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According to business success strategist Philip Humbert, it’s none of those. Read on.

Strictly Business: The Purpose of Business

I hear lots of discussion about purpose and mission statements for business. Some tell me the purpose of any business is to make a profit. Others focus on the quality of the product or on teamwork and morale. Obviously, all of that is wonderful and to some extent necessary. But it misses the point.

The purpose of every business is to serve a satisfied customer. Period.

In the end, satisfied customers create the profits. Satisfied customers create repeat business, which is vastly more profitable than finding a new customer for every transaction. Satisfied customers allow for pride, satisfaction and the constant improvement of our goods and services. Only satisfied customers will ultimately keep the doors open and allow the business to “work.”

Sure, a great marketing plan is desirable. Of course, making a profit is necessary over time.

But in the end, only satisfied customers make everything else possible.

So, what are your customers really looking for? What benefit or convenience, what quality or experience is most vital to them? Ask them! Let your customers tell you what makes your business special. Let them tell you how and why you stand out from your competition. Let them tell you why they buy from you and keep coming back.

Too often, business leaders spend too much time examining details when a simple lunch or phone call to your best customers could tell you precisely how to grow the business. In the end, systems and business plans, tools and equipment are good, but only to the degree that your customers are smiling. Everything else is detail.

Copyright 2008, All rights reserved. Philip Humbert.

Contact him at www.philiphumbert.com or Coach@philiphumbert.com. Sign up for his free TIPS e-newsletter.

An effective Web site follows design, content and usability principles that focus on the site’s visitors. You want to make information easy to find and easy to understand. You want to make it easy for visitors to take action, whether that action is to contact you, engage in a conversation, buy a product online, or simply to smile.

To remain an effective means of communication, most Web sites require proper care and feeding. And not just any old tinkering around. The key is to base the TLC primarily on what your site visitors need.

It doesn’t matter if you’re bored with the colors or other visual design elements. It doesn’t matter what Technology Tom says you gotta have. It doesn’t matter what Artsy-Fartsy Fara thinks would look fabulous. If it doesn’t enhance or support your communication with your target audience, forget it.

Gerry McGovern addresses this issue in his New Thinking article, Resist Redesign:

Redesign is classic organization-centric thinking. It rarely has much to do with making things better for the customer.

Your website isn’t working. What should you do? Well, how about finding out why it isn’t working and fix that. But let me tell you this, the problem with your website has rarely anything to do with its graphical design.

Your website is working. But it’s four years old. What should you do? Leave it alone. Or focus on making it work even better. But let me tell you this, making it work better has rarely anything to do with its graphical design.

Organizations love projects. You get a budget and a launch date. You can get busy and look like you’re working really hard. Some web teams love website redesign projects. It’s fun. They get to go to lots of meetings and talk about graphics and colors, and to extol about how bored they are with the old design.

But usually it’s not the web team that wants the redesign. Rather, it’s some marketing manager. Or some senior executive in communications who has had a golf course conversation about the Web. Or some newly appointed manager desperate to reinvent the wheel.

Great websites are not redesigned. They are continuously improved. The website that gets some new budget every couple of years for a redesign is the website that is being managed like a brochure. In other words, it’s not being managed.

Keep reading…

The PayPal shopping cart is easy to use as well, but its features are sparse. Very sparse. I wanted an e-commerce solution that has features such as product management and newsletters. I installed Zen Cart, but it was overkill for my needs. Just when I thought I’d have to settle for the PayPal shopping cart, I discovered E-junkie.

You can sell physical products and digital downloads, set up an affiliate program, send updates and newsletters to any buyer group, and much more.

And how cool is their logo? I kinda like having the blinking thing there, watching over me as I work.

I also enjoy learning foreign languages. I studied Spanish in high school, and I lived in Spain for several months while in college. (I ran with the bulls in Ceuta, and I have gouge marks to prove it.) I’ve taken a couple of French and Italian courses, and I learned a smattering of Thai and Mien while teaching English in a Laotion refugee camp in Thailand.

Why am I talking about this?

Well, I just read an interesting article by Jerry Bader, “Web Content: It’s All About the Why.” For some odd reason (too much caffeine this morning?), my brain translated the word “why” into Spanish and French. I wanted to know how to say it in Thai, so I started googling around for an online translator.

You know how it goes. One thing leads to another, and before you know it, you land on a really cool site such as the International Dialects of English Archive referenced above.

I still haven’t answered the question. Why, oh why, am I talking about accents, dialects, foreign languages, and getting gouged in Spain?

See if you can guess.

[guessing]

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[guessing]

…

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[guessing]

…

Here’s why:

Simply to tell a story. Why? Read Jerry’s article.

