December 3rd, 2013 by Elma Jane
De-clutter
A messy workplace is annoying, distracting, and can get out of hand. Keep clutter at bay by regularly tidying up.
Clutter can also exist inside the mind. Having piles of paper on your desk can keep you from finding a pen, having too many thoughts can curb your focus.
Fix this by de-cluttering your mind. Use a mind-mapping tool to organize all the ideas, tasks, or worries in your head.
Eat your Frog Early
When you arrive in the office every morning, do you dive right into your biggest task or do you get the minor stuff out of the way first? Author and personal development coach Brian Tracy says that the former is more effective in terms of productivity.
In his book Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, Tracy cited a famous Mark Twain quote, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
He used frog eating as a metaphor for task completion, in which the frog “is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it.” Finish that task as early as possible, and you can spend the rest of the day knowing that you’ve accomplished a big goal.
Resist the urge to complete smaller jobs first. Doing so will only feed your procrastination and won’t take you any further towards completing your big tasks.
When deciding on what to prioritize in your business, always put your highest-impact goals at the top of your to-do list. What step can you take today that will have the biggest effect on your company? Start with that, and either delegate or hold-off on the low-level tasks. This tough to do.
Follow the 80-20 Rule
The 80-20 rule, developed by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto states that for many situations, about 80 percent of the effects or outcomes come from just 20 percent of the causes.
In business, the 80-20 rule comes into play when 80 percent of a company’s clients are generated from 20 percent of its sales staff, or when 80 percent of returns come from 20 percent of its customers.
Determine how the 80-20 principle applies to your business, then address that 20 percent so you can generate more results, or eliminate problems.
For instance, if you discover that 80 percent of your profits come from 20 percent of your customers, then nurture your relationships with those customers and reward them for their loyalty. Or perhaps you notice that 20 percent of your online marketing efforts are bringing in 80 percent of your site traffic. Stop spending resources on the low-performing strategies, and focus your efforts on the channels that work.
Have a Meeting Policy
If you must hold meetings in your company, keep them brief. Always have an agenda and a clear purpose for the meeting.
You may also want to consider having company-wide policies that tell people when and how to set-up meetings. Some companies for example, always hold meetings on the same day and time each week…e.g., Monday mornings, Thursday afternoons. This schedule enables people to plan their days and weeks more effectively.
Optimize your Relationships with Vendors
You optimize your site for speed and user-friendliness. Why not do the same for your suppliers and service providers?
Check with your vendors to ensure you’re working efficiently. Ask if there’s anything you can do to make their jobs easier, or recommend any improvements that they can implement. Don’t view your relationship as a service provider and client. Instead, treat your vendors as your partners.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, e-commerce & m-commerce, Electronic Payments, Environmentally Green, Internet Payment Gateway, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale Tagged with: agenda, business, ecommerce, loyalty, marketing, mind-mapping, online, optimize, organize, policies, prioritize, procrastinate, procrastinating, procrastination, spending, strategies, suppliers, task
October 22nd, 2013 by Elma Jane
The best place to start understanding your customer is to put yourself into every step of a buying cycle and analyze what influences various purchase decisions.
Who is your customer?
Basic demographics and usually includes the following:
Age range Education level Gender Income level Location Marital status Profession
Many of these basic demographics can be inferred from your interactions with customers. In many cases, you can simply ask them.
Beyond the basics, you will also benefit from more personal data, such as the following:
Interests Activities Political affiliation
That data is harder to access, but there are databases that will allow you to target individuals based on those criteria. Facebook’s ad platform provides an incredible amount of targeting data. You can infer your customer profiles by the types of results you get by running ads aimed at specific target markets. That will help identify the interests of your customers.
What? consider what consumers need to know about a product to make a purchase.
Are there ongoing costs? Does it need anything else to make it work? How big is it? How does it function? How long will it last? How much does it cost? Is there a warranty? What are its specs? What does it look like? What options are there? What sizes and colors are available?
To find those details, shoppers will seek different sources: articles, websites, blogs, and actually looking at products and trying them on. Make sure you understand the “what” questions for your products. Then, provide answers to those questions.
Why? The “why” questions are important. Do you know why your customers buy your products?
It could be for the following reasons.
Address an immediate need or desire. Loyal to a particular brand or store. Need flexibility to return products. Need product occasionally or on a regular schedule. Purchase because product is cool or trendy. Seek bargains. Seek high-quality products Seek little or no shipping or sales tax. Seek the lowest price possible. Shop around every time they buy.
Answers will surely vary. Consider also, what motivates your customers to purchase the products you sell and also why they purchase them from your company versus your competitor. This will help you better refine your value proposition of why shoppers choose your company.
How? This area is the most significant change in a consumer’s shopping cycle. As recently as 15 years ago, most product research was done in stores or catalogs or magazines. Today, product research is done in many ways. In the living room, in the boardroom, at the hospital, you name it. Most shoppers start their search at Amazon.com or on Google by searching on a product.
Many searches start with an opportunistic email promoting a product. From there, we may find the shopper looking at the item on that store’s website.
Consumers likely check product reviews, from other consumers. They may read professional reviews. Browse the Internet on SmartPhone.
The point is to understand your customer’s research process. It will vary widely. But in many cases it’s something like this.
An event triggers an interest in a product. Check other brands or alternative products. Conduct research by looking at a product’s pictures, reading descriptions. Evaluate the product’s real value, and eventually make a purchase decision. Narrow your selection and shop for price. Seek out reviews or ask friends.
Where? That leads us to the where customers are researching. They could be reading relevant blogs, going to brick and mortar stores, checking comparison shopping engines, and reading trade publication articles. They may be looking at Pinterest boards, Facebook posts, and checking with their network of friends on Twitter.
They will be using tablets (increasingly the shopper’s preference), smartphones, laptops, desktops, Xboxes, and store visits.
Can an ecommerce merchant be in all of these places with your message? Likely no. But you can identify where your customers are looking for information as they move through their cycle and try to make sure you are seen. You can also ensure that your messaging and content are mobile friendly.
To compete in the future, your store needs to provide input and information to support all those steps. If you lack reviews, your customers will seek them out elsewhere.
Most ecommerce merchants can describe their customers in a general way. They likely know basic demographics – age range, gender, income level. But, do they understand the “why, where, when, and how” their customers make their purchases? These basic tenants of marketing are more important than ever.
The buying process has never been more complex. Consumers have hundred of places online to purchase products that meet their needs. They may shop at home, at work, in the grocery store. They may be using an Android phone, an iPhone, or an Xbox.
Posted in e-commerce & m-commerce, Electronic Payments, Internet Payment Gateway, Mobile Point of Sale, Point of Sale, Smartphone Tagged with: alternative, Android, brick and mortar, comparison, competitor, consumers, content, costs, customers, cycle, data, databases, desktops, ecommerce, Facebook's, flexibility, Iphone, laptops, leads, Merchant's, mobile, ongoing, online, phone, pinterest, platform, price, product, profiles, purchase, selection, shop, shoppers, smartphone, store's, tablets, target, trigger, value, websites, xbox
