News Article
Manage Your Web Site Smarter
By Bonny L. Georgia
January 11, 2002
As your Web site becomes more sophisticated, time spent on maintenance increases too-and that means time-sensitive new-product listings, news releases, job openings, multimedia clips, and other critical content may grow stale waiting for approval before going online. Content management tools lighten the workload by organizing Web pages into a database and letting you fix errors, add pages, and make global changes with minimum effort.
Web sites are a smart way to collect sales leads, but Steven Rothberg, president of CollegeRecruiter.com, knows you'll never turn prospects into profit unless you follow up. When potential customers request pricing and other details about CollegeRecruter.com's job listing and resume database services, an autoresponder from AWeber Systems takes over. "They immediately receive information by e-mail that appears to come from me," says Rothberg. "Then they automatically receive scheduled follow-ups from me four, seven, 14, 30, and 60 days later. I can't tell you how many times customers have responded after the fourth or fifth e-mail, thanking me for my diligence, and asking how they can purchase our service."
Rothberg pays about $600 a year for four autoresponders that track all new customer queries plus clients whose contracts have expired. "For an organization like ours without a large staff, it's invaluable," he says. "About 80 percent of our business is repeat customers. AWeber follows up with those people and helps to ensure that we don't lose them." AWeber autoresponders help bring in as much as $200,000 in revenue for CollegeRecruiter.com each year.
Another way to save money and personalize your Web site visitors' experience is to add live help features. The average cost of a customer service phone call is approximately $33, while costs to provide real-time customer support are significantly lower, reports Forrester. On the other hand, e-mail costs an average of $9.99 per inquiry, while conversations via live chat cost just $7.80.
Live chat tools like Groopz and LivePerson let customers page your customer service reps manually by clicking on a live help button. As the rep pushes sales information to the customer, the technology captures the conversation for follow-up. Both services also allow sales reps to monitor online visitors in real time as they visit different areas of your site, greeting customers and offering assistance. Groopz even includes an audible alert to customer activity at your site and lets you define an ideal customer profile of visitors who've visited certain pages and spent a certain amount of time there. As a hosted service, Groopz ranges from $99 to $300 per month per seat. LivePerson operator licenses cost $350 per month.
R35 in Pasadena, California, provides high-end ergonomic furniture systems, tools, technology, e-business training, and consulting services. The first week R35 reps chatted with site visitors, Web sales jumped 50 percent. A year later, online sales continue to close approximately 40 to 50 percent higher than before R35 added Groopz.
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