Colorado Web Solutions

CWS Client CoffeeCakes.com Celebrates 15 Years of Online Success

Posted on February 3rd, 2010 by Matt Sampson - Colroado Web Solutions CEO

Colorado Web Solutions is pleased to present this article from the PR wire today about our friends at CoffeeCakes.com and their 15 year anniversary selling online. That is quite an accomplishment and we celebrate with them! Enjoy the article.

CASTLE ROCK, Colo., Feb 03, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ —- This year marks the 15th anniversary of Colorado-based CoffeeCakes.com, one of the first Internet retailers to offer high-quality gourmet gift items online. To celebrate its fifteen year milestone, CoffeeCakes.com will offer select anniversary-priced coffeecakes for $15 throughout the remainder of 2010 as well as free shipping on any order within Colorado.

In 1995, CoffeeCakes.com started as an Internet cafe (the first of its kind in Colorado). Realizing that the Internet offered incredible opportunities in the marketplace, Sherry Comes, the company’s founder, decided to move her business exclusively online. Applying her many years of IT consulting expertise to her new entrepreneurial venture, Comes has grown her online store into the profitable entity it is today.

In the fifteen years since the company’s inception, Comes has experienced the usual challenges of running a small business while maintaining a full-time career. Over the years, the company has revamped its website for Search Engine Optimization, taken the functions of fulfillment, inventory and warehousing in-house, and streamlined its order management, inventory control, and shipping processes.

Since the early years, CoffeeCakes.com has greatly expanded its product line (which initially centered on coffeecakes) to include travel mugs, teapots, and items such as coffee presses and tea samplers. “In the fifteen years since I founded the company, I have seen a huge change in customer shopping patterns,” Comes said. “My customers are super-savvy Internet shoppers. They expect high-touch customer service and a broad and appealing range of products.”

For Valentine’s Day, the company is introducing its new line of “Chocolate Surprise Squares” and “Chocolate Bliss Gourmet” gift baskets that can be shipped anywhere within the US and Canada.

The company plans to launch a sister web site sometime in 2010 that will focus on an even wider range of gift items spanning children’s wear to home decor.

To place an order, visit www.CoffeeCakes.com or call 1-800-830-2696.

About CoffeeCakes.com

CoffeeCakes.com (www.coffeecakes.com) is a privately-held company that markets specialty food and gourmet gift items exclusively on the Internet. Founded in 1995, the company is headquartered in Castle Rock, Colorado. CoffeeCakes.com’s product line includes corporate gifts, specialty gift baskets, coffeecakes and other cakes, tea samplers, travel mugs and products to enhance the enjoyment of coffee and tea.

SOURCE CoffeeCakes.com

Matt Sampson | CEO | Colorado Web Solutions
http//www.ColoradoWebSolutions.com

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Update your Yahoo Store’s Copyright Date Automatically

Posted on January 6th, 2010 by Matt Sampson - Colroado Web Solutions CEO

It’s that time of year again, the calendars switch to 2010 and we struggle for a few days to remember to write 10 instead of 09 on our checks and other dated materials. Don’t forget an important change you need to make to your Yahoo Store as well… it’s time to update the copyright date in your stores footer.

For most store owners this can easily be accomplished by going to your VARIABLES and looking for the “Copyright” field toward the bottom of the list of default variables. If you have a custom designed store you may have to look in a different location depending on your developer. For example, our customers can typically look in a field called “cws-footer” to change their footer. CWS clients, however, will not need to update their copyright dates because we code our sites to update automatically.

If you would like to update your Copyright date for the final time, here’s a sample of the code you can use.

© Copyright <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
// current date - from http://rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com/scripts
// Array of day names
var dayNames = new Array("Sunday","Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday","Saturday");

var monthNames = new Array("January","February","March","April","May","June","July",
                           "August","September","October","November","December");

var dt = new Date();
var y  = dt.getYear();

// Y2K compliant
if (y < 1000) y +=1900;

document.write(y);
// -->
                  </script> Your Company Name

I hope this little tip was helpful for you. While you’re at it, make sure all of your Holiday Promotions are cleaned out and you’ve got everything back to normal again after the holidays. Our entire team at Colorado Web Solutions wishes you all a very successful 2010.

Have a great week everyone.

Matt Sampson | CEO | Colorado Web Solutions
http//www.ColoradoWebSolutions.com

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Unsatisfied Customer? An example of what NOT to do.

