Adding Extra Value

These steps adding articles to a site and enabling customers to add their own comments are only the first toward increasing the amount of information a site has available to share with its customers. Successful sites are composed of a slew of tools that are employed to bring customers back to the site over and over again.

Producing newsletters and e-zines

Tools used by many companies, because they are relatively inexpensive, are newsletters and e-zines. Both of these products are essentially the same: information on products and services is sent to customers in an e-mail. While this may sound as if it’s spam (the Internet equivalent of junk mail), it is not. The difference is that the customer requests the newsletter by filling out a check box on a form (the already notorious ‘‘check here to receive more information on our products’’ check box) or by registering with a site. A user is far more willing to receive e-mail from a company if they have requested it.

Newsletters and e-zines can take many forms. Rich HTML can be used to format the newsletter. But this should be done cautiously. Not all e-mail programs display HTML with images by default, such as Microsoft Outlook, so your e-mail can appear funky when received. The alternative is to use plain text, and although it’s not as pretty, it does guarantee that everyone receiving the e-mail can read it. It’s always a good idea to give your customers a choice to receive either format.

When creating a newsletter to be sent through e-mail, the only rule to bear in mind is to keep it brief. The average Internet customer receives 25 to 100 e-mails a day. No one has time to read through lengthy newsletters. Indeed, many readers may give up after the first few paragraphs, the first page as viewed on a normal computer screen. If you have important information, place it at the top of the letter.

Successful newsletters from companies such as DevX, RealNetworks, and BusinessWeek are used as tools to drive users back to the sites. The newsletter may contain news information, stock quotes, or press releases, but the intent is to get users to the sites to begin viewing advertisements or buying.

All articles in a newsletter should be very short one to three paragraphs. If an article is longer than that, provide a link back to the main site for the full article. Important product news (such as a recall or news release) should be placed as the first article. The next article in the newsletter should be related to the main article, but with a twist. For example, the main article may be for a new car, whereas the second article can discuss the fuel savings of the new car. The third article should be part of some sort of series. For example, the third article for a car newsletter could be a series focused on maintenance. The idea is to create a consistent format that customers come to expect. Creating newsletters that change format with each issue only frustrates the reader and drives them away from future newsletters. Newsletters are a great way to get product information placed in your customer’s Inbox. It also allows for the timely dissemination of information to customers, instead of relying on them to come to your site.

Writing product reviews

Whether it is a product or a service, the single driving need for almost every Web site is to sell, sell, sell. The Web is unparalleled in its ability to reach and deliver to an enormously diverse range of customers. With this in mind, customers coming to your site expect to find product and service information that is fresh and up to date. Generally, customers search a company’s site to obtain information on a product before making a purchase. This is particularly true of big-ticket items such as TVs, game systems, motorbikes, cars, and trucks. By providing timely, accurate, and concise information, they allow the customers to make an informed decision about a product before they enter the showroom. Indeed, when an informed customer arrives at a showroom to make a purchase, the sale is made much faster. Perhaps nothing is more infuriating to a consumer than arriving at a site to find old, outdated information. This drives customers away. To ensure that a product is given proper visibility, work with a launch schedule, such as the following:

- Understand the product or service being launched.

- Create press releases for the new product.

- Leverage the content of the press release on the company Web site.

- Create a section on the site for the new product (the larger the product, the larger the section).

- Create a newsletter to be delivered through e-mail informing customers of the new product and providing a link directly to the site, where they can read additional information about the product.

By defining a new product launch schedule, a process is created whereby the Internet site is part and parcel of the whole advertising process. Creating tutorials Offering online education is an emerging technique being employed to keep customers coming back to a site. Today, many products (especially software) are complicated. Meanwhile, other products (such as books) are not necessarily complicated, but they still require interpretation. Online tutorials and classes are a great vehicle to further extend the customer relationship. In providing training, your company is extending a hand to your customers to enable them to become product specialists.

One company heavily involved in online training is Microsoft, which provides online tutorials and demos for its vast range of software products for its professional and home clientele. If you want to learn about an Office application (for example, Access), you can go to office .microsoft.com/en-us/training. Many other businesses provide training for their products online, and there are several organizations that exist primarily to only offer training online (one example being e-learning center).

This form of training or education is now being referred to as edutainment. The education is an extension of the site’s traditional services. One goal of edutainment is to keep customers at the site longer so they have the opportunity to make additional purchases.