I've been doing a lot of research on e-commerce recently. It's rather a fascinating subject, no really it is! Did you know that trusted brands (John Lewis, Amazon etc) only convert 1 - 4% of their website traffic into sales? No? Neither did I.
The thing that really amazed me was not the percentage of view:sales but the word 'trusted'. It seems that unless you are a 'big brand' the online public don't trust you. Which poses the question - how do the big online names become trustworthy? And this, inevitably, leads to the even bigger question of how do smaller companies become 'trustworthy'?
The whole question of 'small companies aren't as trustworthy as bigger companies' irks me even more than people who have the flu travelling on public transport (really your job is not that important - stay off the trains, buses, etc WE DON'T WANT YOUR GERMS. I digress...). I've worked for some of the biggest global corporations there are, and I can honestly say they are the least trustworthy companies I know.
Big companies are sloppy with customer data, have no consistency with their customer support, are very bad at interdepartmental communication and usually charge over the odds to cover their wasteful overheads (office printers usually have reams of paper sat on them where people have printed out emails and not wanted the 5+ pages of email conversation just the most recent bit). The money I used to charge large companies for me to come in and project manage them out of these bad ways?!
But not any more, now I am proud to be a working Mum and I am equally as proud to be a Member of the Surrey Business Mums group. We working Mums all work hard to ensure we provide the highest customer service, are as helpful and as supportive as we can be, and like all Mums we definitely don't believe in waste (Mums are fabulous at cooking a great meal out of leftovers and making a school costume out of bits and bobs in their sewing basket). So next time I see a website that says 'Proud to be A Working Mum'. I for one am going to trust that website more than the faceless big brands. So, trust me; I'm a working Mum.
Great post and I agree to a certain extent but I think it is also more to do with small businesses. I try my hardest to always use small businesses, be it my accountant, web designer or for gifts and presents for people. I find twitter really useful for this. Small companies, in my opinion, go the extra mile and very often find business through word of mouth which is so important and so is customer service. I dont think this is always about mums but more about independents and the self employed. Really interesting and love you have mentioned the business group. We should have this discussion over a coffee - i can go on and on!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you info! I look forward to that cup of coffee.
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