Posted: March 25, 2011

[br][br]

Does your small business have an online presence? Does your business actually conduct business online with either consumers (B2C) or other businesses (B2B)?

If the answer to either of these questions is yes, then when was the last time you looked at your site and actually tried to conduct a transaction through the site? You might be less than pleasantly surprised with what you might find.

Consumers and businesses routinely turn to the Internet as their first source of information about what and from whom they are about to buy. It would seem to be logical that companies who are looking for business would strive to put their best foot forward. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

In a recent study published by Forrester Consulting, "Poor Online Customer Experience Creates Disloyal Customers," it was discovered that 46 percent of consumers (B2C) rated their online purchasing process as satisfactory and less than one third (33 percent) were happy with the overall research and customer service processes respectively.

If you think that this is bad, it only gets worse in the business (B2B) arena where those who said they found their online purchasing interactions "easy, effective and enjoyable" hover around 10 percent for each attribute. In the research and customer service arenas, only 11 percent found the process satisfactory.

What is the result of this poor performance? Lost revenue in that 36 percent of consumers and 22 percent of business buyers surveyed indicated that they were likely to purchase from another source.

Word-of-mouth marketing also significantly suffers as customers are less likely to be product advocates as only 29 percent of consumers and 18 percent of business buyers were likely to recommend a product or service.

"The study found that: 'Taken together, the poor customer experience scores and the reticence to make follow-on purchases or act as an advocate validate the correlation between customer experience and loyalty in the online arena.'"

Simply stated, you have to get it right.

While the data presented above was sampled in only three industries - financial services, mobile phones and IT hardware - it is easy to expect that similar results could be noted in other industries as well.

Customers are looking for three simple things:

* Personalized service at all phases of the customer life cycle. Basically, customers want to feel appreciated and want to interact (actually talk) with someone who cares.

* Readily available and transparent product information. While the Internet has certainly made access to information easier, people looking for information want to be able to easily navigate sites to locate materials to support purchasing decisions.

* Speedy customer service online. While what you offer may be good, it has to be fast and the customer service process cannot suffer any degradation. While speed on the Internet is the standard, your company's internal processes must be able to match this as well.

What can a small business owner do?

Review all aspects of your online presence. Have several outside individuals review and actually try to conduct transactions on the site. Just how favorable are the results that you receive? You only have one chance to make a good first impression.

Listen to your customers. Let's face it, if it wasn't for them, you would not be in business.

Jim Carroll is the vice president of small business for the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce and the executive director for the Small Business Development Center of Hampton Roads Inc. He can be reached at 664-2595 or www.hrsbdc.org.