RESOURCE CENTRE

Your EnterQuest Bulletin - 17 November 2004

In this week's issue:

• why you should offer the unexpected
• how to jazz up a basic website
• what's the difference between approved codes of practice, regulations and guidance?
• finding an Internet bestseller
  

Weekly stir

Why you should offer the unexpected

One frustrating aspect of running a small business is trying to reach that point where you've developed a reputation that sets your venture apart from everyone else in your sector.

The problem with reaching this goal is that there is nothing you can directly say that will result in it happening. In fact, the harder you try, the more difficult it becomes.

For example, producing marketing messages that say you offer a "quality service", "best advice" or "good food" tell your customers nothing at all about why they should buy from you. All you're telling them is what they should expect as a bare minimum anyway.

So how can you develop a reputation where people sit up, take notice and do the talking for you, and where they spread the word to others about how good your product or service really is?

Your reputation boils down to how you act and behave in your market and the reaction you get from your customers. And this will be built around the experience that people have when they deal with your firm.

The first step is to try and put yourself in the position of someone who's thinking of buying from you.

How do you come across overall? How easy is it to understand what you're offering? Is it obvious why people should buy from you? How effective is your customer service before, during and after the sale?

Once you've done this and taken an honest and critical look at yourself, then ask yourself what you could do, how you could act, or what you could change to make your customers' experiences even better.

By improving those experiences even in small but subtle ways, such as making it easier to order, opening longer hours, allowing e-mail enquiries and so on, this will gradually begin to establish the reputation you are hoping for in the eyes of your customers.

But there are other things you can do that will make a real difference to your position in your market, in your local area or type of business. You need to look for ways to make your customer experience unique.

This is where you should be striving to provide a service and experience that doesn't just deliver the expected, but surprises your customers with standards that go way beyond their expectations.

For example, if your business sells plants, your buyers will expect them to grow and produce flowers or bear fruit. If you fix broken computers, your customers will expect them to work again. If you sell fresh food, everyone who buys it will expect it to taste good.

But what else can you offer that is over and above basic expectations, and that will set you apart from your competitors? Can you find an opportunity to develop a positive reputation with your customers by offering and delivering the unexpected?

So if you sell plants, you might provide a series of useful free factsheets or a booklet that provides tips and advice on plant care, establishing a reputation as an expert in your field.

If you fix computers, they shouldn't just work again when you've done the repairs. They should work better than they did before they developed problems, and with free telephone support for a month to provide additional help and advice.

If you sell fresh food, why not offer a money-back guarantee if your customers aren't satisfied, or try holding regular free buffets on a Saturday afternoon to allow people to taste your latest produce.

Spend some time thinking of ways to go that extra mile for your customers - they'll quickly begin to appreciate it, and will start spreading the word about your service. Then you'll find that your prospects and target audience will travel that extra mile to buy from you and not your rivals.

A recent survey by web hosting firm Easily suggests that small businesses with websites stand a better chance of convincing customers that they're reputable. But when you're designing or planning your site, it's important to remember that the experience visitors get from your site is an important factor in determining whether they'll ultimately become your customer.

Here are five tips that will help enhance your website visitors' overall experience:

1. Make your site content-rich: this will not only help you get a better ranking in the search engines, which prefer sites with lots of content that includes relevant keywords, but will also appeal to visitors. Recent research has shown that people are more inspired to buy from a stimulating site that interests and educates them than from a plain, shop-window site that simply lists products and allows online ordering.
   
   
2. Give yourself the credibility associated with a real, bricks-and-mortar presence by listing your business name, postal address and phone number on your website.
   
   
3. Get your 'About Us' blurb right. This is an opportunity for you to persuade visitors to become customers by convincing them that your business is a reputable, trustworthy and principled operation. But you don't want to put them off through salesy language. So use personal details, such as photographs, names and testimonials from previous customers. More tips on writing your 'About Us' section are online at http://www.workoninternet.com/article_2387.html.
   
   
4. Consider including a news page or weblog that's updated at least once a week, as this will keep the site looking fresh and give visitors a reason to return. Get a guide to creating a business blog at http://www.corporateblogging.info.
   
   
5. Provide some live support for visitors and customers on your site. This means a form of real-time assistance from a member of your staff, for example through instant messaging. The technology for this has come on in leaps and bounds, and small businesses are recognising that live support using instant messaging can provide them with an easily managed way of providing a more personalised service than their larger competitors. As an example of what's possible, go to
   http://www.liveperson.com/sb/index.asp and click on 'View Demo'.

In the UK Small Business Marketing Bible you can find hundreds more tips on finding customers, as well as techniques and tactics that will help increase sales for any small business in any sector.

Legal tip

What's the difference between approved codes of practice, regulations and guidance?

Who or what did Charles Dickens say was "skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape"?

a) Lawyers
b) Britannia
c) Entrepreneurs
d) The Health and Safety Executive

The answer is at the end of this section.

From time to time, we suggest links to sites where you can find out more about specific rules and regulations affecting small businesses. But it can be confusing to discover that some of that red tape is mandatory and some is simply guidance. So here's a brief guide to the differences between the major types of laws you might come across in your business.

• An Act (or Act of Parliament) is a major piece of law, and can often be the framework around which other, more detailed laws are made. An example might be the Health and Safety at Work Act, 1974 (HSWA).
  
