Answers needed in 24 hours
Answers needed in 24 hours
by Dr Tony Berg
Respond within 24 hours or lose online credibility
Leads gathered from your website have a real prospect behind them and need treating as such. But many web enquiries seem to get second class treatment.
In a recent survey by Lifestyles Online only 16% of respondents were prepared to wait more than 24 hours for a response to a query sent via a website.
84% expected to hear back within 24 hours.
Worse news still was that 88% said they were prepared to wait only 24 hours or less for a business to respond to their online enquiry before shopping elsewhere and 42% of these users said they would wait just an hour or less.
Unsurprisingly, if online queries were completely ignored then 85% of respondents said they would never bother with that same business again.
Companies are now putting more time and effort into their website. SEO (Search Engine Optimising) is understood to play a major part in drawing new traffic to the website.
Analytics is letting companies develop the conversion efficiency of their website and bring in more enquiries.
Overall the number of qualified leads that a well engineered website can generate has grown dramatically in the last two or three years.
The Internet must be treated as part of the sales department and given as much time and effort to follow through as conventional business enquiries.
Even more important is that any website development is integrated into the overall sales strategy.
Cinderella is coming into mainstream sales and marketing, don't lose out through neglect.
Dr Tony Berg
Managing Director - Realnet Ltd
tonyberg@realnet.co.uk
Article originally published in Cambridge Network Connection magazine Issue 39, 03/03/2008.
"The Realnet team are very enthusiastic about our website and are always asking if we are happy with the way things are going or if there is anything that we would like to do to improve the site."
Steve Rosewell,
M J Warner