In the last post for our Main Street URL series, we discussed the good ol’ days, when customers were as close as kin, and loyalty abounded on both sides. Today we look at how customers have changed, reasons why you can still tap into that old time spirit, and some ways to do it.
Customers move at warp speed
Shopping at Warp Speed: Today’s Customers
The days of hanging out in front of the Main Street shop, sometimes for hours at a time, chatting it up with the storekeeper are gone. While customers still crave shopping in physical locations (it’s not all online, yet), they want bigger, faster, and cheaper.
Watch people in the mall. They are often multi-tasking while shopping, trying to get it done as quick as possible, and moving from place to place. In fact the only time we ever seem to slow down in the mall is the food court.
Today’s customer is well informed. They have likely done research on what they want to buy before they walk through your door. Sellers are expected to be as knowledgeable as the most expert customer, yet so many wage earning clerks are not that initiated or engaged. For business owners, this means either cultivating engaged sales people who are dedicated to the business or having a clear and easy training program to bring employees up to speed.
Despite the speed at which they shop, customers still expect top notch customer service. This means sales people who are not only knowledgeable, but friendly and helpful. Perhaps it is an obvious point, but considering the megaphone customers now have to talk about a business online (Twitter, Yelp, etc.), a bad experience can spell an avalanche of online bashing that can hurt the bottom line of a business. You need to be able to monitor this and respond appropriately. In later posts we’ll talk about capitalizing on bad publicity and responding to unhappy customers who blast you online.
Okay, so we’ve thrown the Internet into this mix and everything has changed. Not only are customers coming to your physical location, they are shopping for your products and services online as well. In some cases, they are only buying from you online. The opportunity to reach a wider audience has never been greater, so why do most businesses having a hard time reaching people online?
How Customers Have Stayed the Same
As mentioned above, customers still crave interaction. They want to feel listened to. At the end of the day they are still human even if using technology to enhance productivity and achieve results.
People spend more time brushing their teeth than on your website
According to a Neilson survey in January 2010, the average time spent most websites is under 1-minute (about 42 seconds). That’s less time than most people take to brush their teeth. Attention spans online are short, yet most businesses have dense websites that are little more than an afterthought or advertisement, unclear calls to action, and no plan or method for turning visitors into regulars.
There is hope. According to that same survey, the average time spent on Facebook per user is a whopping 14 minutes per day!
42 seconds … 14 minutes. Which would you rather have? But it’s not enough to just throw something up on Facebook and hope for the best. To turn customers into regulars, you’ve got to do it right. That means creating an optimized Facebook presence that serves the needs of your customer and business. Again, be on the look out for a later post on how to create a kick a** Facebook page.
In our next Main Street URL post we’ll talk about what it means to attract regular customers, and why a Mexican restaurant in New Jersey can teach you everything you need to know about being successful in this area.
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