Posted on December 3rd, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colroado Web Solutions CEO

Hey everyone. I haven’t written about customer service in a little while and I just had an experience that sparked my interest in sharing some thoughts with you.

As you all know, the holiday shopping season is upon us and regardless of how hard you try and the effort you make as a merchant, you will ineveitably end up with customers that are not going to be satisfied with their purchases. It may not even be something in your control, in fact it could be as simple as “I didn’t like the product.” More than likely, you already have a “Return Policy” in place and if you sell sensitive products you may even have some restrictions with your returns. I encourage every merchant we work with to establish ground rules for customer service related issues, but I also know that those rules need to be flexible if you are 1) going to survive online and 2) want to keep your customers coming back.

This is the story of a customer who will not be returning to a merchant, and that customer is me.

To make a long story short, I purchased two high-end specialty Yoga Mats from a company called YogaMatic. My wife is a very active yoga instructor and I knew she’d love one of their custom designed mats. They are quite remarkable. They are also quite expensive ($80 as opposed to $20 for a regular sporting goods store mat). I ended up purchasing two of these mats, one for my wife and another for her best friend who is also a very active yoga participant.

The mats arrived and were fantastic looking. I was very pleased. Unfortunately though, the very first time both mats were used, we discovered that they were abnormally slippery when even a slight sweat was broken. We’re talking ice skating rink slippery. Completely unusable for yoga practice (other than mild stretching) without a towel on top. And with a towel on top, what the point of purchasing these beautiful mats? None of our other mats are slippery that we use, in fact, you could even call them tacky, which is great. We tried washing them down with water and a few other remedies and nothing worked. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do to fix them, so I wrote Yogamatic an email to see if they had any thoughts for me.

Now a good company with good customer service would have responded differently, but let’s start with how NOT to respond.

Hi Matt.
Thanks very much for your comments.
We are very sorry indeed that you don’t find our mat suitable for your yoga practice.
We have so much great feedback about the Y-Brid mat that you do surprise me.
In fact we have some of LA’s best known instructors, who love our mats and have branded them as their own.
We do however accept that we can’t be everyone’s favorite mat,
or tick every box of everyone’s perfect mat.
Each brand of mat has it’s own strongest feature,
and appeals or does not appeal to people for different reasons. Like any product.
We state in our return policy on line that we do not take back used mats or custom mats.
The sweatier class  I go to,  there is not a person in the class not using a towel.
With every brand of mat represented.
The less sweaty classes, I find I do not need a towel.
A mat and ones own practice is a very personal thing,
and we are sorry to not be your favorite mat.
I will share your e mail with our team.
Many Thanks
(name removed for privacy)

At first glance, the response is nice enough, but if you look at it, they did absolutely NOTHING to help solve my problem. This is not how I would suggest treating your customers, at least if you ever want to sell to them again. In this example, having an active yoga teacher teaching hundreds of students a year, you would think that it would be in YogaMatic’s best interest to try to resolve the issue and try to find a solution. Instead, they completely blew me off.

What I read (through tainted glasses of course) in her response was “We’re sorry you don’t like your mat, but it’s yours now. The top instructors in LA love them. (Clearly the Colorado Instructors are not as skilled?) Good luck, use your mat for car repairs, I’ll tell the team about your complaint as we laugh with all the LA instructors about you silly Coloradans.”

Now clearly this is not what she said, but she might as well have.  Is this a way to keep a customer coming back? Uh.. no. In fact it’s a way to inspire a customer to write a “How to treat your customers poorly” article.

So what could the folks at YogaMatic.com done differently? Let’s look at a few options…

1. Knowing that the unsatisfied customer is a Yoga Instructor who works with students daily, my first assumption would have been that they would want only the best words spoken about their mats and they would want to replace it with a different one or at least clarify why the mats are as slippery as they are.
2. They could have offered a coupon/discount on an additional mat if we wanted to try one with a different design that could be less slippery.
3. They could have offered a few ideas as to how to make it less slippery. Sandpaper? Probably not, but you know what I’m getting at.
4. They could have offered to take it back for a full or even partial refund.
5. They could have made me felt like I was heard.

I understand the policy about no returns from a logical point of view. Someone dripped sweat on this mat, it’s no longer new and can’t be sold as such. Makes perfect sense. BUT, there are times when eating the expense of a dud product is worth keeping a customer, especially an influential one. If I owned YogaMatic, I would have asked my customer service reps to craft a letter something more like this:

Dear Matt -

We’re very sorry to hear that the mat isn’t living up to your wife and friends expectations! We pride ourselves on creating high quality yoga mats and never like to hear that we’ve got an unsatisfied customer. We have mats beings used all over california by some of the countries top instructors and they love them, so I’m sorry you don’t feel the same. I’m sure you’ve probably seen our return policy posted online that says that our mats are not returnable but I wanted to see if we could work something out.

