Those of you who have shopped online, use online banking, or have used Facebook may have see a padlock icon appear in your address bar, and may have noticed the address bar has turned green. This happens when your browser is using a secure or safe connection (HTTPS) to communicate with whatever site you are on. Whats the difference?

HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol and its used for a majority of websites. Its safe and secure for your day to day browsing like surfing the web, reading blogs, checking your on your favorite sports team or watching videos. The extra “S” in HTTPS stands for “secure” and websites that use HTTPS want to ensure that the information you enter on their site remains private.

Tips and Hints:

• HTTPS should always be used when entering credit card, or financial information.
• HHTPS should be used when you are saving a passwords or entering personal information like your name, address, telephone number…etc
• HTTPS webpages might take a little longer to load, but the safety is worth it
• Just because your on a site that uses HTTPS, doesn’t mean their links or applications do (Be wary of your social media apps!)
• Share these tips and hints, protect your family and friends!

For more internet safety tips you can visit: www.uknowkids.com/communityprogram

By Shashi Bellamkonda

We’re in the New Year and the time for making resolutions about health, wealth, family and oddball bucket lists. Don’t forget about making resolutions about your online presence as well. Your website 2012 resolutions should include content, communications, community, conversations and conversion.  The secret of successful small business owners is that they spend more time “on the business” than “in the business.” One of the tools for spending on your business is your web presence.Small businesses are great at customer service and realize that their next customer will come from a current customer – Word of Mouth. In the digital world word of mouth is “word of mouse” a powerful tool to gain new customers. A new era of marketing is unfolding and digital marketing helps you in your objective to influence behavior to change positively towards you.  The audience who need your product and services are increasingly searching for them online. It is interesting to see how the communication tools are coming together.

We hope you are convinced that even your brick and mortar business needs to be on the web. Guess what - “92% of online adults use search engines to find information on the Web” according to a May 2011 Pew Internet Survey (PDF).

Without further adieu, here are some 2012 resolutions you should include in your business list.  Five “C” online resolutions for small business:

Content

• Not having a website for your business is not an option anymore. A website or a blog all count as establishing your web presence.
• Resolve to update it constantly. Once a day, week or even a month as long as you are consistent.
• Show your thought leadership through content. Publish your thoughts on your industry, peers, products, good news about your community.
• Education through content – provide tips to your customers, answer the most asked questions on your website or blog.
• Fresh and updated content is a good way to ensure search engines are indexing your site often and your chances of appearing in search results will be better.

Communications

• Email  Marketing is still a top performing marketing channel for businesses. Embrace it and use it to flourish.
  • It is important for you to get email branded with your business name showing consistency and credibility.
  • Communicate with your customers to solve their problems with your product rather than selling your product.
  • If you are sending an email newsletter you should try to use software like Constant Contact, Exact Target, MailChimp or other professional tools. Many of these tools make it easy for you and also guide you to succeed in email marketing.
• Establish communications with customers using popular social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. Before you decide on setting up your social profiles, asking your customers where they would like to connect with you is a good idea.
  • Food trucks use this medium very well to let customers know their location.
  • Last minute availability of appointments at doctors, saloons.

Your website should have the components of a Web 2.0 site – ability for your web visitors to comment, share your content and bookmark it.

Your blog, social media tools are all communication tools and working together with email make great marketing tools.

Community

• Every business should nurture their customer communities by providing them with tools to spread word of mouth.
  • Customer appreciation days
  • Special offers for regular customers
  • Formal or informal meetings with customer advisory boards
  • Asking customers for ideas to improve products or suggest new product features
  • Provide easy ways to give you feedback or review your business

Face to face networking is important

Attend local events

Business networking and educational events

Set aside time and budget to attend and learn ways to increase your business

Sponsoring local community events – get involved in local community events, PTA organizations, schools , scout groups.

Cutting edge Technology

• While investing in technology evaluate the benefit to your organization and avoid any impulse buys.
  • Upgrade your Internet speeds if you feel it will increase the speed of your customer transactions.
  • Get a new smartphone if you are away from your computer a lot and your business depends on emails and orders from customers through the web.
  • Invest in a tablet if you would like to carry an electronic portfolio to show customers.
• Attend trade shows or subscribe to trade magazines to see what new technology can help make your business more efficient.
• Consider having an advisory board of people you know who can advise you on new technology.

