Email — A Staple Business Tool

In today’s business world most people have the staple tools needed to conduct business with other people on a daily basis.

Such tools inevitably include the obligatory diary (electronic or otherwise), a pen, a notepad (electronic or otherwise), a telephone (landline and mobile), a car or some other form of vehicle and of course a computer of a description with an internet connection and associated email account.

Fifteen years ago you could have probably omitted the email account for some folk and any connection to the Internet would have been on dial-up rather than broadband. Twenty years ago pagers were the ‘away from the office’ communication tool of choice for many unless you were either a Yuppie or a keen early adopter who owned a mobile phone. Computers whilst becoming more common place, hadn’t quite penetrated through to every nook and cranny of business life as they do today and Lotus Smartsuite ruled the roost when it came to office software applications.

Today, technology has spread throughout the business world and is not purely the domain of early adaptive geeks. You don’t need me to tell you that I’m sure.

Take a straw-poll of business bodies in a room to find out who uses a Blackberry™, iPhone™ or other type of smart-phone to email and surf whilst on the move and I’ll wager that most of the hands will go up. Similarly, notebook computers and netbooks are outselling desktop computers by a large margin and mobile internet access is common place through 3G and WiFi coverage. Tweeting and messaging through the social networking sites (SNS) is the new kid on the block and are deemed to be a more flexible and superior substitute for email by some.

Phew!

Voice-Mail Hell

So I was amazed at the outcome which resulted from being trapped in the hell of a voice-mail loop with an associate of mine. You know the score; someone leaves you message on your voicemail, you return the call, missing the person but getting diverted to their own voicemail and so the circle continues. Nightmare!

This went on for a couple of days with this particular bloke, both of us listening to a one sided message from the other. Frustration gradually creeping into the tone of our delivery.

So, as one does, I thought; “I know, I’ll send this guy an email with the information he requires!” Out came his business card, “ah yes an email address”. Tap, tap, tap! Gone!

That should illicit a response.

Er, no! Nothing!

Another day goes by without contact, but at least I was safe in the knowledge that he had the information he needed on email.

I don’t do email

Then, one morning the phone goes. It’s him, sounding angry now!

“In my defense”, I retorted, “because I couldn’t get to speak to you — I dropped you an email instead. Did you get it?”

“I don’t do email!” bounced back the reply. “I will check it later and get back to you if I didn’t”. I called him later regardless to check. Yes, he’d got it and was happy with the details I’d emailed to him two days previously.

“That’s okay, we got there in the end.”

So in a world where email is a staple commodity of business, this fellow obviously still lives in the late 1980’s. Just imagine how more efficient he could become and less frustrated into the bargain, if he just “did email.”

Which beggars the question of course; if the subject in this post “doesn’t do email”: then WTF does he have an email account for?

Now texting, there’s another story!

“How’s it going?” I casually asked, to which I was subjected to a response which was not favourable to their chosen web designers and included whinges such as “it’s taking much longer than we expected” and “the cost keeps going up”.

Don’t Get Frustrated with Your Web Designers

One Side of the Story

This sort of client experience is not uncommon I’m sorry to say with many web designers; however as I’m not privy to both sides of the story, I’m reluctant to take sides with this accountant at condemning his designers particularly as my experience in the web development industry has taught me that client activity (or lack of it) is often a major contributing factor towards many a web project going pear-shaped.

A Bold Statement

Now, you’re probably thinking that I’m biased, perhaps even a little condescending; to make such a statement that doesn’t automatically side me with the client. After all, the “customer is always right”. Right?

Maybe, but hear me out!

Having been involved in numerous web development projects at every stage and on both sides (client and developer) over the years, for a whole range of different types of clients; using my experiences and observations I’ll wager that this accountant or his staff have a big part to play in their problems.

Now, before I carry on; this post shouldn’t be taken as a rant at client’s even though it may come across as that! Far from it, instead it should be taken as guidance for companies who are preparing to refresh their website or have a new one built from scratch.

Here’s my summary of points to consider on the road to a successful website design and build project.

