Think about it, the last time you decided to try a new restaurant for a change, did you look it up in the phone book or look it up online? You may have browsed some restaurant reviews and ratings on the Ordering Secretary website, or used a search engine to directly find restaurants in your area, and visited some websites to check out the menus. Any restaurant that doesn’t have internet access is definitely not on your consideration list.
Currently, nearly 70% of American households use the Internet, and more and more businesses are conducted online. Research shows that in less than a decade, having a website will be as common as having a Yellow Pages listing. Creating a successful online presence is the key to your future success, both in terms of business development and sales promotion.
As the world becomes increasingly networked, companies going online are no longer just about selling products and services. At Dell, more than 50% of business comes from the network. As a pioneer in cyberspace, we understand our customers' evolving needs and expectations. Dell is currently launching a new generation of Dell.com.cn website to provide an easier browsing and purchasing experience. By then, product images and descriptions will be more useful, navigation operations will be more streamlined, and features such as customer ratings, focus, and forums will support users in making informed purchasing decisions using the wisdom of the crowd.
Our goal is to create a pleasant online space that helps customers easily find the right technology solutions. In the development of Dell's new website, we followed some design principles that may be helpful in the construction of other business websites.
1. Ensure website usability with easy navigation: If you want to drive sales through your website, then your site’s navigation interface must be simple and easy to use. Nothing is more frustrating than when a customer wants to buy a product but can't find the information they need quickly and easily.
Once you've built a visually appealing website, make sure the site is stable, functional, and easy to find information while focusing on driving deals. The Yola.com and Wetpaint websites can help you create a free website and provide guidance on business and community building.
2. Customer-focused: In most cases, customers who visit your website expect it to solve a specific problem of theirs. The content on your website needs to focus on the direct benefits of your products and services because if you don’t grab your customers’ attention right away, they will move on to your competitors’ websites who can. . Visualize and demonstrate how your solution can help customers solve their problems or fuel their growth.
If you're not sure if your website is meeting your customers' needs, why not just ask them? A simple, web-based survey or online forum is an excellent method for gathering this type of information. Alternatively, you could launch a website dedicated to hearing great ideas from your customers (Salesforce.com has a great idea platform). Based on 3 ideas from our customers, we launched the FastTrack program for fast shipping, sending popular pre-configured systems directly to customers within 24 hours.
3. Don’t just sell a product – deliver a solution: To maximize the effectiveness of your website, think about what your customers want to see on your website. If you're selling something, don't just show off the product and its capabilities, you also need to demonstrate how the product can be used in situations in your customer's life.
Harley Davidson does this very well. By taking a holistic view of the customers using their products, their website provides an experience of excitement, engagement, and community. By offering instructional courses that teach visitors how to ride, an interactive ride planner, and more, the site itself becomes an experience with lasting impact.
4. Leverage the Wisdom of Crowds: Leverage your community to reinforce and recommend your brand. When a customer is planning to purchase a product, positive experiences and recommendations from colleagues are of significant value that cannot be ignored. With comprehensive ratings and reviews, like the ones on our product pages, customers can easily share experiences and learn about products from others.
Without spending a fortune on advertising, many small businesses have found success through positive comments they get from blogs, Twitter, and other online media. If you don't have enough people to create and maintain a comment platform for your site, you can aggregate comments from other sites. .
5. Personalized shopping experience: Differentiate your business from your competitors through positive customer interactions. A website with personalization options can help build customer loyalty, engage fans, and create free brand evangelists. Companies like Zazzle and Threadless sell personalized products of your own design, such as T-shirts.
6. Build a brand: Use rich images and content to showcase your business content and increase brand attention. A beautiful website improves your company's credibility in the eyes of your customers.
In order to create a beautiful website, it helps to hire a professional web designer. Since these designers are more expensive to hire, you'll need to do a little homework and find a web designer who has successful experience with search engine optimization (SEO). Having an SEO-friendly and engaging website is valuable to your business, as high search engine rankings will bring more visitors to your site - which in turn can boost sales.
7. Ditch tradition and incorporate innovation: One way to improve the customer experience on your website is to continually innovate and stay ahead of web and industry trends. Small businesses have many advantages over larger businesses when it comes to innovation because their size makes it easier for them to try new approaches quickly.
These 7 tips for small businesses also served as our guiding principles for building Dell's new website. As the Internet develops and grows, companies that do not have online business will have less and less room for development. There is no reason for your company not to establish an online business. To quote marketing guru Seth Godin: “It’s no longer about budget, it’s no longer about tools, it’s about determination.”
Thanks to juanzi5y1 for his contribution