What can you do to prevent a similar thing happening to you regardless of what business you are in? Make it as easy as possible for customer to buy from you by identifying and focusing on your customers needs and desires. Then make your website meet those customers needs and desires. Anything on a website that prevents your customers from reaching their specific objectives easily is making it difficult for them to buy from you. Anything on your website that is unclear to your customers is making it difficult for them to buy from you. I’ll call these obstructions ‘barriers’ because they are preventing customers reaching their objectives. They are Internet’s equivalent to brick walls, like their real world counterpart they prevent you from continuing on your chosen path. This is where most websites are going wrong, either customers needs are not being met or barriers are obstructing them from satisfying those needs.

Focus on your customers needs and desires. Ask them what they want. Build or change your website to directly meet their objectives. Check regularly during and after to make sure you are meeting their needs.

On an ongoing basis encourage feedback and interaction on your website. Be open to constructive criticism. Ask questions: How could we improve? What would you like to see on our website? Make statements: we value and want your feedback to help us improve our service. Offer incentives (if necessary) so they take time to comment and help you to help them.

Research any information received and act on it. Try to be creative in your actions too by going that extra distance to really satisfy your customers with extra features and functions, especially if they cant get those features elsewhere. Once you’ve got it right, keep checking regularly to make sure their needs haven’t changed. Consider your visitors and customers carefully, there may be more than one type of customer. Write a customer profile for each type to use as a reference point. Just simple details like: how they use your product/service, when they use it, what their needs are, what their wishes are, what they do and don’t want, what extra features would help them, etc.

Once you have got it right, your customers will love you for it. They’ll buy more from you and be much more inclined to stay loyal to you and your products (for as long as you continue to satisfy their needs). They’ll happily recommend you to others. A happy customer is an extremely valuable asset to your business, they can start a word-of-mouth marketing campaign more powerful than any campaign you could ever buy. All you have to do is make customer happy!

Summary/checklist: Research your customers needs and desires. Put customers needs and desires first. Remove all ‘barriers’ to ensure your website is simple to use and crystal clear to customers. No vagueness. Add extra features/functions that make it quicker, easier, more convenient, etc., for your customers. Actively ask for comments, suggestions and feedback on an ongoing basis. Make it easy. Refer to your written customer profiles to ensure you are still meeting your customers needs.

Good luck!

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To clarify it once again, there is 1st rule, called 'golden rule', for anybody interested in doing business on net. You can find it at this page at point number 1:

http://www.truste.org/webpublishers/pub_modelprivacystatement.html

But it seems that nobody remember it.

Well, this was really making me upset, and I had no more possibilities to consider to leave for a short travel for fun and amusement at all!!!

The last night of year? Not nice at all, not spent online anyway (of course). Rather totally nauseated by behaviours of persons that hide behind a PC.

I came back to big net first day of this new year anyway. I had to solve problem with webhoster as website still was not loading, done forwarding email receipts of renewals.

I had also decided to restart rank of Graphic Art Galleries Top Sites (guess why?), and I also had to complete more renewals.

Well... do you imagine I found a Christmas present? Not at all. At opposite, my account showed no domain names in it! The system was totally out of order.

I notified this fact to list of Domains REALM Insider, surely interested in important news.

Could you consider a short fun or amusement travel if you were experiencing something similar?

I could only dream of a whole sabatic year to recover from these events!

But unfortunately it is not possible nowadays for me, as it isn't easy to be paid when you make a big sale on net, you are in Europe, and company that must pay you is in USA.

Another day passed. The account that showed problems, and whole whois, seemed restored.

I completed all my controls and decided to see if I could find some interesting domain names for new projects and websites for my actual (and growing) network.

Some of good ones I found not registered and picked up?

internet-fun.org internet-circus.com

and of course...

internet-art.org

Gotcha!

At least a positive aspect and some nice moments of internet Christmas time 2002, one of worst Christmas of my life (I remember a decent or normal one no earlier than 8 years ago).

Let's hope in next ones.

And a last thought, I don't think you will find these new names listed on DomainsREALM.com anyway.

Respectfully submitted

Gian Luigi Ruggeri (aka XmX on net since 1997)

http://MakeFeelBetter.org