Points to Ponder

1. Research what you need from your new website, look at your competitors’ websites, note what you like and dislike. Think about the purpose of the site and what objectives its users will fulfill and the paths they will take as they move through the site.
2. If you employ a number of people; get your employees involved, perhaps creating a focus group to bounce ideas around. You could even ask some of your customers if you have a good relationship with them.
3. Collate all your ideas together into a written document that you can give to your chosen designers. This document is often called a ‘brief’.
4. Be realistic with your time scales for the whole site design and build process. Take into account unexpected events such as the demands that your business will put on you, realistic periods of time for feedback from staff, holidays and even the time associated with your internal processes e.g. the time taken to pay your designers invoices. When you have a time estimate for the project that you’re comfortable with, double it!
5. Your designers will ask you for a number of “deliverables” throughout the build process. Such elements may include photographs or copy text. Don’t underestimate the amount of time and effort needed to write website copy for your website if you plan to do it in-house. If you’re in any doubt at your abilities to deliver appropriate copy for your website to your developers in time for the site’s anticipated launch date, get a professional copywriter in. It’s often a false economy not to.
6. In just about every web project I have been involved in over the years, the client has added in “features” midway through the project. It’s human-nature! So unless you are very focused and know exactly what you want from your site; in readiness for such modifications, make room for  additional budget costs to the tune of at least 20–30% over the original project cost agreed with your designers at the outset.
7. Finally, whilst this is not an exhaustive list; one important point to make is that you should listen to the advice of your designers. You’re employing a professional web designer to build you a website so take advantage of them. That’s what you’re paying them for. Any web designer worth his salt and who has a good portfolio, will be able to bring many ideas to the ‘table’ and will have a tried and tested process in their methodology.Many a website has gone belly-up because the client felt it necessary to override the proven advice or processes of their web designer. You wouldn’t ignore the advice of your accountant or solicitor as you know they are professionals in their field. Think of your web designer in a similar light.

So there you have it. A few pearls of wisdom from someone who knows and has ‘been there’.

If you’re company is looking to have a new website designed and built for itself but you don’t know where to start when it comes to choosing a web designer, writing a brief or even managing the project, then give me a call — that’s bread and butter business for me and I’ll be able to manage the project for you.

Watch the video survey for yourself below to see the responses.

Now whilst this video is entertaining in itself for geeks and career web surfers like myself, the results (only 8% answered correctly to the question); indicate the uphill struggle that Google has in trying to get people to adopt its Chrome web browser against the major incumbents of Microsoft with it’s Internet Explorer browser and Mozilla with it’s Firefox web browser.

Even allowing for levels in knowledge between our American cousins across the pond and we Brits, I suspect a similar result would be obtained over here if the same survey was conducted in London’s Piccadilly Circus.

Watch the video for yourself and you’ll see that many people in the survey not only don’t know what a web browser is, but also demonstrate their ignorance regarding the differences between a search engine, the Internet and ‘the Yahoo’.

It’s Not Surprising Really

To be fair to anyone who’s reading this and doesn’t know the answers to Google’s questions, it’s not surprising really.

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that the Internet world is one of those areas that is fraught with terminology and TLA’s (Three Letter Acronyms) and whilst many “I get by” Internet Users may have got to grips with some of the basic phrases and what they mean (I’m talking terms like “Link”, “Web Page” and “Broadband” here), the continuous exponential development of the web, its new technologies and trends; means there’s a constant stream of new terminology to learn if you want to make the most of the platform. As a consequence many people just don’t bother — or for that matter, care!

Try it for yourself; ask your colleagues “what is Bing?” or “explain a Tweet” or “what are RSS feeds are for?” Unless they are geeks or linked into the web industry in some form, I’ll eat my hat if they know! Yet these three items are prominent trends and tools that are happening on the web today and are worth knowing if as a business, you want to capitalise on the Internet.

Don’t Put a Geek in Front of a Customer

It’s for this precise reason that I feel it’s important that you shouldn’t rely on a “geek” to develop and promote your business online. Just because they know all the terminology, what it does and how it does it; doesn’t necessarily mean they know how to translate such features into workable benefits for your business.

Yes, you need specialists in their fields to design and build your website, promote it on the Internet and to deploy the needs of your business using the appropriate technology; however what you don’t need is someone to bamboozle you with meaningless terminology or someone who doesn’t understand the needs of your business.

That’s where someone like myself as an experienced Internet Consultant who has a foot in both camps and as such can work with a business by interpreting their needs and can then translate them into a language that the techies can understand and work with.

So if you’re looking to work with a web consultant that talks your language, lets get together for a coffee to talk about what you want to do.

I’ll buy.

Over the last few months I’ve been witness to the demise of a client’s business purely because of negative chatter on the web.

If you run your own business you’ll be acutely aware that a positive word-of-mouth endorsement for your company or its products is worth its weight in gold when it comes to generating a sale.

Conversely if your business gets things wrong and more importantly, continues to get them wrong; then news of those negative customer experiences will quickly spread and before you know it; you’ve got yourself a bad reputation.

Trust in your company or product begins to wain and before you know it you’re into “fire fighting mode” with sales going down quicker than Bobby Crush on an oil-rig.

Word of Mouth Marketing

In the days of over the fence gossip, a bad reputation was relatively easy to contain. You simply moved your business to the next town out of ear-shot.

Then some bright spark invented the printing press, then the radio, telephone, TV and eventually the Internet. So what we have today is the means for people to tell other people around the world en-mass, their good and bad news stories about particular company or product. That’s why companies tremble at the negative exposure on consumer TV programmes such as the BBC’s Watchdog and their like can bring but conversely, love the ‘buzz’ that the internet can generate about their products.