  
• Regulations are usually more detailed, and in many cases are designed to put into practical effect general principles found in Acts or in European Directives. For instance, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 go beyond the HSWA and require employers to carry out a risk assessment.
  
  
• An Approved Code of Practice (ACOP) offers very specific guidance on how to interpret Acts and Regulations. It's guidance rather than a law, but in the case of ACOPs for health and safety law, you'll need to prove you followed them if it is thought you were liable for an accident at work.
  
  
• Government departments and local authorities sometimes publish ordinary guidance in the form of booklets or leaflets. This sort of guidance is not law either, but is meant to help you understand the law by relating it more closely to examples from real life.

There are plenty of other types of red tape, but the examples above are probably the most common. The LLRX legal information website goes into Acts and Regulations in more detail and the Health and Safety Executive has published a PDF brochure explaining ACOPs.

Our Red Tape BUSTER also has advice on the laws that will affect you and your business, as well as hundreds of business scenarios, FAQs and checklists for every small business situation.

And what did Dickens say was bound in red tape? Britannia herself, the representation of the British Empire. Some things never change.

Finding an Internet bestseller

With the announcement from Visa Europe that UK online sales have doubled in the space of a year, you might be wondering what people are actually buying over the Internet. In other words, what's the basis for a successful online business that you could set up?

Market surveys tend to say different things, but there are some things they all agree on. Both men and women are equally keen on buying over the Internet. Those aged between 25 and 34 are the most frequent online shoppers, but it's shoppers aged between 35 and 44 who spend the most money.

Keeping this profile of a typical shopper in mind, you can start to think about what they might need. Research has shown that shops selling the following have a head start on the others:

• Groceries - think the home order and delivery service offered by all the leading supermarkets, but also think small, specialised, online food shops catering to specific consumers such as foreign food fans, organic devotees or vegetarians.
  
  
• Drinks - the beauty of selling drinks over the Internet is that the products have a long shelf life, bottles are fairly easy to pack up and transport, and in most cases alcoholic drinks are a high added value product. Offering consumers an easy way to buy rare, specialised or imported booze is a particularly successful niche.
  
  
• Books and music - these launched the Internet shopping boom, and small businesses can take advantage of the market for second-hand or specialised goods.
  
  
• Jewellery - this sells well online because it can easily be presented attractively, costs very little to deliver, and is actually falling in price as suppliers tap overseas markets.

These are just some of the many things that sell well online. If you're casting around for other ideas, have a look at one of the auction sites such as eBay, or think about your own hobbies or interests and consider how you might turn them into business ideas for the Internet.

Each week we provide you with summaries of some popular or emerging business ideas in the UK.

Here is this week's idea:

• Seafood Bar

Just one word

Regularly improving your vocabulary is not just about learning a new word and its meaning. It will improve your general knowledge and make you feel and act smarter in all sorts of personal and business situations.

Do you know the difference between the commonly confused words "perspicacious" and "perspicuous"? Which of the following definitions apply to each word?

a) having or showing insight
b) clear, easily understood

Did you know?

Trojan tricks give phishers new hook, MyDoom's back and Microsoft's being helpful

It's been a busy old week in the jungle of IT security. A new phishing scam is using techniques commonly employed by virus writers to reel in victims: the scam, dubbed JS/Qhosts21-A, is activated simply by opening an infected e-mail. Previous phishing ruses, unpleasant as they were, required that you clicked on a particular link within an e-mail before being spirited to the scam website. Security experts are warning that this dangerous new trend may represent the future of phishing. PC World has an in-depth analysis of the scam, plus advice on how to spot it, how to repair infected computers and how to avoid future phishing attacks.

Meanwhile, small businesses are at risk from a new variant of the MyDoom virus. MyDoom.AF, MyDoom.AH and MyDoom.AG exploit an unpatched flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), and spread through infected e-mails.

And another flaw in the IE web browser is being exploited by a new piece of malicious code. An error in the way IE handles some segments of HTML tags is responsible for the vulnerability. Microsoft hasn't released a patch for the bug yet, despite having published its monthly security updates for November, but it has pledged to give advance notice of future security updates, so users can prepare to install relevant patches. It will publish a summary of key updates online three days before they are officially released.

Stamp discount for small firms

If you use a franking machine or pre-paid envelopes for your business mail, you may be eligible for a proposed new discount of 1p per stamp from the Royal Mail. The discount starts from next April, and has been introduced because Royal Mail reckons businesses should be rewarded for the considerably lower cost of collecting franked or pre-paid mail.

For more details on the discounts, see:
http://www.royalmailgroup.com/news/expandarticle.asp?id=1375&brand=royal_mail

Have you ever wondered whether it's true that the Irish drink more booze than any other nation? You'll find the answer (which is no, incidentally) among all the stats and reports at Nationmaster, along with information like how many people in Scotland use Linux servers, and whether people in Wales are very happy or fairly depressed. A brilliant resource for your market research, the results are presented in the form of easy-to-follow graphs and maps, and you can pick which regions you want included in the calculations.

All this and more is available at:
http://www.nationmaster.com

Finding out about franchising

If you've ever considered taking up a franchise or franchising your own business, this resource is well worth a look. It includes a directory of all the franchises available in the UK, plus a section providing practical guidance on how franchising works, how much it costs, and a search function that allows you to look for franchises by sector and by how much money you've got.

Find out more at:
http://uk.betheboss.com/franchise_directory.cfm?type=1