Screengrab Ecommerce

One of our Core beliefs is that customer service online needs to flawless. It needs to be all seeing, all hearing and everywhere at once. The lack of face to face contact that exists for online traders makes the task of connecting with customers much more challenging than with traditional retail. Luckily social media and other engagement technologies have bridged the gap between online users and businesses.

Online customer engagement

To properly use the suite of online engagement tools it is importamt to approach the area methodically and create a company-wide plan for meeting customers expectations online.

Firstly, set out your goals. Do you want to merely respond to online queries?, do you wish to project an image of a fun loving company? or do you wish to push your new products to customers through social media channels.

The next thing to consider is context. You should behave appropriately on a particular channel. For instance, Twitter might be a more casual conversational tool whereas Linked-in might not be considered appropriate for the same interactions. A follow on from this is that it may not be a good idea to have all your Tweets posted directly to your Linked-in account.

Management is next: You can’t sit online all day waiting for someone to mention your company so that you can respond. You need to put in place a combination of automatic monitoring tools such as Google alerts and manual responsibility. The manual responsibility can be rotated among a number of employees so as to lessen the burden on any one person, this also helps to keep content fresh.

Finally measurement: If you alocating some time and resourse to this endevour you will certainly be expecting some return. There are some metrics you can find depending on the platform you are using but another simple measurement is to check with your staff to see if they have had any sales leads or positive experiences with customers through your various online channels.

As smart phones continue to increase in market share the increase in the number of applications to provide mcommerce is rapidly increasing. However online retailers seem unsure as how to best prepare for the migration of traditional online customers to this new platform.

Retailers don’t really need to worry about this just yet unless they perceive that they are operating in a sector that will have some of the earliest adopters to the mobile commerce platform.

The first purchasers of course will be the early technology adopters, keen to try the new technology first and with little fear of security risks that might deter less savvy customers.

So this brings us to our first product grouping for mcommerce: Technology. This is a no-brainer. With technology being a highly commoditised product type quite often price is the only concern. By having a mobile friendly bar-code scan enabled mcommerce shop retailers can expect to pick up some of the earliest mobile purchases. This will also leave them perfectly poised to periodically update their mobile sales platform.

Sticking with commoditised products it would be wise to follow the logic that whichever products began to sell first on the web will also sell early on mobile. This brings in books, DvD’s and gifts.

I will leave clothing to a separate point because this is where mcommerce will come into it’s own.  By having the ability to scan and order goods through smart phones there will be a definite increase in the number of physical shop browsers who can use high-street stores to check the physical attributes of a product before ordering for a better price online (or on mobile as the case may be).

By having your products show up after a bar-code scan from a smart-phone you can greatly increase the instances of impulse purchase. Previously a consumer would have to remember to search for a product when at a laptop or PC, perhaps having seen it out in town earlier. Now the ability is there at your restaurant table to scan your bottle of wine and order a case online or any number of similar situations.

The other basics that apply to online selling will generally transfer to mobile with some alterations. Readability for mobile may need to be tweaked with a reduction in the average syllable count in product descriptions, image sizes reduced, shopping carts specially adapted to charge mobile phone billing or to tie in with NFC capabilities.

Of course the non physical type products are already selling well through mobile applications including gaming and music. It is when everyday purchases migrate to mcommerce that we will see the this platform com into its own.

SocailOomph have a new best practice guide for auto tweeting your new followers. I have often noticed this when following someone and find it a bit impersonal, the opposite of what you expect to get. The main points of their guide are below:

What Should You And Should You Not Say In Your Welcome Message?

This advice contains the collective wisdom of many folks who have given feedback regarding what they appreciate in a welcome note, and what they do not appreciate.

Write a very simple welcome message.

If you really want folks to unfollow you, then try and sell them something with this first welcome message. Very few people like that.

Be careful even if you’re giving away something for free.

The purpose of this message is to say hello and welcome.

Most people take a dim view of you when you do any kind of self-promotion with this message. If your message smells remotely like, “Hi, thanks for the follow, now buy my stuff or do something that will benefit me or check out how cool I am,” then you really are misusing this welcome message.

Don’t send what you wouldn’t like to receive from others.