You know all this I’m sure. However when you see its impact on a business first hand, then it brings home the power that the medium of the web, particularly when blogs and websites such as Twitter and Facebook are thrown into the mix, can have on a business.

Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword

In my real-life example, the client was an online retailer of furniture which sold its products purely through its website. After being in business for a couple of years they had built their turnover to about £1M and were profitable, which isn’t bad for a small company of less than 10 people. They even included some famous clients amongst their regular shoppers and enjoyed some good exposure through the TV make-over shows as a result.

All seemed to be going swimmingly; their existing website had some faults, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a refresh (which is where I came into the picture with a strategy for an improved website and online marketing campaign). Added to this they had plans to expand into their own premises with a larger warehouse.

However somewhere along the line, independent of their website, things started to go wrong. Customers started to suffer from late deliveries, faulty products, poor communication and at the end; money being taken without orders being fulfilled.

Oh dear! Trouble at’Mill!

Now I wasn’t privy to the whole story; this post is based solely upon my observations. However what I did pick-up on was the increasing level of negative chatter about the company amongst consumer forums and blogs.

Clearly there were some very unhappy people out there who wished to vent their anger.

This sort of bad mouthing soon started to snowball and couldn’t be easily overcome to such an extent that it began to impact upon the client’s ability to promote their website in the search engines. Any search for the company not only brought-up references to their website, but also the negative comments from their unhappy customers.

Shredded

Eventually the client’s reputation was in tatters by the very medium that they had used to build their business with in the first place and their business had to fold.

A sad situation for both their customers and the two directors of the company involved, who I had grown fond of over the preceding months!

Get your Back-end Right

So the lesson of the day in this post is: “Get your back-end right.”

By this I mean it’s not good enough just to have a swanky website with all the bells and whistles if you’re an online retailer. You need to get the customer service elements right as well behind the scenes by making sure your customers trust your company and its website.

This is done through quick order fulfilment, quality products and good customer communications. Get these bits wrong and… well! You know the rest!

Here endeth the lesson

Nothing illegal went on here, however technically, I did hijack a Google Adwords™ account and take it away from its top level Administrator and give it back to its rightful owner, in this case a client of ours.

Let me explain.

We’re working with an online retailer who spends a significant amount of money on PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising with Google Adwords each month. Too much in my opinion, but that’s what I hope to address with them.

Over the last few years the client had delegated the management of their Google Adwords account to a third-party PPC agency who it seems were not delivering the results that were expected. As a consequence, the relationship between the client and the agency had soured and the client wanted to part-company with them. Understandable!

Easy enough you may think! Simply block the PPC agency from accessing their Adword account and hey presto! Job done! However things are never as simple as they seem. Here’s why.

For a start, the client didn’t have the all important “Administrative Access” to their own Adwords account. Bizarre as this may sound; the PPC agency had given themselves Administrative Access to the client’s account but not the client themselves. This meant the client couldn’t go in and amend important details or control who had access to the account and or even their own PPC spend. A possible security issue if nothing else, as the client’s bank account and credit card details were available to anyone with Administrative Access.

So without this all important access level, there was a risk when the client terminated their relationship with the PPC agency; that they would take umbrage and shut the account down. This would result in the loss of the all important PPC keywords and adverts, both of which numbered in the hundreds.

The risk of this couldn’t be taken as it would mean spending hundreds of hours re-establishing their PPC account to its former status.

So having gained written permission form the Adwords account holder, our client, I went about seeking a way in which I could gain access to their Google Adwords account as an Administrator which would in turn allow me to grant admin access to the client themselves whilst also deleting other unwanted Users.

How I did this was relatively simple, but it did depend upon the client having control of their own domains name which luckily they did.

Under the client’s Google Account were two email accounts with Administrative Access, namely;

• An email address under the client’s domain “ppc@clientsdomain.com” (obviously a generic example is given here)which was used and accessed by the agency and…
• An independent email address owned and managed by the PPC agency.

The second email account I couldn’t do anything about, but as for the first here’s what I did to gain access to the client’s Google Account.

1. First of all I got the client transfer their domain name to us on our web servers.
2. Once migrated I mirrored the email account “ppc@clientsdomain.com”
3. I then went to the Password recovery page for Google Adwords account holders at https://www.google.com/accounts/ForgotPasswd and entered the email “ppc@clientsdomain.com”
4. I then checked email that had been sent to ppc@clientsdomain.com using a web mail interface on our server and followed the instructions to reset the account password, given to me in Google’s mail.
5. Once I’d reset the password to something that I wanted, I logged into the clients Adwords account as an Administrator which allowed me to delete Users that belonged to the agency. From now on they couldn’t access the client’s account using either their own email address or the one based on the client’s domain.

Simple really! All legal and above board and done with the Adwords account holders permission.