As I mentioned in my last article, you achieve the final evolution of a successful Web site when you build a sense of community among your visitors. Done correctly, your customers engage with you and each other, and they look forward to their next visit to your site. You want your site to become regular stop on their journey around cyberspace. Think of this as the "Cheers" theory: You want to go where everybody knows your name.
So, how do you accomplish this feat? The goal is to provide your customers with a way to interact with you and each other on-line. Many tools are designed just for this purpose, and it's likely your hosting company can hook you up with some of them. Most professional hosting companies have a suite of commonly requested tools that they offer to their hosting customers, sometimes free of charge. You can also search the Internet for scripts that you can install on your site, but the onus is on you to figure out how they work (and to support them when they break).
To give you a better idea of what I'm talking about here, here are some specific examples of "community-ware."
*Chat*
Chat software lets visitors write to each other in real time. Usually the software presents two panes, one that displays the comments of the other visitors and one that accepts input from you. Most chat software supports the concept of "rooms," which lets you organize chat sessions into specific discussion topics. Sometimes you can keep a record of the discussion for later reference.
The down side of chat is that everyone types their comments, so the conversation has odd little delays and can get out of sync. Depending upon how you have the software configured, the participants may be more or less anonymous. This can be either an advantage (more freedom of expression) or disadvantage (excessive freedom of expression).
A good use for chat is to give customers a chance to communicate with someone in your company whom they would not normally be able to access. Publicize a schedule of who will be available when. Chat allows any number of people to participate or observe the discussion all at the same time.
*Discussion Groups*
A discussion group is like an organized bulletin board. Visitors can drop by and post a message whenever they want. For example, if someone posts a question, anyone else can post a response. A series of related postings is called a thread, which you can follow from the beginning to see the entire discussion.
Discussion groups are great forums for customer support. Many software companies use them as a free support option. One advantage to this approach is that your customers frequently help each other out. I've seen many sites where a customer posts a question and another customer provides the answer. This makes for *really* inexpensive support on the part of the company hosting the discussion group.
*E-mail Newsletters and E-zines*
Well, you're seeing this one in action right now. Conventional marketing wisdom includes the concept that an informed customer is a better customer. The more your customers understand what you do for them and the more willing you are to demonstrate your expertise, the more trust and confidence you will generate.
Every business has useful information to share with its customers. Every customer has questions, and every question is an opportunity for you to share your hard-won experience. Take advantage of this opportunity by sending out a periodic e-mail newsletter. Be sure to give your visitors an easy way to subscribe and unsubscribe from a page on your Web site.
Hopefully I've given you some ideas here on how you can engage your customers in ways that bring them back to your site regularly. You can use these ideas to make a site that is more than just a fancy brochure. |
