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How Fast Do You Process Refunds?

28. Jul, 2010 2 Comments

How fast do you process refunds?

Are you giving refunds enough attention?

In addition to satisfied customers and new customers, you also have to deal with existing customers who decide that your product or service is not for them. Your product may be great, though the customer may have needs that do not get resolved by your product. Regardless of the reason, anytime a customer asks you for a refund, the only usual way of making that customer happy is to give them back their money.

In such cases, while you may be losing money, you try to focus and make sure the customer in question leaves you or your product at least a bit satisfied. In addition to making sure you get new customers, you have to make sure that one of the most popular trends among customers, the trend of getting a refund, gets sorted out and planned well by you. Without working out a plan or focusing on how you can make your business or blog offer refunds faster or easier, you may never be able to get people to try out your products or services on an effective scale.

How are customers viewing your refund policy? What kind of refund policies do you offer?

How Easy is Your Refund Process?

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Should You Contact Customers Through Personal Channels?

17. Jul, 2010 1 Comment

Contacting customers through personal channels

Do you contact customers through personal channels?

The most important thing that many customers prefer is communication from and with the companies that they do business with. You can communicate with your clients through practically hundreds of ways. You can realize beforehand, however, that the channels through which you communicate with your clients can be divided into a few categories, including the personal category.

Contacting customers through personal channels shows initiative and actual interest in the success of the customer. It lets the customer know that you are interested in being proactive with your customers. The same way you can communicate effectively or poorly, communicating through different channels could be good or bad depending on what the customer actually prefers.

Should you contact your customers through personal channels? Would you be appreciating clients more if you approached them through personal channels? There are a few ways to figure out the answer that would be best suited for your clients and your business.

Contacting Customers Through Personal Channels

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Where Does Your Blog Fit in Your Business?

15. Jul, 2010 1 Comment

What role does your blog play in your business?

Do you know the role your blog plays in your business?

Every business should try to regularly review the different components it depends on and uses to figure out their place within the business. From different departments to actual products and services, a business can figure out the importance or shortage of different elements needed for both survival and prosperity. Your exact focus on anything in life in order to make money makes it the equivalent of a business for you. You should try to figure out the roles different elements play in any business for you.

Your blog should go under the same kind of review. Your blog, whether personal or business or both, probably exists to serve some kind of a need. Your blog can either make or break your business. By seeing the wrong tools or articles on your blog, people may avoid taking you seriously and may actually not do any business with you. With the good tools and content, your blog can help you and your business become better and generate more clients and readers. Therefore, you have to figure out the role your blog plays in your business if you want to improve both your business and your blog.

In order to figure out the role your blog may play in your business so that you can appreciate clients and your blog more, regardless of the size or type of business, you may start figuring out the types of roles a blog can play in any business.

5 Different Roles Blogs Can Play in Your Business

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Are Customers Making U-turns On Your Blog?

05. Jul, 2010 1 Comment

Are customers making u turns on your blog?

Are you making customers make u-turns on your blog?

U-turns are usually the least liked signs some drivers want to see on a road. And there is a good reason for that. Many drivers prefer driving straight or making left and right turns. A u-turn usually tells a driver that they have come too far, and that they have to turn around their entire car. This kind of an experience exists in the online world too. U-turns are everywhere online, and your blog may be making your customers make unwanted u-turns.

In addition to making sure that your customers have a great time on your blog, you have to make sure that the different blog features you offer do not result in your customers wanting to literally back off simply because of feeling stuck. From bad blog design to inconsistent ways of incorporating new features into your blog, you may actually be forcing your customers into making u-turns on your blog. And you may thus be losing readers, customers and money because of such u-turns.

RA Project shows you 3 ways your customers may be making u-turns on your blog, and not liking you because of that.

3 Examples How Customers Make U-turns on Your Blog

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Should you reply to every commentor on your blog?

19. Jun, 2010 10 Comments

Should you reply to all your commentors?

Commentors are commenting on your blog. Will you reply to all of them?

The entire age and popularity of guestbooks from the late 1990′s led us to the idea of having comments from other people everywhere, specially on our blogs. Guestbooks were very long, often single-page listings of comments that anonymous people from all over the world left for you. The comments would usually focus on the coolness of your guestbook design, instead of the topic at hand. Because of the number of entries left on such guestbooks, majority of the guestbook owners would never reply to any, or all, of such entries or people in the form of leaving an entry themselves in their guestbook. Today, however, the situation of replying to the entries, or comments, that you get today on your blog is different.

Many business and personal blogs focus on the concept of writing an article and letting commentors comment on them. Many other blogs focus on writing short articles and replying to each and every comment. In the end, the idea of replying to comments gets separated into a few different categories, with the most coveted or time-consuming option for many people being the task of replying to every comment. There are several benefits to replying to each and every commentor on your blog. There are also, however, several downsides to replying to every commentor who comments on your blog.

