Are you blanking your customers?

Is it difficult for customers to understand what you’re trying to communicate on your website? Are you showing them a blank screen, or hiding key sections of your site from them? It can happen to the best of companies without them realising …

I can think of a couple of reasons why you might decline somebody’s custom: but only people that you no longer wanted to have as customers. You surely wouldn’t refuse to serve those people you do want to retain or exclude them from your corporate communications.
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Signing the web

Is your site truly accessible? Are you providing the best possible service to all your visitors?

I expect you’ve taken the first step, and perhaps your site is accessible to level A (or even AA). But have you considered taking the extra step, and providing accessible charting in your investor section, transcripts for all your video or audio sections on site, or providing a sign language translation for your webcasts and videos?

There are up to 70,000 users of British Sign Language (BSL) in the UK, and up to 500,000 users of American Sign Language (ASL) in the US. This is a big constituency which you should perhaps be considering.
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Want to talk to Coca-Cola?

I have now managed to get onto Coca-Cola’s new mini-site (launched on Wednesday, apparently). I couldn’t find it before because the link from the press release didn’t seem to work - now there’s something that should always be checked - but Google found it for me. Of course.

Do you think this site is designed only for the British? It has a UK URL, and the audio clip used of their focus group contains some quite strong northern British dialects, which maybe people coming across this from abroad may struggle with. It reminds me very strongly of the Nick Park adverts for electricity … and if it is UK only, why?
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Starbucks: how to communicate change

Starbucks provides us with a demonstration of a great way of communicating the significant changes under way (changes in their approach and in their senior management structure).

The home page has been replaced with a letter from Howard Schultz, addressed to all customers. At the bottom are links to copies of a letter and a voicemail from him to all Starbucks partners (employees), together with a link to a Questions and Answers page dealing with the changes, and to the Investor Relations pages, which shows the press release at the top of the list. If we click through to review the details of the Board of Directors, we can see that the changes have been reflected on this page, which is up to date. Even potential job applicants have been provided with a link to the letter/voicemail to partners and letter to customers in the careers section.
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How to use your customer as your sales force

You can use your customers to help future customers find exactly what they want on your site - thus increasing their satisfaction level.

How? By letting them write reviews of your products on your site. This helps future customers select the right product for them, based on the experience of your previous customers.

Why would you do this? Read the rest of this article …

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