In order to ensure a smooth product delivery it is key for communication links to be available and used by both the seller and purchaser. Business is carried on as usual even as the methods of how business is carried on continuously morph with high tech Internet speed.
Convincing a prospective purchaser that you can deliver the product of their desire in a timely and reliable fashion has become a challenge to most Internet marketing operations. Scam artists and botched up sales deliveries have made the news with much regularity. The consumer's have become wary of doing business transactions over the Internet even though that is the very place that quite often the best deals can be found. The balance between convenience and confidence must be weighed in favor over the increasing threat of Internet scams and bumbling sales follow through methods.
As a merchant, use more than one method to communicate with your prospective customer. Telephones are not such a great method to instill customer confidence, anymore. In fact, requiring a valid phone number can lose the sale for you! Ask for, but do not insist upon a phone number. Most marketers do not have the time to field sales calls - online marketing, irregardless of what many so called 'pros' may say, is a pretty time consuming field of work to be in.
Create a form which customers can fill out post sale to verify their shipping information and add a variety of contact methods which they can choose from. E-mail is a very convenient and usually reliable standard for sales communications, but, spam filters are sometimes over zealous and your customer might not catch a message sent to him or her from you. That is why it is vital for the customer to fill out and submit the e-mail message coming your way first. Use a dedicated e-mail address on your own server, if possible. If not, set up a free e-mail address just for the purpose of collecting your customer's correspondence. Leave the spam filter set to low or off or ,at least, regularly review your filtered spam mail to make sure your customer's correspondence didn't get pitched.
Communication - remarkably it seems to be getting harder to stay in touch as the technology to make it easier gets better. What an oxymoron!