RA Project would like to discuss this idea with you and share a poll to ask what you think about the important question: Do you reply to every commentor on your blog?

5 reasons to reply to every blog comment

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Why are you on twitter?

13. Dec, 2009 38 Comments

Why are you on twitter?Twitter has quickly became a household name for millions of people, probably including yourself and your friends and family. From marketers to friends and confused people, Twitter allows almost anyone to go online and to try and spread or communicate some sort of a message.

Because of the different reasons people may be online, the reason you are on twitter may be different than the reason I am on Twitter. This results in the same types of online messages to have different meanings, due to the nature of the tweeter.

If you could figure out one single reason why you are on twitter, it could help you figure out whether you enjoy being on twitter, or if someone you know on twitter is being honest, loyal or even accurate in their tweets.

What is the single reason without which you would not be on twitter?

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Comment Response Choice: A Step Backward?

18. Apr, 2009 65 Comments

Business Reply Mail for Customers

Recently, at RA Project a new brand idea was born to allow, through WordPress and in general, each and every website commentor the choice to specifically tell a website owner whether or not that specific commentor would like a comment response. I call it the RA Project Comment Response Choice Idea. I wonder about the effect of this idea on other things in the blog-reader and business-customer relationship arena and wanted to discuss that with you today. Read more…

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Are You Concerned About Fake Friends?

30. Jul, 2008 34 Comments

If you run a blog or two, you may already know that some of the means to promote your blogs to the world are social media and commenting on other blogs in your niche. Both methods imply communication. Your avatar meets my avatar on the same page and we exchange words and thoughts.

What if my avatar has been “borrowed” from Flickr and designed to represent that other “me” I want to be in relationship with you? If you knew that your web 2.0 friends who helped you when you needed were just “somebody elses” hiding behind fake social media profiles, would this discovery lower your appreciation for them?

Is this situation similar to the one of the little boy who wanted to get his grandmother married, so he pretended to be her in some dating websites, and befriended some potential grandfathers in her name?

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Invisible Readers, Where Are You?

23. Jul, 2008 4 Comments

Do you remember the last time when you did something for your readers to make them feel better on your blog? How did you come to the conclusion that you had to do exactly that particular change and not others?

One of the niches I’m writing in is internet marketing. As I want to stay informed on what other people in the niche are writing, I’m subscribed to a gazillion blogs, and every now and then I even remember to read them. Many bloggers in this niche feel like monetizing their blogs is a must, taking into consideration that they write about making money with blogs. However, every once in a while, there’s a blogger who decides to get rid of all blog advertising as tribute to his readers. The results? The readers’ appreciation? I quote from the blog of Garry Conn, who’s the person in question:

Since this time, I have written some really good articles — at least what I thought to be — and have received virtually ZERO reactions to these posts. I even wrote a post about my daughter’s 16th birthday and out of 1200 subscribers on only 4 people wished her a happy birthday. So for me, I am truly offended by that. I understand nor do I expect that all 1200 people would have wished her happy birthday, but I would have expected around 20 people to do so…

So, ads are back on the blog, and so are the comments from readers. This is the last comment on the post I’ve quoted from:

I’ve never seen a marketer chew is viewers out … ?? I get great feedback, and most others do to. Only 25% of people come back to your site, meaning you’re failing on building the emotional connection. Don’t blame your viewers when you fail at generating buzz or comments. You are the one making the “first move” with your website. If you fall on your face, then work on your style, or add more value.

What do you think? Was this reader unfair? Or is it just that our readers are in such a hurry themselves that they really don’t find the time to stop and wish Happy Birthday to the daughter of somebody they learn from?

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The Lifespan of a Reader

15. Jul, 2008 4 Comments

There was this research some years ago which was showing that the staff of a company fully renews itself over a period of three years. People come and go, and if you have the curiosity to pay a visit to your former colleagues after a few years, you may end up with the surprise of not knowing anybody in that company anymore.

Thinking at myself as a blog reader, one of the things I notice immediately is that the list of blogs I read has almost completely changed over the past two years. Although I watch on average 100 blogs (or more), the ones which are still on my favorites list can be counted on one hand’s fingers only.

I don’t remember when I’ve lost interest in some blogs and how long it did take until I wasn’t interested in them anymore. However, I believe that for most of the blogs, my lifespan as a reader last some 4-6 months. I have no idea if those bloggers were starting to repeat themselves, or was it only that I didn’t care for those topics anymore?

How are you as a reader? Are you aware of your lifespan as reader of a certain blog? When you stop reading one, do you know your reasons, or it’s just that one day you discover that you completely forgot it existed?

After how much time the readership of a blog is completely renewed? I wonder if we could measure that. What do you think?

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