Conversion: All your resolutions should lead to your objective of growing your business.

• Make sure you spend your time on activities that help your business grow.
• Social tools can be distracting.  Consider them as communication tools and allot enough time to nurture your communities there.
• While only talking about sales in a social context is sometimes in poor taste, look for opportunities where you answer peoples questions and offer to help.
• Definitely use analytics programs to see where your traffic is coming from and which keywords they are using to find your business online.
• If you are a brick and mortar business like a restaurant, try to ask your customers where they found you.

Remember you don’t have to do all these tasks yourself. Weigh the time you would spend with the cost of hiring people to tell your story and concentrate on what you do best – working on your business. What did you add to your New Year business resolution?

New Year Resolutions List Photo via Shutterstock

Shashi Bellamkonda is Sr. Director of Social Media, AKA "Social Media Swami," at Network Solutions. Visit Shashi Bellamkonda's blog. He is also an adjunct faculty at Georgetown University. Shashi is a regular contributor to the Washington Business Journal, DC Examiner and other tech blogs like Smallbiztechnology and Techcocktail.

Shashi is literally the "swami" of Social Media - and ecommerce. We can all learn a lot from him as technology advances. He never forgets the basics!

It's good to know others mirror the thoughts I've written in my books over the years. I'm not sure if Andrew had read anything I've written, but his guest post below make me feel secure that the drum I've been beating for close to a decade is being heard by someone!

This comprehensive guide on ecommerce customer service will teach you how to improve your customer service strategy without altering the structure of your business. It also helps illustrate just how much money you can make from your existing customer base with great customer service.

50 Good Ecommerce Customer Service Strategies

1. Offer a monthly product giveaway to customers that sign up for your newsletter.

2. Offer coupons to your customers for writing a seller review.

3. Add coupons & promotions in your e-mail marketing. Don't have an e-mail marketing strategy set up? You need one.

4. If possible, work to offer same day shipping for customers that need their items in a hurry.

5. Increase your call center hours to take into account extremely early and late orders.

6. Offer free return shipping for a limited time to see if that added feature builds confidence in your customers and leads to more conversions.

7. Give customers the ability to have their items sent gift wrapped, or to purchase their item with gift wrapping for them to wrap themselves.

8. Offer gift cards to your customers so they can easily share your website with others.

9. Implement live chat. Live chat can greatly decrease the number of abandoned carts at your webstore.

10. Give a coupon to each customer that signs up for your weekly newsletter.

11. Let customers apply to become a ‘product tester’ where they get your products for free in exchange for writing about them on blogs and linking back to your website. 

12. Throwing a video-submission contest using your products and rewarding the winner, then use those videos for your own marketing.

13. Provide product recommendations or similar items to customers below the items they're interested in to make it easier for customers to find items that work well in sets, and to increase average order volume. Sweetwater does a great job of this: 

 

14. Be upfront with shipping and tax costs. No one likes hidden charges.

15. Invest into your site navigation and search functions. Customers who can't find an item they're looking for quickly is one of the major causes of a high bounce rate.

16. Start a review contest. Whoever writes a review gets entered to win a drawing of $1,000. Roots Canada has a great example below:17. Create a blog where you show off your expertise about your products and interact with your customers.

18. Start a Twitter & Facebook page and promote it on site to share deals and listen to your customers.

19. Throw a Holiday-inspired contest where a winner receives a gift package or makeover of their house with your products. To be entered into your contest you can have users sign up for your newsletter or fill out a short questionnaire.

20. Display McAfee, Better Business Bureau or VeriSign secure badges.

21. Include a personable About Us page. Here’s a great example:

22. Lower shopping cart confusion. Use one of these tools for help: http://www.getelastic.com/8-quick-n-dirty-tools-to-beat-site-abandonment-this-holiday/

23. Increase your return policy time table to increase customer confidence. 

24. Give coupons to customers that share their purchases on Facebook. Shopon.com provides a tool to help you do just that.

25. Display positive seller reviews and testimonials on your home page.

26. Personalize your brand beyond your About Us page with interviews and op-eds from your staff. Show off your expertise of your products.

27. Offer delivery estimates so your customers can know when to expect their order.

28. Add additional payment methods like Paypal, Google Checkout, and Amazon Checkout so your customers can checkout with ease.

