Archive for December, 2006

The Big Red Cherry dished the dirt on us, so I guess we'll have to spill at least 5 of our very best kept secrets. This is part of a viral blogging thing where you post 5 little known truths about yourself, and then "tag" 3 other bloggers to do the same.

1. Live Alchemy originally started as a web profitability company.
2. Our offices are based at home, and our founders, Andrew and Shane are neighbours.
3. We don't manufacturer any of our products and we try not carry any stock. In fact we've never hoisted a flag and we've never used most of the products on YuppieChef.com
4. We've been PC users from the beginning and this year converted to Mac, even though we don't actually own one yet (any sponsors?)
5. We're saving up for a EVA SOLO CafeSolo Coffee-Maker.

Now to be silly…

The Heavy Chef
PCOW, Inc
Taste Matters

Today I received a call from a client who was wondering why the invoice that he received with his flags was less than what we had originally quoted and what he paid (His accounts department alerted him to the discrepancy). Our conversation went something like this:

"Uum, sir, could you please tell me what name is on the top of the invoice?", I asked

"Oh, it says XXXXXXXX", the client responded.

"Oh dear!…..that's our suppliers invoice", I ashamedly responded. 

Very embarrassing I know, but there is a reason why this happened. The courier company would pick us the order from the supplier and then send it to the client without anyone from Flag Kit being involved. Great in principle, but not very realistic. We learned the hard way and have since had all flags from the supplier sent to us, allowing us to do a quick quality check and package each order the Flag Kit way.

This afternoon I had my first "call" from someone on a site who clicked on the Live Chat link. Here is how it went:

Visitor: can you help me get a bugzapper to port elizabeth by tuesday 12th december?

Andrew: We certainly can, but we will need to courier it. Do you want just 1 racket?

Visitor: can you send me three?

Andrew: Of course!

Andrew: Will you be paying by credit card or bank transfer?

Visitor: great. credit card

Andrew: OK. Go ahead and place the order through the site and pay, and I will make sure it gets to you by Tuesday. Make sure to enter a daytime physical address, with a postal code.

Visitor: thanks very much. have a good day

We will never know for certain, but I'm pretty sure that the conversion he had with me led to the sale of 3 Bug Zappers. We don't publish a phone number on the website (we're trying to run our sites at a slight arm's length) so his only other alternative would have been to e-mail us with his query, but he probably wouldn't have trusted that we would have responded in time, so he wouldn't have bothered. Because he could find out right away about his order he went ahead.

Recently I was battling to log in to BusinessWarriors.co.za and I noticed a link to "Click here for live help". I clicked on the icon and was greeted by a friendly (real) person who helped me through the process of logging in. I had seen this type of chat on other sites, but never before had it helped me so effectively and quickly. The alternative would have been to fill out a form or an e-mail, and probably wait a day for a response (if at all!).

The service on Business Warriors is provided by LivePerson.com. I poked around a bit on their site and they seem to be quite comprehensive, although a bit pricey at $99/month. A bit of Googling uncovered another option in ProvideSupport.com who seem to offer something very similar, but starting at $15/month.

I have set up the 10 day trial of ProvideSuuport.com on 2 of our e-commerce sites (www.flagkit.co.za and www.bugzapper.co.za) to see if our visitors/potential clients would make use of it. 24 hours later nobody has requested a chat, so perhaps the South African market is not educated enough on what live support would entail? Perhaps we can lay blame on the usual "slow internet" culprit and guess that the average SA surfer doesn't have time and bandwidth to click on links that look too fancy? Or maybe our sites are simple enough to not require help! ;-)

If you are interested to test out the service please feel free to visit on of the sites mentioned above and click on the link. An operator should be on-hand to take your call (ie, me!). I am really excited about this type of service and what it could do to improve the web experience for everyone. I can think of a ton of sites that I use and wish I could chat to someone about.

[PS - you might be reading this post some time in the future, and we might not be using this service on our sites anymore. If that's the case then clearly we decided it isn't worth it!]

We had a successful meeting with a new potential flag supplier yesterday. We currently buy flags from 3 other local suppliers. Some are cheaper than others, but we have to shop around because the cheaper guys don't stock all of the 200+ country flags (in 2 different sizes each).

The company we met yesterday seemed to be the first to "get" what we are trying to do - be an online retailer for their manufacturing capabilities. All the others give us a miserly 10% discount, which we means we have to be the most expensive in the industry in order to survive. These guys understand that we're not competitors, but a complimentary business. Even though they also sell directly to the public they suggested linking from their own website to our's, crediting us as a source for buying flags online. They understand that marketing is usually the hard bit in business, so if they can get us to do it for them it's worth giving a healthy discount.