I know you purchased two of the mats that have the white backgrounds, so I’m wondering if you’d be interested in trying one of the less graphically intensive mats? If you would like to consider that, we would be happy to take your wifes mat back for a full exchange (we’re happy to eat that cost to keep our yoga instructors around the country happy and promoting our products!) and I can also offer you a 50% exchange credit for your wife’s friends mat. So she would only have to pay our cost to produce it. Would that be acceptable to you? Please keep in mind that if the second mats do not work, we can’t continue to keep taking them back, but we would love to offer you another chance at using our mats. We love them and want you to love them too!

Please let us know if this will work for you and we will get new mats out to you this week and you can return the old ones in the box when it arrives. I’ll toss a UPS return label in there as well so it’s nice and easy.

Thanks so much, we look forward to hearing from you.

See the difference? Sure, my version would end up costing them a little bit of money (the cost of one mat and shipping… $60?) but in the end, they end up with a yoga instructor using this beautiful mat and all of her students wanting to know where she got it. I’ve seen it first hand, they really are striking mats and her students ask her all the time where it came from. Wouldn’t they rather have her raving about how wonderful the mat is and telling them where to get one, vs having her say “Don’t buy one, they’re expensive and slippery. Get a Giam mat.” In the end which do you think makes them more money as a company?

Now please understand, I’m not telling you that you need to change your rules for every customer who wants to return something. Just think about it for a moment from your customers eyes and see if you would be happy with your reply if you were them. Some customers will never be happy no matter what you do, and those are the customers that fine print and policies are written specifically for, but if you have the opportunity to forge a stronger relationship with a customer who could potentially send you more business from either themselves or those in their community, I would suggest thinking twice before shutting them down.

Now get back to your holiday sales. Take care of your customers that can be taken care of. It’ll pay off in the end.

Oh yeah, if anyone needs a really slippery yoga mat, they’ve got beautiful ones over at YogaMatic.com.

Until Later -

Matt Sampson | CEO | Colorado Web Solutions
http//www.ColoradoWebSolutions.com

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$50 in Free Clicks from Nextag and GoDataFeed

Posted on December 3rd, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colroado Web Solutions CEO

Greetings!

Many of you have inquired about getting listed on NexTag, so we are excited to announce that NexTag has just launched a new $50 Sign Up Credit promotion for GoDataFeed merchants.

$50 Sign-up Bonus

Sign up with NexTag and receive $50 credit after your $150* deposit- see terms below.

If you’re thinking about listing on NexTag, now’s the time!

NexTag is one of the most popular engines on the Web, making this sign-up bonus a great opportunity for new merchants

• More than 17 million people per month use NexTag to research, compare, and save on products and services online
• For thousands of merchants, NexTag is an extremely efficient sales channel with its highly qualified traffic and performance-based pricing
• Results are measurable so you can make an educated decision on how you allocate your marketing budget

You can find the promotion in the GoDataFeed-NexTag link that will enable you to sign up for this special offer.

*Registration and acceptance of NexTag’s online agreements are required to become a NexTag Seller. Registration requires a $150.00 deposit (“Deposit”) that is fully refundable minus any cost-per-click fees and/or other fees you incur. You will receive a $50.00 credit in your NexTag account at the time NexTag verifies your Deposit. You must use the $50.00 credit within thirty (30) days from the date NexTag first lists at least one of your products. Any credit that you may receive (or unused portions thereof) has no cash value and may not be redeemed, resold or transferred. This offer may be modified or discontinued at any time without further notice. One credit per merchant store.

Matt Sampson | CEO | Colorado Web Solutions
http//www.ColoradoWebSolutions.com

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Cyber Monday Tip: Last Minute Details for your Yahoo Store

Posted on November 28th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colroado Web Solutions CEO

Part 14 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Weekend Edition: Cyber Monday Yahoo Store Preparation Tip #14: Checking the last Minute Details

Hi everyone, I know it’s the weekend and I typically only post for you on weekdays, but Cyber Monday is in just two days, so I think this is a good time to give you a few last minute things to consider. These should all be fairly simple ideas so you should be able to take care of all of them in just a few minutes.

