How to Scare Away Customers
Got too many visitors? Profits climbing? Becoming too successful? Have way too much money? If so, here are some techniques for driving away business:
- Promote the site to entice visitors, only to have them find “Under Construction” signs plastered on your pages.
- Use small white type on a yellow background. If customers really want to see what you're offering, they won't mind squinting.
- Use a lot of superlatives in the product descriptions. Customers will truly believe that you offer the very best merchandise at the lowest possible prices.
- Over-promise and under-deliver. Make customers think that you will give them more than they are paying for but fail to come through in a timely manner.
- Don't respond to e-mail inquiries and be sure to subject customers to lengthy telephone hold times. Call center staff should be really rude to customers too.
- Bombard newsgroups, bulletin boards and forums with your shameless self-promotional messages. Make sure your posts contain disparaging remarks about your competition.
- Spam often. After all, who doesn't like to get e-mail?
This may be a tongue-in-cheek look into how NOT to succeed in e-business, but it only takes one negative experience to drive a customer away permanently. Developing and operating an e-commerce site takes time, devotion, research and testing and should not be embarked upon haphazardly. With the proper nurturing and cultivation, you can attract and retain a profitable customer base.
Reprinted from ECommerce Guide
Robyn Greenspan, an independent researcher and speaker, is interested in innovation, market trends and information technology. She was a participant in the AI Summit and also took part in the IEEE International Conference on Edge Computing, International SOA Symposium series and the International Cloud Symposium series. She graduated from Temple University. She was previously the communications and research manager for the AMS, an internationally recognized professional association that advances knowledge in the IT and business management areas.
