Posts Tagged ‘reliability’

Show Shoppers Your Online Business Can Be Trusted: KikScore Your Trust Solution

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

PROBLEM: Online Small Businesses lose billions in dollars a year in sales because shoppers do not know if they can trust those small businesses.

SOLUTION: Trust Seals – But which one?

It is established that small businesses, especially ones just starting out, can have a difficult time conveying to the public that they are trustworthy and reliable.  As a result, small businesses often lose significant sales because of this concern that the public has.  One of the primary ways that small businesses address these concerns is putting a “trust seal” on their website.  The trust seal is supposed to denote that a third party validation has occurred in some way and that third party therefore “vouches” for that small business so shoppers can then trust that business.  There are many trust seals out in the market that do different things and some of the providers of those seals include Verisign, TRUSTe, BuySafe, Trust Guard and the Better Business Bureau.

So we at KikScore often get the question: Why should a small business use KikScore and how is KikScore different than the other trust seals?

This post is not going to bash other seals, but there are critical differences between the KikScore seal and other seals that are on the market.  This post points out those differences and is meant to educate the community about why these differences are important.

1) Empowering Small Businesses To Show Their Track Record – A fundamental concern that shoppers have is can they trust a business?  Many businesses and business owner have an actual track record of reliability in paying their bills, having a strong financial history, reliably delivering products and services and historically being responsive to customers. Typically that has been built up over years of being responsible, reliable and trustworthy in the market.  So isn’t that track record work something? We say YES!  KikScore allows small businesses to take their own great track record and communicate it to the world and visitors to their website.  No one else allows a small business to take their business history and communicate that to the world so shoppers can get more comfortable with that business.

2) Promote Your Own Brand Not Another Company’s – A lot of other trust and verification seals do much more to promote their brand name on your website than actually assist in promoting a small business.  This is especially the case with some seals with lots of money behind their brand name that are widely recognized. Again these may be good trust seals that have a limited purpose, but they each miss out on a critical element to the trust equation.  They essentially are saying their brand name is more important to have on your website that your own brand name. At KikScore we do not believe that is the case. In fact, our seal is structured to take extensive amounts of information about the small business itself such as the management team’s names, their financial reliability, business policies, locations and website information and promote that information rather than our own brand name. We do this because we feel that information is more important to a website visitor or shopper in their determination of trustworthiness of a website.

3) KikScore is a Multi-Dimensional Trust Seal – Some trust seals try to do and message different things to the public. For example, some seals check for certain types of malware, some collect comments, some convey that an secure connection (SSL) is on the website, etc.  KikScore deliberately leaves those tasks to other folks because again in some instances those functions serve a purpose.  Those seals/services are, however, typically a one-dimensional service that only communicate that a small business website site gets a periodic and limited security scan.  You should note that based on our extensive information and first hand experience those scans can be helpful, but by no means are comprehensive and historically have not caught major pieces of malware that have resulted in some recent data breaches. KikScore’s seal actually incorporates all of these seals in our Certifications tab in our merchant report card, called a KikReport, in addition to providing the other wealth of information about a small business, its management and website history. Taken together this creates a multi-dimensional seal unlike others in the market.  This multi-dimensional seal allows small businesses to have one comprehensive seal that addresses the trust and reliability equation from a variety of angles.

4) Give Shoppers Dynamic and Continually Updated Information About Your Business – As small businesses know, their historical track record for reliability and trustworthiness always is being updated with new data and information as more transactions occur and a business grows.  Kikscore’s seal addresses this by being dynamic and continually updating a small business and their merchant report card (KikReport). The KikScore seal is set up to continually be updated and our own databases and data providers are scanned constantly for new information about a small business site.  So for example, when a small business website’s traffic increases meaning that business may be growing, that is reflected in the KikScore seal and the KikReport.  Also as a small business becomes more financially viable, that also gets reflected in the KikScore seal too and again helps demonstrate trustworthiness and reliability to shoppers. We do this, others do not.  Most other trust seals are static meaning they do not update information presented on a seal besides perhaps a change in the date of a scan that is performed – otherwise other trust seals just present static information.  That static information really does not do a lot to help address the issue of building trust for small businesses.