It was a good meeting in amongst a difficult day of dealing with customer complaints (see Shane's previous post). Selling physical stuff seems a lot harder than our experiences of making websites for clients.

We got mail today:

To whom it may concern,
I am really disappointed in the poor service and delivery of your organization.

The events unfolded as follows:

• I placed an order for one Bug Zapper via your online services over two weeks ago.
• I received a receipt twice via email shortly after payment.
• I received a postal tracking number earlier this week.
• I was only contacted on Monday the 4th of December to be informed that the transaction did not occur. The salesperson assured me that he would fix the problem on the system .
• Today I followed-up delivery with the postal service, after tracing my parcel with the tracking number , I found that it is on it ’s way back to Cape Town! I was told that the parcel was not marked clearly as to the delivery address.

Your website states clearly that delivery is 3 to 4 days, this information is false and should be corrected. I deal with customer on a daily basis and try to adhere to the dates I set for delivery.

It is unpleasant to receive complaints from customers when their goods are not delivered on time, I do however rectify the problem and put measures in place so as for it not occur again.

I await your reply and a solution to this dilemma.

We called the writer and are sending him another Bug Zapper on overnight delivery regardless of what happens to the first delivery - and we’re throwing in an extra zapper to ease the pain. We want to be known for great service and delivery, so something like this makes us wanna reach for a bottle of Jack.

We had a nice bunch of orders to get out today - you can see we didn’t quite get the knack of crease free stickers first time round, but hey, we’re new at this.

Also, we always liked the white nylon stuff that was wrapped around all our Kalahari.net deliveries; it sends a message that the goods are securely packaged. Does anyone know what this stuff is called? We didn’t and after quite a bit of calling around we managed to get to the bottom of it. You heard it here first - its called Strapping and it comes in 2 kilometer rolls. You don’t need any fancy machines (they are available, but at a cost); just a bag of buckles. Its takes a bit of working out, but once you’ve got it you should be on your way.

.

Last Friday we sent out a semi-unsolicated e-mail to everyone who has purchased a Bug Zapper up until now. I say unsoliciated because when people make a purchase on our site we don't specifically ask if we can e-mail them in the future, but our newsletter sending company (www.campaignmonitor.com) suggest that it is OK to e-mail someone who has bought a product from your company in the last 2 years, as long as you give them the option of unsubscribing permanently. Here is what the e-mail said:

Hi [firstname]

Recently you purchased a Bug Zapper from our site. I trust that it is coming in handy as fly and mosquito season arrives with full force! We thought you might be interested in an end-of-year promotion that we’re running from now until the 14th of December - buy 3 or more Bug Zappers for R99 each, including delivery. The usual price is R120 per racket, including delivery. We’re not in the habit of e-mailing customers out of the blue (and if you never want to hear from us again regarding Bug Zappers, click on the link at the very bottom of this e-mail), but this special is only available to people who have purchased a racket from us before. We think the Bug Zapper makes the perfect Christmas gift for all ages, and particularly for those tricky uncles and brothers-in-law that seem to have everything already. You can order now, pay by credit card or bank transfer, and have the rackets delivered to you with plenty of time to wrap them up. Delivery usually takes around 3 to 5 days, anywhere in South Africa.

If you are interested, click on this link: http://www.bugzapper.co.za/order.htm Remember to use your e-mail address ([email]) as the promotional code, and this special price is only available for 3 or more rackets ordered at one time. We hope December treats you well!

Kind Regards,
Brad Price
orders@livealchemy.com Live Alchemy Orders:
www.BugZapper.co.za – Bug zapping racket
www.FlagKit.co.za – Flags to your door
www.YuppieChef.co.za – Kitchen gadgets and tips
Click here to never hear from us again regarding special offers.

The e-mail went out to 250 people, and so far (4 days later) 6 people have taken up the offer, with a total of 26 Bug Zappers between them. That's a 2.4% response rate, which isn't bad for direct mail, but I was hoping for around 10%. It was certainly a profitable exercise, and it obviously didn't annoy too many people seeing as only 3 people unsubscribed. An interesting side affect is that about 35 people clicked through to the YuppieChef, FlagKit and RatZapper from the links that we included in our signature. We are definitely going to explore cross-site marketing opportunities in the future. A voucher to YuppieChef for everyone who buys a Bug Zapper?

We had known for sometime that our packaging for Flag Kit needed some serious attention. Up until now, flags were delivered to our customers packaged in very unexciting clear plastic bags. Not that remarkable! We wanted to WOW the client with a clever packaging idea; something fun and non flag related that has word-of-mouth potential. So off to the drawing board we went.

Flag Kit is about quality flags delivered to your door - we came up with the idea of flags packaged in pizza boxes delivered to your door on time and piping hot! We had some labels printed with a 100% Fresh concept. This is our first freshly packaged flag, ready to go.