Now, more than ever, it is important to know how a visitor sees your business website. This is a very neglected part of most company Internet plans. Sometimes this is called a website review or website audit.

In reality what is important, is how a potential customer locates the information they are seeking, and proceeds to the point of sale if applicable.

Mystery Shopping of departmental stores, restaurants, hotels, etc. is common, but most company websites nearly always gets forgotten. There is more than just reporting broken links, it is the whole customer experience, and then there are practical ideas, solutions, not forgeting the very important sitemaps.

If you need a resource to review your website, here is the link to addition information on Website Mystery Shopping.

Posted in: mystery shoppers, website audit, website mystery shopper, website reviews on Saturday, April 23, 2011 at at 9:35 AM 0 comments

Senior management including Sales and Marketing, depend on the full operation of the company website, but there is a problem.

Maybe Management is not interested in the Internet, and leaves it to the web design department or outsourced to a web design company. The design company is too busy to check if there are visitor problems, anyway they don't get paid for it. A small survey of 60 websites I visited, every one from small to global had a problem. Problems mean potentially lost business.

You may have seen the earlier posts about Mystery Shoppers. If the same care was taken by companies of their website, both the company and customer would benefit. Need an independent reviewer of your website, often takes about an hour, and you as get suggestions and recommendations included. The contact form is here.

Drachsi

Posted in: on Friday, April 15, 2011 at at 11:30 AM 0 comments

Additional information has been added to the Mystery Shopper page. See the ethics guide and the general guide for all Mystery Shoppers.
Drachsi

Posted in: mystery shoppers, UK mystery shopper on Sunday, April 10, 2011 at at 10:09 AM 0 comments

There are many great websites which work perfectly, but some fail the mystery shopper test. What is a mystery shopper? In the normal sense, it means a person checks out a store or shop, and reports back to the shop how the customer services works, sales staff actions etc. The shopper is not visually known to the store.

The same thing happens to websites. See Mystery Shopper. I visited a very well known company website which is for channel crossings between France and the UK. The menu only allows you to book from the UK, not from Europe. So I guess customers go to another website. Could be 30-50% lost sales.

Maybe you have designed your website and are really pleased with the results, but what are the experiences of your visitors?

Posted in: on Monday, March 28, 2011 at at 9:00 AM 0 comments

You can increase the chances of your pages being listed higher in search results by moving your optimised pages into the main root directory of your website. Both Google and Bing favour these pages more than pages deeper down in your website. Between 40%-50% of results are pages listed in the root directory, down to 6% for pages 3 levels deep.

Drachsi

Posted in: on Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at at 9:14 AM 0 comments

The UK Government is planning to add one hour to the traditional "Summer Time" as reported in the Guardian newspaper. I am a member of a business Forum and have set up a poll, if you have time, worth visiting.

http://forums.internetbusiness.co.uk/18714-summer-time-changes-planned.html

Drachsi

Posted in: on Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at at 8:23 AM 0 comments

Posted in: on Saturday, February 19, 2011 at at 11:01 AM 1 comments