5) You Get a Unique Trust Score for Your Small Business –  Unlike anyone in the market, KikScore takes information, data and merchant provided information, analyzes that information and presents to the public a completely unique and dynamic trust and reliability score.  This trust and reliability score takes into account literally hundreds of data points and indications of trustworthiness in order to compute the trust score.  The trust score which in some ways is akin to a credit score except that the KikScore trust score is made available to the public so a small business can communicate to customers that they have a high trust score and therefore can be trusted.  Even better is that the trust score is based on data and information that is verified by KikScore through our systems and automated processes.

6) KikScore Helps Small Businesses Giving Wary Shoppers Transparency Into Your Business – KikScore attacks the heart of the trust issue for small businesses by giving small businesses a way to make themselves, their business and their management more transparent to shoppers.  We have seen that when shoppers are provided more information about an online business their level of comfort and likelihood of buying from that website increases.  Without this important transparency, sales are lost and shopping carts are abandoned.  Instead of empowering small businesses to provide this transparency, other trust seals merely provide a very small, isolated and static piece of information about a small business (a malware scan, etc). Those seals are just not comprehensive enough to fully address the trust issue.

7) Encourages Interaction with Your Customers – KikScore’s seal incorporates an interactive feedback platform within the seal.  This permits small businesses to interact in real time with their customers.  This also allows these small businesses to have other shoppers review the comments that are posted inside the KikScore seal about the shopping experience with that customer.  KikScore even incorporates these comments into the trust score for the small business.  One additional benefit of the interactive feedback platform is that it helps bring customers to the small business website to post comments instead of having those customers post comments on various unrelated sites around the internet like Yelp.  Now granted their are a few other seals that include comments sorting and response functionality, none of them have the comprehensive trust building solution that KikScore includes with the items listed in 1-6 before.

So I will leave everyone with the following:  We rarely and I mean rarely overtly talk about the KikScore product on our blog.  Instead, we use this blog to communicate with the community and provide valuable small business tips.  That being said, we thought that this would be a good time to take the opportunity to educate small businesses on the critical differences between KikScore and the many other seals that claim to address the trust concern that shoppers continually say are a barrier to buying more online.

We would love to know your thoughts on the differences we have identified.

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Posts Tagged ‘reliability’

7 Questions A Small Business or Startup Should Ask Themselves Every Day

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

I like to talk.  I like to talk alot, especially when I have had a few really good margaritas.  And my wife, my family and friends can all attest to that fact.  That is all except for where I may have had too much to drink and then I have an uncanny tendency to just fall asleep in mid-sentence sometimes even at a restaurant booth (reference multiple experiences in Columbus, Ohio eating a Barnyard Buster and in Washington DC eating a jumbo slice at Pizza Mart).

Anyway so what is my point?  Talking is not as good as everyone makes it seem for business.  Instead asking questions is much more important.  It really did not dawn on me, however, until I was reflecting back on conversations with mentors, business partners, and our own team that you really should be asking critical questions about your business almost on a daily basis.  Those questions can help uncover critical gaps in strategy, planning and execution for your startup or small business.  If you ask these questions, then you can increase your chances of addressing these gaps.

So here are a few questions that may help you with your business:

1. Distractions. Are you focusing your efforts on the right tasks for your business and avoiding distractions that take you away from meeting your overall goals?

We all know how bad distractions can be in business.  Distractions can be one of the biggest impediments to building momentum for your business. The trick here is to make sure your business and your team is focused on what will move the business forward by continually weeding out distractions.

2. Customer Satisfaction. Are you doing everything to make your customers’ lives easier in some way through either using your product/service or helping educate them?

If your customers are not happy, then it will be nearly impossible to grow your business.  So in everything you do you need to make sure the goal of the task is that you are helping your customers in some way.  If not, then you should seriously consider abandoning those tasks that do not relate to helping current or potential customers.

3. Customer Value. How can you give your customers more reasons to keep buying from your business and not your competition?

Your customers are likely being bombarded by your competitors with tempting offers and reasons to buy from them instead of you.  So you have to be relentless in making sure you give your customers reasons to remain loyal to you.  Without investing the time to create that customer loyalty, your business will always be at risk of churning valuable customers to your competitors.

4. Facilitating Word of Mouth Marketing. How can you get more customers to refer their friends and contacts to use your product/service?

