Ecommerce Web Design Blog

Whatever business you are in there will be times when something major goes wrong (e.g. you need to do a product recall). The bigger you are and more significant your products are to the market, the more attention there will be on you.  A recent example of a crisis was Google's blunder which led to every website on the Internet being labelled as malware.

The most important thing to remember in managing a public crisis is to communicate with the public via the media quickly, assertively and truthfully. There will often be tremendous pressure to explain what went wrong and why and it is tempting to say anything just to "get the media off your back".  You will be judged on how you are coping by what you say and do in the first few hours of a crisis so it is absolutely crucial to be fast, thorough, truthful and accurate. Your business reputation depends on it.

But what you need to do is stay calm and if you don't know say so.  Don't think about talking with the journalist, think about talking to the people at home reading their newspapers, visiting their favourite online news website or watching TV. You are communicating with them.

Here are some tips:

•  Never Speculate. If you don't know the cause don't say you do. Google did this well initially in their crisis by acknowledging that they knew something was wrong and that they were looking into it when they said to initial BBC enquiries "There is a fault. We are not sure what the nature of the fault is yet. We are looking into it."
• Tell people how they will find out more. Google also did this well by telling the public that they would be making a statement on their official blog as soon as they were ready.
• Inform your key staff about the problem so they can report on it if contacted.  If you have a call centre or live chat operators tell them what is going on and how they should respond. Prepare a FAQ document for them to reply to enquiries. Be fast! fast! fast! Google ensured their key media staff and public personas (e.g. their search engine public face Matt Cutts) were informed and could confirm when and how Google would communicate with the public
  
• When you do communicate show empathy to those inconvenienced or harmed. If customers were frustrated by you acknowledge that you understand it must have been frustrating for them.
• If you can't comment, give a reason. Don't just say "no comment". If you can't comment say why. For example, "I can't comment becasue there is an official investigation into this."
• Take responsibility if it is your fault. Don't blame others. Google made a blunder in their malware meltdown by stating in their official statement that their malware URLs were obtained from a non-profit third party called StopBadware.org and that there was a human error in this list.  It turned out that this was not exactly true - StopBadware.org provided lists of bad urls and criteria that were then entered by Google into their system. The error was Google's but their initial statement seemed to blame their partner. This flooded their partner with enquiries and inflamed the problem somewhat. Some more checking before issuing the media statement would have helped there as they had to later update their official statment to correct this inaccuracy.
• Threats are opportunities too. If you handle this crisis professionally and carefully there is the opportunity to prove your business is sound under pressure and win over critics and even gain new customers. 

Overall, Google handled their issue well. They identified and fixed the problem in under an hour, informed their staff and issued a statement promptly. They made a mistake in not fact-checking their statement thoroughly but resolved and apologised for it quickly. They have said they are putting in place procedures to ensure this doesn't happen again. Let's hope they live up to their promise. If they do, this is a good example of how to handle an online crisis.

One of the biggest factors that people don't take into account when buying shopping cart software is the cost of support . There are many 'free' ecommerce solutions in the marketplace, but when something goes wrong with them, what do you do? You could post in the forums relevant to the free shopping cart you are using, but if you don't get a reply or the solution posted doesn't work, where do you turn?What if you are getting a unique error message?

Unless the problem you are having is to do with the server's configuration, in many cases they will also be unable to help. You will then be left on your own and with the expensive problem of trying to hire paid support from the original  developers of the cart or a third-party developer. Depending on your problem, either option could be very expensive.

Some shopping cart software products charge hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month in addition to the cost of their hosting environment just to give you the right to submit a very limited number of problems to them per year. 

If you are choosing a shopping cart for your business, support matters. Our advice is that you should choose carefully.

If you are choosing a hosted ecommerce solution like ozCart (where you are renting the shopping cart software but own your domain name and products), then support is often included in your monthly payment. It's good to check however what support you get for your monthly payments. For example, ask your shopping cart provider:

• Can you get support after 5pm? If you're working a full time job, you will often be working on your store between 5-8pm so look for a provider who has support during these hours.
  
• Can you get support at weekends?
• What support options do you get? Is there an extensive knowledgebase covering the key problems you may face? Is there an email ticket system to ask questions if you can't get what you want from the knowledgebase? Is there phone support or support live chat?
  
• How many support enquiries do you get for your monthly payment?
• Is proactive website performance management support provided behind-the-scenes?
• Is there a willingness of your provider to maintain a secure environment for your store?

Although ozCart from Osc Works does not offer phone or online chat support, our customers are not disadvantaged by this at all. We are proud to offer oustanding ecommerce support 7 days a week, 365 day email support via our ticket system (with unlimited tickets on all our ecommerce packages), plus a members knowledgebase with answers to questions based on past customer enquiries.  Our support team also provides proactive support where critical bug fixes and security patches can be implemented on stores without a ticket submission even being required if we become aware of them.

Choose an ecommerce software provider who includes support as part of their monthly fee and either provides a generous or unlimited number of ticket support enquiries and reasonable rates for extra work if required.