You know what I can’t stand!?!? Companies that have online reservation forms that don’t work. The whole point of filling out an online reservation form for a service is that I don’t want to have to follow up with you! I want you to contact me regarding my reservation. I don’t want to have to wonder whether you received my reservation submission, and I certainly don’t want to have to come back to the site and look up the phone number and CALL to make a reservation. If I wanted to do that, I would have done that in the first place.
Oh, and don’t tell me you didn’t receive the reservation form â like I don’t know how to operate a five-field form and press the submit button with my left click button. Let’s just come clean and admit that your form is broken.
But⦠I guess that’s what I get for submitting an online reservation for a service to a website that doesn’t even rank well for its own brand name. I had to get to the website by clicking on the 4th result, which was a Citysearch page, and then clicking on the website link. Oy vey!
The site I had issues with today â and other reservation sites out there â can take some notes from my favorite reservation system out there: OpenTable. I can select restaurants by region & neighborhood and then by date, time and party size. I can find out what reservation times are available in 15 minute increments, and I get immediate email confirmations of my reservations. I also receive email reminders before my dining date. Additionally, I get reward points for booking reservations online and dining at the restaurant. My personal favorite â the OpenTable representatives are accessible and helpful. When I had a question about a restaurant’s participation in a special event after I had made the reservation, the OpenTable representative took care of contacting the restaurant (by phone), getting an answer, and emailing me back promptly.
The moral of the story: if you’re going to have an online reservation form, be ready for fulfillment. Potential customers may not follow up with a phone call when they don’t hear from you. In a competitive space, they might just go to the next result down.
You know what I can’t stand!?!? Companies that have online reservation forms that don’t work. The whole point of filling out an online reservation form for a service is that I don’t want to have to follow up with you! I want you to contact me regarding my reservation. I don’t want to have to wonder whether you received my reservation submission, and I certainly don’t want to have to come back to the site and look up the phone number and CALL to make a reservation. If I wanted to do that, I would have done that in the first place.
Oh, and don’t tell me you didn’t receive the reservation form — like I don’t know how to operate a five-field form and press the submit button with my left click button. Let’s just come clean and admit that your form is broken.
But… I guess that’s what I get for submitting an online reservation for a service to a website that doesn’t even rank well for its own brand name. I had to get to the website by clicking on the 4th result, which was a Citysearch page, and then clicking on the website link. Oy vey!
The site I had issues with today — and other reservation sites out there — can take some notes from my favorite reservation system out there: OpenTable. I can select restaurants by region & neighborhood and then by date, time and party size. I can find out what reservation times are available in 15 minute increments, and I get immediate email confirmations of my reservations. I also receive email reminders before my dining date. Additionally, I get reward points for booking reservations online and dining at the restaurant. My personal favorite — the OpenTable representatives are accessible and helpful. When I had a question about a restaurant’s participation in a special event after I had made the reservation, the OpenTable representative took care of contacting the restaurant (by phone), getting an answer, and emailing me back promptly.
The moral of the story: if you’re going to have an online reservation form, be ready for fulfillment. Potential customers may not follow up with a phone call when they don’t hear from you. In a competitive space, they might just go to the next result down.
Let me start by saying I’m a member of Performance Bikes‘ newsletter. I get an email from them on average every two business days. What a perfect example of how marketing can be overdone. With this frequency, readers will get sick of nonsense emails and eventually unsubscribe. In an attempt to get their specials in front of as many eyes as possible they generate less interest to a certain degree.
After determining my want for goods was greater than my frustration with their marketing, I bought some things. However, while checking out a few more things raised my left eyebrow.
I was near the end of the checkout process when I left to change the color of a product. It was disappointing to find it was my duty to reenter all checkout information again. No one likes doing this. This would be the first thing that I would fix.
Next I noticed the most predominant number labeled total on the next-to-last checkout page was incorrect (as far as I see it)! This total didn’t have the coupon applied. To find out what you’re actually being charged, you’d need to know enough to subtract the grand total from the discounts listed below in a different colored & aligned area. How many support calls does this generate, or even worse, how many customers leave silently at this point?
Performance bike seems to always have a promotion; they offer free shipping or a percentage discount on all items. Personally it’s a little strange. I’m either used to better prices all the time, think Trader Joe’s, or sales on a few select items every week, think Whole Foods. Having discounts at all times that claim to be “limited time” reminds me of the boy who cried wolf. I feel less incentive to buy today knowing their “soon to run out sale” will be back again in two.
I don’t doubt that Performance Bike does tons of business online, they claim to be the #1 retailer of bikes. I only think that they can do much better if they were to straighten some of these issues out.
On a side note, I was going to link “Trader Joe’s” above to a page of theirs that had something about Philadelphia on it, but I defaulted to a home page link. They decided to hide their location listings in a PDF. :(
Google has launched a new product called Google Checkout. It allows for consumers to make purchases in participating stores across the web with only one login and password: their google account.
Why consumers like it:
They have less chance of getting spam & unwanted newsletters. A consumer’s personal information is spread out less across internet shops, and in that they feel safer. It’s much easier to enter in information one time for numerous checkouts. Besides, Google is name brand they trust.
Why you as a store owner should participate:
If you’re enrolled in Adwords and you spend $1, Google will credit you $10 in transaction fees. It’s a no-brainer. Who wouldn’t want to invest money that would otherwise be spent in transaction fees to Visa, AMEX, etc. especially when considering it’s multiplier?
We don’t need many more reasons to participate because consumers like it! This means more sales for you. The only factors in need of consideration are cost and feasibility. (more…)