Word of Mouth Marketing is free.  So all it costs you is the time and effort to give the customer a great experience, but also the means for that customer to spread the word about your business and the product/service that they love.  So always be thinking about how can you arm your customers with information about your business value that you can provide the market.  The best way to do that (and least selfish) is making sure the customer knows the value you have created for them.  They can then go and spread the word for you!

5. Building Trust. Are you doing everything possible to ensure that your customers have confidence in your business, product or service and believe that you are reliable.

Customers know small businesses and startups come and go.  There is a reason why buyers tend to prefer larger and more established brands.  So one way to distinguish yourself is to make sure that everything that you do for your customers and for the public is viewed through the lens that you are trustworthy, reliable and your business delivers on its promises.  That track record of delivering will help generate trust in your business.  Heck, after all that is what KikScore was based on – allowing small businesses to show the world their track record of reliability and trustworthiness!

6. Your Team. Do you have the right team to succeed and grow your business and if not, should you bring in a new employee or a freelancer?

Businesses and startups can be just like my beloved Cleveland Browns.  The Browns team has been terrible since 1999.  Bad teams means lots of losses.  So learn from the Browns and be like this year’s Packers (Collins will like this reference). The Packers built a great team, loaded it up with depth and even got people off the streets in some instances to fill in when key players were injured.  The New Orleans Saints did the same last year on their way to winning a Super Bowl.  As you evaluate your team, make sure you have depth, solid performers and cut the freeloaders as they are a drag on morale and overall team dynamics.  Once you eliminate the underperformers then decide if you need a new employee or perhaps a freelancers that can step in and augment your existing team.

7. Your Money. What are areas of your business that you can manage your costs better?

Always be reviewing where your money is going.  Even though it is sometimes easy to just say well those costs are ones that I can’t really control and I just have to suck it up and pay for them. NO!  Call up that vendor and see what discounts that they can give you.  Threaten to leave and go to their competitor. Also there may be particular functions at your small business or startup that you can get experts to help with instead of you having to spend extensive time on your own.  Time is money so the value of your time may very well be better spent on your core business of serving your customers then performing back office functions or doing things like managing a marketing campaign.

These are just some of the questions that each small business or startup should be asking themselves.  But just like too much talking, too many questions can send you down a spiral of too much analysis and confusion.  Keep your daily self-analysis of your business to certain key questions that are fundamental to your business and watch and see if your perspective and approach changes.

What questions would you ask?

Photo from Flickr user Marco Bellucci, CC 2.0.

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Posts Tagged ‘reliability’

2009 Online Ratings Survey Synopsis

Friday, October 30th, 2009

As dojomike’s previous post alluded to, LexisNexis recently released their 2009 Online Ratings Survey. In that 2009 Survey, LexisNexis revealed some interesting trends that are continuing to develop in the online community.

Trend 1: The vast majority of small businesses and consumers are active users of review and ratings Web sites (90% for small business and 80% for consumers).

Trend 2: Small business owners place a greater value on ratings and review Web sites than consumers.

Trend 3: According to Alfredo Sciascia, a vice president with LexisNexis, “review and ratings Web sites are being used to a greater extent than ever before to inform buying decisions”. Sciascia adds that “ratings offer consumers valuable insight into a wide range of goods and services, and they can be a powerful tool used by business owners to differentiate their goods and services from those offered by competitors.”

Trend 4: Despite the increased use of review and ratings sites (as dojomike indicated in his previous post), the reliability of many of these review and ratings Web sites are in question.

Lexis-Nexis Recommendation Based on Trends: According to Sciascia, “the survey indicates that in order to offer a trustworthy, complete resource that provides significant value to business owners and consumers, providers of ratings will need to incorporate a combination of qualitative and quantitative evaluations”.

Lexis-Nexis’ recommendation was derived from the fact that when asked what kind of evaluation would be most valuable, nearly 80 percent of small business owners and consumers find that a blend of both numerical scores (overall ratings score) and written feedback (verbatim comments/testimonials) would be the most valuable type of evaluation from review and ratings Web sites.

Accordingly, do not only listen to me or dojomike as you continue to purchase and/or sell online, also listen to the experts at LexisNexis who commissioned a survey to obtain information that me or dojomike would have gladly provided to them for free.

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