29. Open a forum where your customers can talk openly about your products. You’ll be surprised by how much you can learn from them.

30. Ask for product reviews in exchange for coupons. You can then use these product reviews as valuable SEO on your website.

31. Create a ‘deal of the day’ or ‘deal of the week’ for your customers.

32. Offer a deals section to your customers. Offer quarterly or yearly clearance sales to clear out old inventory. Wetsuit Warehouse does a great job of this:33. Give your customers free samples of products for signing up to your newsletter.

34. Donate generously to a charity and promote it on your website.

35. Run a special promotion where a certain % of proceeds goes to charity.

36. Offer a ‘best sellers’ or 'popular products' section to your customers.

37. Add a coupon section to your website for easy access. You’d rather keep your customers on your website while they look for coupons instead of on Google, right? Macy's does a great job of it: http://www.macys.com/campaign/social?campaign_id=61&channel_id=138. Offer freebies / coupons for customers that share your products on social networks. 

39. Reach out to bloggers with a strong community and let them write about your products. They don't even have to be in your industry – do they have a hobby that your products can service? 

40. Give coupons and deals to users who invite their friends to shop at your store. Have them e-mail you a copy of their invetation for a coupon. 

41. Have great phone support? Connect consumers directly to a phone representative from a search engine. More: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2120364/Phone-Through-Rate-is-new-AdWords-Ranking-Factor (Make sure to read the comments- some good insight there).

42. Include any retailer awards on your home page.

43. Host a blog-a-thon where you invite regional bloggers interested in your products to a big party where they are the theme, in exchange for a blog post. Lucky Gunner does a great job of this: http://www.luckygunner.com/2011-blogger-shoot

44. Listen to your customer and talk about it. Offer an easy ‘submit feedback’ button on your website, then talk about any changes you make that take into account customer suggestions on your website or blog.

45. If all of your products are made by people in America, show it off on your About Us and home page.

46. Offer discounts if customers buy in bulk? Let it be known, clearly!

47. Have a list of charities to donate to? Share that list on your website.

48. Offer multiple language phone support for your products? Show it off clearly on your home and product pages. Don't have multiple language phone support? Depending on your products it might make sense to add new language support to your customer service team. Talk with your current team to see approximately how many non-English speaking calls, or calls where the caller cannot speak English very well, happen. 

49. List your contact info clearly, including a mailing address, on your Contact Us page. I hate it when I find retail stores that only include a customer inquiry form to fill out on those pages without any information about the company.

50. Advertise your top customer service employees on site to show off your good customer service skills and promote good customer service within your company.

How do the numbers really add up? We’ve all seen the Black Friday rush and the news reports of skyrocketing Cyber Monday sales and felt the pressure to spend, spend, spend over the holidays. In this brand new infographic, It's easy to see when people shop for the holidays, where they spend their money, and perhaps most importantly of all, where on the globe is the world’s most expensive Christmas tree?

by Ted Coiné 

I wrote my first book, Five-Star Customer Service, with one simple premise in mind: you don’t have to charge Ritz-Carlton prices to give Ritz-Carlton service! After all, a sincere smile costs you nothing, but that alone can build you an empire – just ask Chick Fil-A how that type of warmth is working for them as they compete for customers with McWendy King.

No matter what business you’re in, you can make Five-Star Customer Service your calling card as well. Begin with some of the “12 Quick Tips” I share with each of my Five-Star audiences.

Everyone else out there is making the same sloppy mistakes, treating their customers poorly – and setting expectations low. Follow these suggestions and lock your customers in for life.

Remember, Spoiled = Loyal. Spoil your customers with your outstanding customer service.

1. Make your company a H.I.T.

Hire for attitude. Inspire through pride. Train in skills.

In. That. Order.

Remember: you can teach job-skills to anyone with half a brain, as long as their mind is open to learning. Attitude is key. When hiring, start there or suffer the consequences.

2. “It’s not my fault, but it is my problem” – Disney

Don’t take complaints personally. …But do solve them. The buck stops with you, no matter where you land on the org chart.

3. You are always on a job interview

Who’s to say that your client’s dorky intern won’t be your biggest customer three years from now, or your next boss? Give the same unrivaled level of customer service to everyone you meet, all week long.

4. If it works for Stew…

This one is written in stone outside Stew Leonard’s, “The World’s Largest Dairy Store.” If it works for Stew… I’d at least give it a try if I were you.

