Now this post is not meant to just brag about our success. No, actually this is a post designed to help you, the small business person. I intend to share with you what I consider the secret of success for any small business, particularly service businesses. Now my business isn’t your typical service business, usually you think more of the guy that comes to fix your refrigerator or the exterminator, or perhaps someone who comes to cut your grass. But, I do look at myself as a service company and most definitely a small business despite our tremendous growth.
The simplest thing a service business can do to retain customers and reap the benefits of those people referring you over and over is to respond to inquiries immediately. As an example, we answer every email the same day. Most of the time we fulfill customer requests within 24 hours. No matter what you’re doing, respond to your customers quickly. Otherwise, they will go elsewhere. And, If you have the contact form on your site, make sure you check and respond as soon as possible. When people fill out a form, they do so as they want immediate help. As not everyone prefers the phone these days, they fill out your form. If you ignore this or take too long to respond, again they will probably go elsewhere.
A lot of times companies make the mistake of overcharging a customer on their first interaction. The problem with that, is you leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth and they’re not as likely to for you or use you again. Instead, try to be fair, even giving first time customers/clients a discount. The result will be repeating business and referrals. Being shortsighted and overcharging maybe profitable in the short term, but in the long-term is not a great strategy.
One thing most people and companies are looking for is to deal with businesses who have a good solid offering. For us, we have tried to develop service plans to handle most of the web tasks a small business could ever need. So rather than their company having to hire a person to do SEO, another to do social media, another to write blog posts, another to host their site, and yet another to manage their website updates and security, they just hire us. So think about your business, what are you offering and what can you add to those offerings to make you more valuable to your customers?
One thing that we have always done is give a substantial discount to nonprofit organizations. This is something we recommend to most small businesses. By giving a discount to nonprofits, veterans groups and others you show people that you are a part of the community. This leaves your customers with a good feeling about you and your business. And people always want to refer companies they like and respect.
I am a firm believer that you can always be improving. [ see my post on Kaizen – Kaizen is Japanese for “improvement”, or “change for the better” ] But to do so you need to constantly be reviewing what you are doing as a small business. Take a look at what can you do better, what works and of course what doesn’t work. The world is constantly changing, and as such you need to be evolving all the time as a business. Keep your eyes on others in your industry, look for the next big thing. I’m not telling you to get away with from what made you successful, but perhaps adding something to your company can help you sustain yourself for the long haul.
I have followed these tips and they have worked well for me growing my business over the last two decades. I’m sure there are other good pieces of advice, and I would love to hear some of your tips to help small-business. The small business community is a tight knit one and anytime you can reach out and help others, that’s a good thing. Good karma can never hurt!
I am a big believer in WordPress and use it for 95%+ of my client websites. They are constantly upgrading the CMS and at this point I wouldn’t consider using any other software. But, as with most things in life there are some things I’d like to see improved. My number one pet peeve is the random nature of theme updates. Now what do I mean by this? When you log into your WordPress, some themes give you a notice that there’s an update. The problem is that there are different ways of upgrading themes.
Here are a few:
The scary thing is there isn’t always good documentation on how to upgrade themes. Some vendors do a much better job than others. Some of the premium themes make it very easy, and not only offer an automatic update you can just click on, but they also have a mechanism for patching along the way.
Here’s where I think:
WordPress can improve. I think there needs to be a uniform method of updating themes. I think there needs to be away that people can have a one click update, AND also have a mechanism to revert back in case the theme update corrupts the website.
I also feel that WordPress should try and require theme vendors to have a minimum standard of documentation for updating themes. Besides dealing with the three methods, some themes also have strange quirks.
Here’s an example:
A theme I really like a lot has a one click theme update as I mentioned above in method number one. But as I found out the other day the entire header region disappears after making a team update. The logo, menu, and entire top of the site literally disappears.
Why?
Well, they have a header builder and when you upgraded the theme you lose your settings. Now, I reverted back and figured out there is a way to save your header settings. I then updated the theme and then could use those old settings. While this was simple enough, it was not very clear and an inexperienced website owner or developer would not have known what to do, other then perhaps open a service ticket with the theme vendor.
In Closing:
WordPress is the number one CMS in the world. But as with any open-source software, there is a random nature in the way some people develop their plug-ins and themes. I think that it is in WordPress’ best interest to have some standards which themes and plug-ins have to follow. This will make the user experience much better. And after all, WordPress owes its success to providing the world’s most user friendly content management system.
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