Internet Business Blog

Customer service can quite literally make or break a business on the internet. If you have an exceptionally high level of customer service, it may be enough to sway potential and repeat customers to purchase from your site instead of a high profile competitor. On the other hand - If you have a hazardously low level of customer service, you may receive unwanted criticism that will follow your business to all depths of the internet, eventually affecting your sales and reputation as a whole.

What are they saying about you?

1. Google your website. You can find out a lot about what others think of your customer service by simply plugging your web site’s name into any major search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN. I often refer to the term as Googling because I am a Google addict, but bear in mind that any search engine will do the trick. Also, be sure to continue after the first page of results. Go five or more pages deep, and click on random pages after that. You never know where a customer review or opinion is hiding.

2. Ask your customer base. Create a survey and email your former and current customers how they think that you’re doing. I’ve found that as long as you keep the questions short and sweet, they will usually answer them.

3. Ask yourself. Often times, being completely honest with yourself will provide incredible results, after all, who has more insight about how you are truly doing than yourself? If I am lacking in any particular area whether it be customer service related or otherwise, deep down I am always the first to know about such a flaw.

How to help raise your level of customer service:

1. Spend more time serving your customers. We only have so many hours in each business day, so it is crucial how we spend them. I’ve found that setting aside specific blocks of time each day dedicated to serving my customers has really helped to increase sales, productivity, and customer satisfaction.

2. Respond to emails and voice mails promptly. Nothing will cause you to miss a sale or lose a repeat customer by not responding to their phone calls or emails in a timely fashion. The general rule of thumb is 24 hours or one business day for a response, but I would go so far as to say that If you do not respond within 4 business hours the sale is as good as gone. Make it a point to try and check your email and voice mail multiple times per day, every single day.

3. Write down the areas that you need to improve upon. Depending on your personality (and ego) this can be a very difficult and painful process, but I encourage you to be completely honest with yourself. If you do not make note of your flaws as a customer service representative or business owner you will not be able to fix them. As a business owner, customer service is generally only one of many hats that you will wear during the business day. Make note of the problem, or you will likely forget that the problem even exists – until you lose the sale or even worse a valuable customer.

In Conclusion

If you’ve found that your customer service needs some work the good news is that it’s a very fixable situation. Follow the steps that I have outlined for you above and you will notice more repeat sales, good publicity, and most importantly - a very satisfied customer base.

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Finding the value in a domain name or website has never been, nor will it ever be an exact science. It involves a plethora of variables and analytics, often times left up to professionals. I have created the general guideline below to help give you an understanding of some of the more common things to look for when appraising a website’s value, assuming that you’re doing the appraisal yourself. Please remember that this is in no way, shape, or form a complete guideline for web appraisal but it is definately a good starting point.

Ten Variables of Website Appraisal

1. Domain Age. The age of a web site’s domain name should be taken into consideration when determining its value. It gives any potential buyer a sense of security that they are buying something that has been around for awhile and not just a fly by night website that will be developed over and over again.

Tip: The age of a domain name is also thought to hold some weight in the search engines as well.

2. Domain TLD. TLD stands for Top Level Domain and can be extremely important well appraising a domain name or website. TLD’s are your .com’s, .net’s, .biz, etc. Generally, people only want .com and .net but I have seen other TLDs such as .mobi sell for quite a bit. I would stay away from .us, .biz, and .info if possible as they hold very little weight and credibility in our industry.

3. Is it Brand able? This can often times be a loaded question. The main point that I’m trying to make is, if this site were to grow - is it a memorable name? Does it have a unique Look? This is Marketing 101 at it’s finest, and can play a very important role in the value of a website.

4. Alexa Rating. Though the Alexa rating is a debatable statistic with some obvious flaws, I believe that it is still a very useful tool to find out the bare minimum in regards to a web sites traffic and site popularity. Most experts agree that once a website reaches the top 100,000 on the Alexa chart it becomes much more accurate and harder to manipulate.

5. Google Page Rank. PR relies on the democratic nature of the web by using its link structure as an indicator of a web site’s value. This is basically Google’s way of determining how “important” your website is, and it will take some time to build up PR. Increasing the number of quality inbound links will help boost PR greatly.

6. Indexed Pages. It is very important to have each page of a website indexed by all of the major search engines. If the pages are indexed correctly, that means visitors will be able to find your site through search engines such as Google and Yahoo. It can take time to be properly indexed, and this can be a huge selling point since indexed pages generally means that there is at least some incoming organic traffic.

7. Inbound Links. The more quality inbound links a website has will not only boost it higher in the search engines, but will bring more traffic to the site as well through said links. Having a high amount of quality inbound links will make the website look very good, and you will appear to be an important site of interest for it’s niche. This tip can tie in with Google PR.

8. Is it Search Engine Friendly? This is becoming more and more important as the internet matures. A website can have the best design with the best product or information, but if no one can find the website via the search engines, it won’t have very many visitors and it’s investor certainly won’t make a return. There are plenty of ways to establish quality SEO, I recommend hiring someone such as myself. /shameless plug

9. Is there Spider Food? Spider food in it’s most simplistic term is quality, unique content. If the website in question sells products or services, are their product or service descriptions unique? If the website bases itself on articles, news, and other pieces of writing, you’d better make darn sure that those are unique. Google hates Duplicate content and so do visitors and the original authors!

10. Monthly Revenue. Here’s a shocker. This is obviously the most important variable to consider when appraising a website. Whether the website receives an income stream through advertisements, affiliate programs, or product sales that certainly needs to be taken into account - because when a buyer approaches to purchasing the website, they’re looking to make money from doing so.

The 10 variables above should help point you in the right direction when appraising your website (or someone else’s). If you still feel that you lack the skills or time to undertake such a task – I would recommend that you hire a professional to do this for you. If you do so, great, but just remember that no one knows your web site better than you, so take all appraisals with a grain of salt and ultimately, It’s only worth what the highest bidder will pay.

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Have you ever had a business meeting, task, or proposal that absolutely needed to be finished and still manage to somehow forget all about it? I know that I sure have, too many times in fact. That’s why when it comes to internet business I’ve learned one very important lesson, to write everything down.

My business life revolves around the written word. This isn’t just because I own a blog and optimize code for clients, it’s because If I don’t write down what I’m supposed to be doing and when I’m going to do it – chances are that It won’t ever get done!

How I manage my busy Business Schedule:

On the desk in my office there sits a notebook. This notebook contains a schedule for each day, and is always written the night before. This schedule contains three things:

1. Meetings. I list any business meetings or appointments at the very top with the time and place right next to them.

2. Tasks that must get done. I try to list a few business related tasks that must be done and finished each day. This way, I’m always moving forward.

3. Tasks that I’d like to get done. This list has been as long as two full pages. Here I basically list everything that can be done at a later time, but I’d still really like to finish.

Thanks to this business schedule, I have no excuse to not be working on something and am generally much more productive throughout the business day.

One More thing…

Purchase a PDA. A Personal Digital Assistant can be a lifesaver when you’re on the go. Generally, I use that notebook I wrote about earlier but that isn’t always a viable option.

Quote: “A goal that is not down in writing, is not really a goal at all.” ~ Brian Tracy

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