How to Lose Business Online
Websites are the window into your company and for many, are the actual shop or office. They are your business card, your boardroom, your media release and your bank.
Successful companies have successful websites – ever-changing, user-friendly and well-crafted.
If you believe success is overrated - by following these concise tips, you too could drive a flourishing business into the ground and get back to whatever is that you do when you should be working.
1. Be impossible to find
That’s right. Make it so frustratingly hard for potential customers to find you that they’ll go to the competition instead. There are a number of ways you can achieve this, but my all-time favourite is to misspell your own domain name.
Ahead of all of this, heaven forbid is not to even have one. Not cool. Or if you do, ensure that links you’ve managed to get on other websites lead to the wrong places or to 404 error pages.
Also, you must avoid appearing prominently in Google. This is pretty easy for the first few weeks as it takes the search engines months to locate and index new websites. Don’t make it easy for them. At all costs, avoid using words people actually use when trying to find your products. For example, instead of kids clothing, write about adult life drawing classes. Far fewer people will type those words into Google when looking for a child’s pair of booties.
2. Avoid updating the site
If your website looked good once, why change it? Sure, that was back in 2001, the news items are out of date and the products you are pushing went out of fashion three years ago, but fresh content and accurate info only encourage more sales and that means more work for you!
If you haven’t updated your postage rates for years, it will really get up customer noses if you email them after a purchase to demand more money to correct the difference. But nothing loses customers faster than failing to update which stock is in or out of stock. That really pushes their buttons of disappointment – especially if your site forces them to confirm the purchase and pay for the item before you email them to say it is out of stock. Don’t repay the money, of course, just tell them it’s on backorder and should be available within six months – maybe – if you remember to call the suppliers and they still make it.
3. Hide your best deals
You know that your special offer on ornamental teaspoons could be a great money-maker but relying on the psychic powers of the average consumer to find the page within your website may be taking things to extremes. On arriving at the website, don’t make it too easy for a person to find your best products and prices. Bury them deep in your product pages, preferably at the bottom of overlong pages of unattractive offers that are not linked from the home page.
If possible, have conflicting offers on different pages of your site. What is offered at 25% off on one page is full price on another and removed from sale on a third. Ensure the customer doesn’t know what to do to get the best deal – and even if they do make a purchase, seed them with enough doubt about whether they paid more than they should.
Alternatively, if you are provide a service additional to your core line of business, never tell anyone about it and just write a small sentence at the bottom of a buried page that says ‘ …and as well as plumbing, we also install air conditioning units”.
4. Loop pages around
Ever been to a website FAQ section where answers that don’t answer the questions loop around each other taking you in circles? One answer suggests you click to another page for the information you need, but the new page refers you back to where you were.
You know that answering consumer questions accurately may force you to reveal how bad your business really is. Baffle them with pages of vague and useless waffle that fails to address the issues while linking meaninglessly to each other in a perpetual loop of confusion.
And then refuse to take queries from customers who have not used the FAQ to solve their problems.
5. Don’t provide any contact details
Taking this one step further, prevent any personal contact at all.
Can’t people just leave me alone! Anyone would think they want to make further enquiries or ask for information to help them make a better purchase. Timewasters! Don’t let them interrupt your daily routine with petty customer service issues. Just remove all possible forms of contact from your site – especially email – and force anyone with a question to attempt to find an answer on the looped and infuriating FAQ pages (see 4).
I might be getting on a bit, but my experience says that people still want to pick up the phone and actually talk to someone. Call me crazy!!!
6. Overcharge on postage
This one is a classic method for losing customers from an online business. Some previous champions at business failure have turned thousands of customers away with inappropriate postage charges. The easiest way is to only offer overnight courier service on all purchases – regardless of what they are. Suddenly, that t-shirt is an expensive buy when you add in $30 worth of courier costs!
But even without going to such extremes, it is possible to scare people away. Avoid postage discounts on multiple items. Yes, of course you’ll send the products in the same package but by insisting on charging as if you are sending them separately, you can be sure to create some angry customers who won’t come back.
7. Get one of those free online website templates
Well, what better way to tell the wider business community that you don’t care for brand credibility, love to cut corners and are happy to have banner ads from unassociated businesses plastered all over your pages.
You spent more on the new couch in the foyer of your office than what you did on your company website. Just a pity no one is going to come sit on it!!!
So there you have it – some foolproof ways to turn away all those pesky customers. All of these techniques are tried and proven to work.
In fact, examples can be found every day across the web, leading the way in customer dissatisfaction.
Don’t get left behind! Join the fight against business success today!
Contact The Web Designer to help your business win online.