Rule #1 – The customer is always right
Rule #2 – If the customer is ever wrong, reread Rule #1

Of course customers make mistakes: they’re people, too! But you’ve got to stop thinking like that, or you’ll never provide Five-Star Customer Service. If the customer wants it, your only desire should be to provide it.

5.You are never fully dressed without a smile

Down? Cranky? That’s for amateurs; your competition. Can’t smile? Call in sick.

6. Replies to “thank you”

2-star answer: “No problem.”
3-star answer: “You’re welcome.”
5-star answer: “My pleasure.”

Be the 5-star “My Pleasure” Guy… or Gal. People will love doing business with you.

7. Don’t fuss at your customer

Compare:

(A) “We aren’t really supposed to do that, but I’ll make an exception this once, as a courtesy.”
(B) “I’d be more than happy to help you with that. What else can I do for you? Really; what else?”

8. “My job is to make your job easier”

This should be the mantra of every member of your company – and no one should take it more seriously than the top brass. Leap tall buildings to make your workers’ jobs easier. Encourage them to make your customers’ jobs easier. Then buy your own island.

9. Act as if your customer’s business were your own

Always start a sale by asking yourself, “If I were in my customer’s shoes, would I really benefit from this?” Keep that attitude throughout your relationship. Serve your customer ahead of yourself; your customer will take care of you, so you won’t have to.

10. Give conservative estimates of time and money required for any project

Your clients expect projects to get off schedule and run over budget; it makes them tense, and they’ll resent you for it before you even start your work. Stun them by completing projects early and coming in under-budget. Earn residual sales and referrals.

11. President/CEO: call your clients “just to check in”

A sincere and unexpected “How are we doing?” call from #1 will blow your clients away – and that moment-of-truth experience will lock them in for life. Watch your referrals multiply, and enjoy the share of your clients’ wallets you gain as a result.

12. C.A.R.E.

Communicate. Appreciate. Respect. Encourage.

Demonstrate through your every action that you C.A.R.E., a stupendous movement started by Al Smith. And you can start by practicing The 15/5 Rule, which I spell out in my recent post on the C.A.R.E. site. I hope you check it out!

…And if customer service is your thing, I can’t recommend the #custserv twitter chat group enough. The conversation is active and awesome all week long. Every Tuesday at 9 pm Eastern (that’s New York time), dive into one of the most active, fastest chats ever! It is chock-full of authors and CEOs mixing it up with front-line CSRs and small business professionals. It’s as egalitarian as it is stupendously educational… and the friendships you build will last a lifetime!

Ted Coiné

http://www.tedcoine.com/

Ted Coiné is the business heretic at the helm of the Catalyst blog. Author and speaker, futurist, and happily-former CEO, Ted is currently writing his third book, Catalyst, about how business will be done in this exciting new century. Follow him on Twitter and join the conversation on #leadbiz.

SPOKANE, Wash. -- Mastering the art of social media - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube - is something many have conquered, but now more and more seniors are jumping on the social bandwagon as well.

For seniors "liking", commenting and defriending are foreign concepts but at AARP's Get Connected event held in Spokane Thursday, 350 seniors took the plunge to learn how to master social media.

Nancy Pritt was among those who wanted to take the plunge online. "I want to learn more, I want to get involved and do it," she said. "I'm pretty empowered about the whole thing ... I'm ready to start."

She, along with other seniors like her, are getting some help from Marsha Collier, the author of "Facebook And Twitter For Seniors For Dummies."

"It's a great way to build your life as you get older it doesn't have to get smaller it can get bigger," Collier said.

While it might be scary at first, Collier says it's time to dive in

"They just need that little extra push to get people online, stalk your children thing, I stalk my daughter all the time," she said.

A study recently found people 65 and older are the fastest growing age group in the State of Washington joining Facebook. And while Nancy Pritt might not have a Facebook account yet, she already knows the lingo.

"A comment would be I saw you on at the AARP session of Get Connected ... you look great and I'd go "like" it," she said.

Then there's friend requests …

"That means you want to ask them to be invited into your program."

… and of course a "Like."

"To like something means you agree with that comment or statement it's a thumbs up."

With the lingo down, now Nancy is ready to get connected on her own online.

"I've got some shopping to do so … right after this I'm looking forward to get going with it," she said.