How to make customers blog about you
An informative article for webshop owners this time, all about how to make people blog about your company. Everything you need to know about online customers, the power of the internet, and how good old moral values still work and can be leveraged to your advantage. Or not.
1. Create a website (or two) The first step of every professional online webshop is ofcourse the webshop itself. It should give the customer a good feeling about your customer, and what better than to make the website in the customer's local language? Or, if you really want to go all the way, you can register different local domains, like Lawrence did when he registered "laptop-accus.nl", and probably a bunch of other domains.
2. Combine great presentation with low pricing Create good looking product pages, which are easily linkable, and make it clear to the customer that this is the cheap knockoff, I mean, product he needs. To top it all off, offer your products at an almost unbelievably low price.
3. Put your company name on the payment receipt When the customer chooses to purchase a product, make sure that your company name is on the receipt. Between all the payments on a credit card bill you want your company to stand out, or at least you want the customer to be able to easily check his payments. Clearly, the "hunt360" and the "GB" indicate that this payment is from the "laptop-accus.nl" shop. ahem Also note the difference between advertized price and the receipt for added customer convenience.
4. Use a professional looking email address When people contact you for questions or support, your reply says a lot about your company, starting with the "reply to" address in your mail. In this case, Lawrence went all the way, and even used the word "professional" in his email address for that extra "enterprise" touch.
5. Hire the best shipping provider So you made a local website. But to be able to make some profit, you found a cheap manufacturer in Singapore. So to get products from your manufacturer to the customer, preferably without stocking up, you select the absolute best parcel service you can find. For instance, you can select Swiss post to deliver your parcels, door to door, at an incredible speed:
Yes, you've read those dates correctly. Pretty awesome shipping speeds there. For a handicapped sea snail traveling over land. And handicapped sea snails tend to get caught at the border, so your customers will always pay that extra import tax you never warned about on your site:
6. Promptly answer customer mails In the unfortunate circumstance that your customer is not as impressed with the shipping speeds as you are, make sure you answer questions politely promptly. During the shipping process I asked some questions about why it takes way longer than the advertised 10 days to get my battery, and I got exactly 0 (zero) responses. And I even used the "professional" email address! Nothing says "hey I've got your money, now beat it!" like ignoring paying customers.
7. Let your products speak for themselves. When the customer receives your product, it is your chance to shine. The product will prove itself to be a top-of-the-line knockoff.
In this case you can clearly see how beautiful it fits the macbook, sitting "perfectly" flush with the body, having the exact same Aluminum color, and immediately is recognized as a brand new, fresh battery by the OS. (NOT, NOT and NOT).
Should you think this is not enough, you can add some extra pizzaz to the whole customer experience by leaving the original wholesale receipt in the box. It will tell the customer how much you paid for this cheap knockoff ($30 is €22,81).
And if you are really the top of the line customer experience perfectionist, you can rig your battery to grow bulges. Is that a battery in your laptop or is it glad to see me?
8. Have a money-back guarantee. When the battery almost explodes, and the customer asks you about your money-back guarantee, politely ignore those mails, just as you did with the shipping inquiries. For good measure, make sure you filter out all messages from paying customers so you can focus on new ones.
Recap: This lengthy article is proof of the fact that you can, in fact, easily convince people to blog about your webshop. Use suspicious names on the receipts, make sure delivery takes weeks or months, ship the cheapest, crappiest products you can find, use a free gmail account to do customer service from, and well, actually, just simply don't do customer service.
As for my personal story: I have learned to not order the cheapest knockoff battery at some random shop because the price is too tempting. This dead battery arrived a month after ordering, and cost me €56,30 + €16,87 = €73,17 instead of the advertized €44,-.
Although I did ask about the refund policy, I doubt I'll ever send this battery back, because I don't expect them to refund me, and I probably will have to pay for shipping, which means more loss. Let's just say that this is an just an expensive way to create material for my blog and helping you make the right buying decision.
I've ordered a proper battery at Apple for €139,- but this time I know there will be no extra charges, it will fit perfectly, and it will just work. Learn from this blogpost and please, please order the original battery from the original manufacturer.
Happy shopping!