What Do You Think Your Customers Want? [back to quick facts]

We never really know what our customers want until we ask them and/or monitor their spending habits. But, we all know this is difficult to do because of the time it takes to develop comment cards or surveys and do the compilation of results. However, these are very important evaluation tools and should try to be done as much as possible. On your business web site why not have an open survey form where people can email you comments. We also know it is difficult for them to respond because it is time they prefer not spending filling out a survey. Offer them a discount coupon or chance for a drawing to win something if they fill out the survey. You could also ask several of your best customers through a hand written letter and survey if they could do you a favor by giving you some feedback. You could also offer them a discount on their next purchase, particularly when you mention to them that they are your best "loyal" customers. Keep your survey instrument short. Often times people get discouraged and turned off quickly if they see that they have to fill out four pages versus one.

There are some Internet tools to help you attract people to your web site and evaluate who has visited your web site. I highly suggest advertising your links to several search engines. There are also services on the web that can automatically share your web site with several search engines for a price. One example is www.submit-it.com.

There are also tools like "Cookies" that monitor your behavior as you surf through that particular web site. Information obtained from Cookies can tell you what portions of the web site they visited. Cookies are helpful for large web sites that have many pages of products and services.

Web tracking software mentioned previously can also give you an idea of what web pages in your site were highlighted. For example, you had four product pages and one particular product page was hit more than the other three product pages. This could be an indication that this product is preferred and additional advertising and marketing should coincide to further improve and enhance it's marketing capabilities.

Depending on the feedback that you get try to implement your changes quickly. Customers always like to see new attractive features on the web site. This particularly include pictures or images on the web site. Invest in a digital camera. Use these pictures through out the growing season and year advertising your products, people, and activities.