. Just read what you write about it – if it sounds banal, there’s a good chance you should consider readjusting the business concept altogether. (more…)