1. Make sure that your Yahoo Store Analytics are turned on and collecting data. Read more about this here.
2. Double check the credit card you are using for Google Adwords payments. Has it been paid down enough to avoid getting declined and thus shutting off your ads this weekend?
3. Be sure to import your current customers from previous orders into your email campaign program before you send out your next promotional email.
4. Post something about your store on your Twitter page. Do the same for Facebook. Encourage people to click the link they see.

That should be enough for you today. It’s a busy weekend, but be sure to check all those items off as soon as you can.

I’ll see you all on Monday. It’s time. :)

Matt Sampson | CEO | Colorado Web Solutions
http//www.ColoradoWebSolutions.com

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Cyber Monday Tip #13: Get your Email Campaigns Ready

Posted on November 27th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colroado Web Solutions CEO

Part 13 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Cyber Monday Yahoo Store Preparation Tip #13: Prepare your email campaigns in advance

I could go on about email campaigns for hours, but today I’m going to just talk about a few aspects. First of all, if you do not have any email campaigns planned, it’s time to do that. Get it done this weekend. I would suggest up to 3 emails for the month of December, don’t do anymore or people will get annoyed.

Here’s a few tips for these emails you’re going to prepare.

1. Make sure your Yahoo Store email campaigns have a point. Why are you sending it? What is the customers benefit for reading it?
2. Be sure to have a strong “call to action”. Ask your customer to do something. Encourage them.
3. Never ever send out an email with the same content the next week. Always change it. Even if the offers have not changed. Re-write it, re-market it. You will guarantee yourself unsubscribers from your list by sending a duplicate this time of year.
4. Don’t overcrowd or underwhelm. Keep your emails simple, but make sure (as i mentioned above) to have a clear point and goal with your emails.
5. Don’t send them Monday morning. If your primary customers typically shop from their homes for your products, consider sending your first email Sunday late afternoon. Just as they settle down to start shopping. If your customers typically shop from you while at work, I’d suggest a mailing either Tuesday mid-morning or possibly Monday Mid afternoon.

Ok, the list could go on forever, but I’ll stop there. If you’d like more information on our Constant Contact marketing services, please visit this link:

http://www.coloradowebsolutions.com/yahoo-store-email-marketing.html

Be sure to get those email’s planned and implemented soon! I’ll be back next week with some thoughts on Analytics. See you all then.

Matt Sampson | CEO | Colorado Web Solutions
http//www.ColoradoWebSolutions.com

Start your free Yahoo! Store SEO Trial at www.15seo.com today.

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Happy Thanksgiving Yahoo Store Owners

Posted on November 26th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colroado Web Solutions CEO

To all of our clients, readers and friends, we wish you a relaxing Thanksgiving Day and hope that starting tomorrow morning you will be too busy to read. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Good luck this weekend and for the entire month of December. We’re all rooting for you.

Off to eat some turkey.

Matt Sampson | CEO | Colorado Web Solutions
http//www.ColoradoWebSolutions.com

Start your free Yahoo! Store SEO Trial at www.15seo.com today.

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Cyber Monday Tip #12: Finalize Last Minute Promotions

Posted on November 26th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colroado Web Solutions CEO

Part 12 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Cyber Monday Yahoo Store Preparation Tip #12: Getting your December Promotions organized and ready.

Today I want to talk about your last minute holiday promotions in your Yahoo Store. Before I get to that though, I would like to wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving.

If you have not ever offered “last minute deals” you may want to consider trying that this season. We have seen a variety of promotions, but the ones that seem to work extremely well in some industries are discounted or free expedited shipping the final week before Christmas and last minute blowout deals on specific products.

Discounted Expedited Shipping

It’s a fact that the week before Christmas, online sales drop considerably due to the shipping delay and possibility of non-arrival on Christmas morning. What if you could capture more of those last minute shoppers before they start going to the physical stores? This doesn’t work for all merchants by any means, but for those that have products lines condusive to this, it may be worth considering. Especially if you want to milk more sales out of the rush.

Consider offering Free or heavilly discounted Two Day Shipping to customers the final week before Christmas. I’ve personally seen it work. Again, it only works if your product line allows for it size wise, etc, but if it does, this is a fantastic promotion. I could go on and on with the ideas regarding the shipping promotions, but I hope you get the idea. Be creative. What works for your business?

