As you may have noticed as you logged into the RatePoint Business Center this morning, we’ve totally reskinned the user interface to be a little more friendlier and flexible as we add new features.
We still have some tweaking to do on the content layout, but it’s a big step forward. We hope you enjoy the new update.
If you have any comments or suggestions on the new layout, be sure to e-mail us or leave a comment below!
As we mentioned last week we pushed out a new RatePoint feature update that address a few functionality areas.
This latest update includes:
Nothing jaw-dropping, but enough to make the world a slightly better place!
Yesterday we held one of our first webinars which was focused on our new e-mail marketing feature. We received a ton of questions at the end of the webinar, and we’ll be reaching out with answers over the next few days. We’ll also try to post some of the best questions here. Thank you to everyone who attended!
The RatePoint system has become fairly robust over the past few months as we rapidly add new functionality and enhancements to the service. We’ll be holding additional webinars focused on these features, as well as some some general marketing and business webinars that of course will be free for our members.
If there is a particular subject or category you want to see us cover, be sure to drop us an e-mail at support@ratepoint.com and we’ll see what we can do!
Over the years, Alexa has been a punchline for Internet professionals and businesses owners who are “in-the-know.” In their opinion the data has always been flawed (primarily coming from the Alexa Toolbar users), their rankings would fluctuate wildly, especially once you were above the 50,000 mark, and in the end was derailed by many as not being a good indicator of how a business is really doing on the web.
Regardless, today a lot of small businesses use Alexa as their primary indicator of how they’re doing on the web and today they’re freaking out as Alexa announced some dramatic changes to the way their rankings work. A significant number of businesses found that their rankings dropped like a rock once the new changes were in place and they started going crazy.
It’s very important for small business owners to take a step back and remember:
Your website is the same.
Your traffic is the same.
Your pageviews are the same.
The past has not changed.
Regardless of what happened to your Alexa Ranking in their update, it’s important to as a small business owner that data from sites like Alexa shouldn’t be the only indicator of the success of your website.
In our business we find these tools to be exceptionally helpful when tracking trends especially in relation to our competitors, but in the end your internal goals that lead to revenue such as leads, conversions, and actual traffic should dictate how successful your feel your business is. You can tell the world your business is #42,000 on Alexa, but if you have no paying customers is your business really that successful?
If you aren’t using a statistics or analytics package such as Google Analytics or Mint, you should be. These tools really allow you to get a solid idea how much traffic you really have, and if you’re growing it. These programs track in great detail your websites traffic, including visitors, pageviews and how people are getting to your site. By tracking actual people visiting your website you’ll start to get a very good snapshot of your website’s progress. If you have website logs available, some of these packages will built reports from the past for you giving you a head start.
In my opinion, the new changes that Alexa have made are definitely for the better and make Alexa’s product much more useful to the business owner. Their service is now on par with Compete.com and Quantcast. In the end though successful businesses aren’t built off of rankings, they’re built on customers and revenue.
It never ceases to amaze me at the sheer level of self-aggrandizing statements that businesses make. In today’s business world, they could be more detrimental to a business’ online reputation than helpful, especially when they’re nowhere near the truth.
Business owners who find themselves at the bottom of the ladder, either because they’re small or new, find it very difficult to resist the temptation to call themselves “the best” or “#1″ or “the first.” This strategy worked well in an era when there were no resources or tools for consumers to quickly determine the quality of a business.
In today’s business environment, saying that you’re the best may be a clear sign to a consumer that you’re not.
I took a few minutes to surf around the net and here are a couple quick examples of what I found on business websites that clearly were not in the top of their fields:
“We are the best web hosting company on the internet today!” Ironically the site that had this statement on it was broken in my web browser.
“#1 in Customer Satisfaction Since 1997″ I’m curious to figure out who these guys dethroned before their 11 year reign at the top.
There are many more examples like this across the Internet, but just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean it’s okay. In every industry, a very small slice of businesses can conceivably call themselves “#1″ or “the best” or even be involved in the discussion. Customers understand that. They’re looking for other businesses because of other qualities such as personalized service, selection, availability and location that “the best” cannot necessarily provide.
Here’s some small business marketing tips to help you avoid some common self-promotion traps:
By focusing more on the better qualities of your business and taking a realistic approach to self-promotion you will spend less time trying to justify the position of your business in the market to your customers and more time selling to them.
The development team put together a monumental effort in putting together some extremely useful new tools and features for this most recent release. These tools are now ready for RatePoint members to use in our Business Center today:
Please be sure to log-in to your Business Center today and check out these new features, or if you’re not a RatePoint Member.
Sign-up for a free 30-day trial and learn more!
We’re preparing for a significant release over here in the next few days. Once it’s out the door, we’ll give you some updates on what’s new and groovy in the RatePoint Business Center.
RatePoint was mentioned in the print edition of Wall Street Journal on Monday in it’s Technology section. The article “Just for You” focuses on how websites are trying to personalize their experience with their customers. If you haven’t tossed your WSJ into the circular file yet, be sure to dig it up and take a read.
The development team has been hard at work, putting out a new release this week that enhances our dispute resolution process.
So far we’ve seen an outstanding rate of success in resolving negative reviews with our service. Over 90% of negative reviews have been resolved through our dispute resolution system. This is really critical because when a dispute is resolved, that customer is less likely to tell others about a negative experience, and more likely to remain a loyal customer. Our latest release is focused around helping businesses resolve their disputes faster and more efficiently:
We’re pretty excited over here as RatePoint was featured in an Associated Press article earlier this week! The article was picked up by over 100 different online publications including the Seattle Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and The Washington Post. The story was also picked up by a handful of blogs as well. The entries are always interesting to read, because their viewpoints tend to be drawn from a much wider array of personal experiences and how much knowledge they have about what we do.
A good question was asked during a recent webinar that RatePoint hosted regarding using your blog to communicate with customers. The real gist of the question was is not activating the comments feature necessarily a bad thing?
A blog is never a bad thing if your business has a need for reaching out to customers in other venue. If you’re in an industry with a lot of debate, have a business that continually has product updates, or you need a forum for reaching out to the community, a blog is a great place to do it. I never cease to be amazed at how Google’s individual development groups handle their blogs. Sometimes they’ll take a few weeks in between entries, but the quality is enough to get me to return several times a week in hopes of an update.
Onto the comments question. If you’re looking to build a community or looking to receive feedback, comments are a must for your blog. When a blog is well written and often visited, the comments section can be a great communication tool, but not all businesses are using their blog for this purpose. Some just wish to provide basic updates to their customers, or use a blog instead of e-mail marketing tools to reach out to customers, and for these businesses, comments might just not be in the cards. Not having comments activated on your blog is NOT a sign that you’re unwilling to communicate or facilitate conversation, turning off your comments when it’s convenient, or over-moderating them is.
The biggest fear that many businesses have with opening up their blog to comments is the same that they have with online reviews: what if something says something bad? The initial gut-reaction is to shut down comments, or delete them. This just serves to antagonize customers, can make them more irate, and injure your online reputation further.
Again, as with reviews, if you’re a good business, these negative comments will be few and far between. Remember, these comments are on your blog, and you have a place to respond to it, and that is sometimes just as valuable as a positive review or comment. In addition, much like a review, the blog comments is another place for your loyal customers to come to your rescue and provide positive feedback, and helpful information to improve your business.
The biggest recommendation I can give in regard to comments is have a policy and be consistent. Have a plan in place for moderating and responding to comments, and do not bend the rules when it is convenient for you. This can go a long way in building trust with your customer community.
