Platonik blog

Goodbarry is great for capturing website enquiries and adding them to their integrated crm (customer relationship management system)

There are two approaches; for two different types of people.

Circling Back on business to business enquiries

In business you don't tell the prospect the price of the product or service on the website but approach them this way:

1. The prospect completes the web form

2. A pdf brochure and price list is automatically sent to them by return email along with the sales managers contact details.

3. A notification is set up to prompt the sales manager to send a message to the prospect - "is everything making sense so far", "any help or if you require a quotation prepared", etc, etc

4. If a proforma or quotation is required, then this is prepared by creating a new order, assigning it as proforma invoice status and then emailing it to the prospect. The proforma contains all the clients bank account details at the footer of the proforma invoice template.

5. Then the sales manager is prompted to follow up on this proposal after a week.

6. If a sale is made, the order status must be manually changed to payment received with the payment details recorded under the "offline payment received" section


Circling Back with consumer enquiries

Since I am a big permission marketing advocate and realise, from experience, that people just don't purchase the first time they come to a website, I make use of the email follow up series functionality within Goodbarry.

Here's briefly what I do:

1. I offer something free in exchange for the prospect's email address

eg:

Free Video clips, sign up here
Free Design Guide book

2. The prospects completes a very short form - name, email, one other bit of information, then hits submit

3. Straight away they get the first video clip

4. Then I stagger a series of emails to the prospect. (for one client I have 10 emails staggered over 60 days)

I've used this approach with google adwords visitors and by offering the "carrott" of free videos to 3rd parties mailing list.

If you have the patience to gradually education prospects over time (instead of acting like an excited puppy when a web enquiry comes in), in the medium term you will win and convert more sales instead of killing your leads dead in the first week of enquiry.

This is how you take your time with prospects, treat em with respect, close more deals and sell more with your online business.

Here's a great way to forward post lots of content to your Goodbarry blog and synchronise the posts to your Twitter account.

Saves you time and ensures you are always adding content to your web presence.

1. This is the blog set up in Goodbarry

2. Create your Twitter account and copy their code

3. Customise and style that code and pop it into the right panel of your blog template

4. Copy and paste the rss feed url of your blog into notepad

5. Go to Twitterfeed.com, create a new account and paste your rss feed url into the box. Under Post Sorting, select the GUID option. Then Save.

7. You can see that the feed is active and ok and that the blog posts being submitted are being clicked on.

8. Now let's post some content on the blog

1. I like to include a keyword i want to be ranked for in the blog post title

2. As well as inserting a product shot image, I like to include the keyword in the body copy of the post as well as provide an anchor text link to the relevant product on the website

3. Oops, I forgot step 3.

4. I create some tags

5. Set the forward release date

6. Then save or publish

I built this site on Goodbarry back in February.

It was the first ecommerce site on the platform which I built and I neglected to use the Goodbarry shopping functionality; ie: the category and product page functionality specifically.

So, upon discussion with the client we decided to simplify the buying process, review the pricing and cut down on the number of products.

So the new Print193 site now looks like this.

Here's how I switched over the old site to the new site:

• Created a new Goodbarry account.
• Exported the product stock file, re-created a new stock file, revised the prices and imported into the new Goodbarry account.
• Copied over all the html pages such as about us, privacy policy, terms and conditions etc.
• Exported all the prospects and customers from the old site to the new one.
• Re-created the same web forms and marketing lists and ensured the prospects and customers were subscribed to the same lists as before.

After the site was re-designed,

• I then did payment gateway testing (again) on the Sagepay test server for every single card type the client accepted.
• I then did live credit card testing and refunds.
• I copied over the google sitemap html file, added google analytics code to the site templates.
• I re-created all the same admin users and email users on the account (the old passwords will still be accepted)
• Then I submitted a case to Business Catalyst that I wished to shut down the old site and replace it with the new one.
• To do this, you need to remove the domain name from Admin > Manage Domains. Then add the domain name to the new Goodbarry account.
• Then tell Business Catalyst you've done this and wish to cancel the old account.
• Then wait a couple of hours and the switch over should happen.

I would recommend doing the switch over of accounts late at night during a quiet selling day.

Many thanks to Sydney and Carolyn at Business Catalyst and to James and TC for the design and coding work.

A business owner new to ecommerce asked me these questions. Here are the questions and answers:

I want to add new products easily by myself or my staff
Here's a screenshot showing you the new product screen in BusinessCatalyst. Simply complete the 3 steps - create the product details, define the pricing and add the product to a catalogue (or catalogues)



I want to have control of our product stock levels
Just tick the control inventory box. Insert your stock level. If you are promoting the launch of a new website or new products, you can pre sell those products by selecting the "Can Pre-Order" button. And you can also hide the product if you are out of stock.

I want to control payments (those already paid and those still waiting)
The little drop down box you see in the image below lets you define the order stage. Successfully transacted online payments default to "purchase - payment received". However you can set up your own order statuses - proforma invoice stage, quotation stage, order being picked etc

I need an easy way to print the shipping’s labels for each purchase
Maybe not so easy within Business Catalyst however you can print off the invoice in various formats - printed and digital and utilise the customers shipping information that way.