Last Minute Blow Out Deals

If you offer seasonal products, or even if you stocked up for the holidays and didn’t sell as much as you anticipated, the final week before Christmas is a fantastic time to blow out overstock or closeout inventory. Don’t wait until the traditional closeout season, you’ve got the customers now, they want to buy, if you have too much, discount it and move it before the rush slows down. Again, this is another great way to increase those sales that final week. Promote the heck out of it. Be sure it’s on your home page as well as your blog and email blasts. Stay Creative. How can this tip work for your business?

Ok, that’s all for today, I’m ready to go eat some turkey. Happy Thanksgiving again everyone. I’ll be back with more tomorrow. I think we’ll discuss email campaigns.

Matt Sampson | CEO | Colorado Web Solutions
http//www.ColoradoWebSolutions.com

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Cyber Monday Tip #11: Your Holiday Shipping Deadlines

Posted on November 25th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colroado Web Solutions CEO

Part 11 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Cyber Monday Yahoo Store Preparation Tip #11: Your Holiday Shipping Deadlines and Happy Customers

Today I want to address the topic of holiday shipping deadlines. We all know that at some point in December, shipped orders are no longer going to be arriving in time for Christmas. If you have not established your holiday shipping deadlines yet, I would suggest that you do so immediately.

If you do not have information from UPS or your shipper, chances are you will be able to get a time frame map on their website for holiday shipping. Look at the map and determine the longest time frame for each delivery method. For example, if you are shipping from New York and shipping to Washington State is the furthest ZONE on your map, use that time frame for your reference. Then consider processing time. Do you ship the same day? Is there a delay? Be sure to add that into your calculation.

Once you’ve determined your deadline dates (again, be sure to check for each shipping method you offer), be sure to post those deadlines in a prominent or at least an easy to find location on your site. Be VERY clear about deadlines. I would also HIGHLY suggest adding a disclaimer to the deadlines stating that you are not responsible for carier delievery issues, etc.

So that’s all for today. Be sure to get those deadlines posted soon. It’s time.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another post on Last Minute Shopping Deals.

Matt Sampson | CEO | Colorado Web Solutions
http//www.ColoradoWebSolutions.com

Start your free Yahoo! Store SEO Trial at www.15seo.com today.

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Cyber Monday Tip #10: Yahoo Store Shopping Feeds

Posted on November 24th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colroado Web Solutions CEO

Part 10 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo! Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Cyber Monday Yahoo! Store Preparation Tip #10: Check your product feeds for shopping engines

I’m going to give you a nice simple tip today. You have no excuses with this one. Today we are going to check your product catalog feeds and make sure that you have them turned on for the shopping comparison engines. In a nutshell, these XML feeds allow other sites to pull your products into their comparison engines and then link back to your site with new customers. I would recommend that every merchant that sells items to the general public turn their product feeds on.

Here’s how to turn your Yahoo Store shopping feeds on.

• Log into your Yahoo! Store’s Manager
• Under the PROMOTE heading in the second row of options you will see “Search Engines” – click that.
• You will see three rows of radio buttons. Ensure that ALL THREE are checked as “Enabled”
• Click DONE
• By checking those three buttons you are turning on your sitemap and allowing your products to be listed in comparison engines.
• Return to your Store Manager main page. If necessary, publish your order settings.
• If your site map was not previously turned on, you will need to publish it once to build it. If your sitemap (the first radio button above) was already on, you can skip this step. You’re done.
• To publish your site map enter your store editor. Click on the VARIABLES button. Then Click UPDATE. Now Publish. You’re finished.

Would you like more control over your product datafeeds? Are you submitting your products to Google Base, Shopping.com etc? Read This!

For those merchants that want to take their product feed and overall marketing to a new level, we highly suggest using a datafeed service designed specifically for Yahoo Stores. We have tried them all and hands down, our favorite service is Go Data Feed. They can help you automatically submit your products (with the correct categories per engine!) to all of the major shopping comparison engines. Free engines, paid engines, they support just about everything! By far the best way to get your Yahoo Store products listed correctly in Google Base / Google Products / Froogle.

If you are interested, here’s some more information on our website:
http://www.coloradowebsolutions.com/yahoo-store-godatafeed.html

I hope you enjoyed this super simple Yahoo Store tip today. Don’t wait. Get it done.

Tomorrow I’ll be back with some thoughts on Holiday Shipping Deadlines.

Matt Sampson | CEO | Colorado Web Solutions
http//www.ColoradoWebSolutions.com

Start your free Yahoo! Store SEO Trial at www.15seo.com today.

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