Almost everyone has heard about social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, blogging tools and platforms such as WordPress and Blogger, video sharing site YouTube, virtual worlds such as Second Life, and, of course, good old email programs. All of that is what is called social media.

I like the way Cory Treffiletti in today’s post on OnlineSpin breaks social media into four main categories:

• Social Networks
• Social Applications
• Citizen Journalism
• Virtual Worlds

As many are fond of saying, it ain’t rocket science unless it’s rocket science. You can understand just about anything once you learn the lingo.

Words are the building blocks of every website. But then, words are the building blocks of modern civilization.

Presidential candidate, Barack Obama, was recently accused of being all words and no action, of being lots of rhetoric and little substance. Here’s how he replied:

“Don’t tell me words don’t matter. ‘I have a dream.’ Just words? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ Just words? ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself’ -just words? Just speeches?’ (Obama plagiarized his friend, Deval Patrick, for these lines, but that’s not the topic of this piece.)

Words matter. They always have. They always will. On the Web, words matter even more. The right words.

The problem is that there are lots and lots of words. For your website, there are a small set of words that really matter, and then there are an awful lot of words that don’t.

How do you judge if a particular word matters or not? You don’t. It’s not for you to judge. It’s for your customers to judge. Customers are highly impatient. They search and scan a page quickly, looking for their right words.

You might want to communicate about “climate change”, but if customers are searching for “global warming”, you’re out of luck. You may have “tight” jeans for sale but if customers prefer “skinny” jeans, you’re out of luck. You might have great “low fares” but if customers want “cheap flights”, you’re out of luck.

If you want to design a new website, the first thing you should decide on is the words. Not the graphical design, not the software. No. The words must come first. Once you get the words right, you are half-way there.

But the words don’t come first, do they? Most websites are driven from a technical or graphical design perspective. The words are hardly even considered. The people who wrote the words were brought in late on in the process and asked to fill in an already agreed-upon structure and design with some words.

Words are simply not respected. Does it really matter if it’s:

“Buy” or “Buy Now”
“More information” or “Request a demo”
“Find a dealer” or “Buy: shop locator”
“Login” or “Logon”
“Fleet” or “Vehicles”

It does. It really does matter. It matters hugely. It matters enormously. I have seen situations where sales have been doubled by changing a couple of words. (Nothing else on the website was changed.)

In most web teams people who work with words get very little respect. But if you work with words, you are literally sitting on a goldmine. The problem is you are selling it like a coalmine.

Most web writers think that their job is about writing articles. But it must be much broader and deeper than that. What is the navigation of the website made up of? Words. What are the links on the website made up of? Words. What are the applications on the website made up of? Words.

Nothing can work on the Web without written words. No page. No link. No classification, navigation or menu. No application or software. Nothing.

Source

Content management solutions: Gerry McGovern
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com

Subscribe to his New Thinking newsletter: subscribe@gerrymcgovern.mailer1.net

Not.

I just received an email from Jim Morris, Founder of NicheBOT.com. NicheBot provides keyword research tools. He writes:

I receive questions all the time that ask me how to find a profitable niche market or how to conduct market research and which tool to use.

And you know what?

Most webmasters and online business owners go about it all wrong.

My answers may be shocking to hear, but it’s the truth.

In this most recent article, I reveal how keyword research falls flat on its face when it comes to market research.

I also discuss why more and more keyword professionals are now turning to one keyword engine to find out about true keyword popularity.

Then, I discuss the true indicators of how to conduct real, nitty-gritty market research.

I read the article and, yes, I am shocked that this advice comes from someone who makes his living selling keyword research tools!

Read his blog post, Market Research (or finding a profitable niche market) has NOTHING to do with Keyword Research!

Here’s the bottom line:

So what we have here, in a controversial example, is a lesson in buzz creation and SEO. This campaign was highly targeted and highly specific. From the SEO standpoint we can confirm:

• Links are crazy important for higher rankings
• Anchor text matters
• Content matters
• Keyword density matters
• Link authority matters
• Timeliness matters
• Generating buzz via social media matters

It also means that a tightly integrated, holistic campaign can make an impact, as utilization of collective media produce a mass effect the search engines (in their current configuration) can’t ignore.

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But I’ve noticed that some of the businesses that closed were not just victims of a poor economy. Quite frankly, they were already on the brink. One of the biggest reasons is that they did not provide value to their clients. Or, tragically, they were able to provide value, but for whatever reason they did not communicate their value propositions to potential clients.

In a down economy, people will be looking harder for cost-effective solutions to their problems and challenges. Businesses that can clearly demonstrate and communicate how they can provide these solutions will be in much better shape for riding out the economic storm.

Success in business is always about providing value — not matter what is going on in the economy. Always provide value, and always communicate how you do that!

To learn more, see Tom Sant’s blog post, Secrets to selling in a slow economy.