I have written before about my professional background in nonprofit management—specializing in fund raising and public relations. One of the things I learned in my former incarnation is that we need to make it as easy and simple as possible for people to respond to our requests. For our home businesses, this means that we need to make ordering products or contacting us to purchase our services as easy and pain-free as possible.
If people need to jump through a lot of hoops to get to us, they will lose interest and give up. If they have to leave several messages (e-mail or phone) and wait for a response, or if our order forms and process are confusing, they will just move on to another business who can make it much easier for the consumer to part with their money. Anything that you use to gather orders or reach out to customers should be as easy as pie for them to fill out or return. This is why online ordering and shopping carts have become such a necessity for even small, home-based businesses. This is how Americans shop and they expect it to be easy, accessible and not the slightest bit complicated.
As an example, if you use order forms or invoices, fill out as much as the information for the customer as possible and make it easy for them to simple check boxes and make choices instead of filling a lot of stuff out by hand. Make sure the forms flow naturally and you are not asking customers to fill in duplicate information—this takes up extra time and can be confusing. Online order forms should be just as easy and you can utilize drop-down menus to make selecting choices even easier. The less thinking and writing a customer has to do, the more likely they will be to place an order or make a purchase.
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Simplifying Business Communication