Can I have a separate section on the website so retailer customers can login and buy at a different price from consumers (80% of my business is still wholesale) ?
Yes. Just set up wholesale prices for each product. Then create a secure zone. Add customers to that secure zone and provide them with access. When that customer logins into the secure zone, they will be displayed their wholesale prices from which they can order online from.

I want to do all this from the same system and in a easy way so I don’t need to copy and paste information from one program to another.
Within Business Catalyst, you can control your web site, create forms easily using Modules, control your ecommerce, control your customers, do your list building and email marketing and using reporting for analytics and data mining. One tool to run them all !

I tend to find I am asked to build a new website or ecommerce site due to the mess left by the previous web designer. Quite simply the business owner has gotten to the point of desperation with the old web site designer and needs a new guy.

This work usually comes by means of referral.

They've had business web sites built in Flash with unfinished pages. They've had sites built with cheap ineffective tools like Mr Site.

And yes, occasionally I've been asked to build ecommerce or design web sites from complete scratch.

But for the first time, I am actually having to rebuild and redesign my own client's existing site.

I must confess I built the original site in a rush and it's not working; or rather it's not generating enough traffic. I admit it and the client acknowledges part of the haste was his too.

So, I'm rebuilding the core site template from the ground up based around what people were searching for in a recent pay per click campaign i ran for them.

Now because I build my clients site in goodbarry, all i actually have to do is build a new site template and apply it to the existing html web pages that exist.

The products in the shop catalogue, the basket and checkout functionality won't change; just the core structure.

In my experience, alot of developers and web designers will walk away or squirm when a problem arises or charge mega bucks for a re-build.

Not me, I make mistakes. I fix em.

Just thought you should know the kind of guy you're dealing with.

Spoke to a chap on Friday about his wife's business. She runs this successful service for high street retailers.

He gave me the url and i told him "the site does NOT do justice to what you just told me".

In other words:

Every time people visit your place of business then check you out on the web, you are undermining your credibility and losing money.

Anyway let's say your website does do your business justice.

Someone then fills out a contact us form.

Are they going to buy from you straight away ?

Very, very unlikely.

You don't exactly have a monopoly in your industry or something so unique it can't be purchased elsewhere.

So what exactly can you do when you know, on average, it takes 6 months to convert a lead into a sale?

You need to take them on a series of dates.

You don't ask a girl for marriage or anything else when you first meet up or on the first date. Seth calls this permission marketing.

Take the prospect on a series of dates through an email autoresponser or an rss feed which both educates them and builds their trust in you and your products.

Oh, I know what you are saying to yourself - email is dead, no one signs up for email, no one opens up email, the click through rates are poor.

Well not if you approach it differently.

Offer something on your site like:

Let's say you sell coffee beans and machines.

"Learn how to serve the perfect coffee to your customers. Sign up here."

From a web form sign up:

• Take the customer through your beans
• Your coffee machine
• Where to position your coffee machine in your shop
• How to add drama to your coffee in your shop, bar, restaurant
• How many beans to use when you brew up
• How to pour into a glass
• how to serve the glass on the table
• how to get a second order from the customer

And so on.

The following image is the anatomy of a prospect who signed up to a series of emails.

Now the salesman in you would have called up and blown the sales with this guy. Hitting him with your stuff too early.

The marketer in you knows it can take a year to sell to this guy, so you don't rush him and let him buy when he is ready (in the knowledge he has been properly educated and trusts your product will do the job for him.)

Perry Marshall is selling an autoresponder course for between $700 and $3500 to learn how to do this.

Good for Perry; he's got amazing insight into running businesses.

Autoresponders are built into Goodbarry's email marketing solution; they are easy to set up and just require some thinking as to how you can help your customer achieve what he wants.

This is a new site James and I have designed and built for Appleprint.info

A bit of background
The guys at Appleprint approached us and asked us to built them an ecommerce site. Sometimes you need to tell a customer what they need, not what they want.

They are a brand new company (although well established and experienced in the industry) and need to establish 3 things quickly.

• A unique proposition
• Instant credibility
• Leads

Their proposition
Printing is a commodity and price driven industry with not alot of room for differentiation. So we developed the proposition "delicious print prices" playing on the brand name and what their customers are looking for.

Credibility
Most websites for printers are dull, boring, faceless and tell you all about their machines.

We wanted to put a face behind the company name. So we created the Apple persona.
We also wanted to establish credibility within social networks and influence their potential customers; designers - so we have created a blog "Follow Apple", added a facebook and twitter account and feedburner rss feeds. The blog will distribute content to all these other channels.

Leads
The site pushes "Ask Apple for a Quote" and the telephone. Lead and quote generation is the name of the game for these guys. There is a simple quote form which is then added to the crm database which sites behind the site and the web forms are sent by email and sms to the guys since they are out on the road.

Good luck Apple, Chris and Allan on your venture.