Giving away your product or service can help grow your user base, however, you must be cautious in how you change your pricing structure after you have people relying on you.

If you’re even thinking about using “free” to attract customers, you need to read Chris Anderson’s book Free.

Additionally, you need to keep in mind that once something is free, people will expect it to be free forever. When you change the pricing scheme, your “customers” will be mad.

For a couple of years, I had used an online service to make sure my websites were up and running. This service was free and served my needs.

One day, without warning, I got an email that they were changing the free plan to only allow three websites to be monitored.

Uh oh.

I had twelve sites monitored by this service.

They said in the email that if I had more than three, then only three would be monitored.

Unfortunately, the website didn’t clearly show which three were still being monitored.

Instead of paying, which I assume was their plan, I jumped to another service which is still free.

This alternative service, mon.itor.us, makes money by showing ads and having a premium service to support their free accounts. Apparently, they had read Anderson’s Free where as the other company had not.

Remember that your current user experience is setting expectations with your users and customers of how things are and should be.

If you make changes and break that expectation unexpectedly, you’ll anger many and lose those that could very well have been nurtured and converted to long-term, paying customers.

If your company has a website (which it should), it would be run a little differently if Santa was in charge.

What do you think would happen if jolly old Saint Nick ran your website and was in charge of your e-commerce efforts?

Perfect Product Recommendations

Since Santa already knows what everyone likes, the website would prominently display what customers are interested in and are most likely to purchase.

This intense personalization of your site’s offerings will drive sales through the roof.

Lesson: What can you do to better adjust your website to the individual people that are using it? One size doesn’t fit all.

Free Overnight Shipping (only Dec 24th)

If Santa was in charge of your website, any order your customers placed on Christmas Eve would arrive the next morning. That may even be faster than Zappos can deliver.

(Of course, if they don’t order that day, they have to wait a year.)

Lesson: Quick delivery builds trust, a delay undermines the customer experience.

Biggest Product Selection

Sorry Amazon, but an online store run by Santa will have more products than can be counted. After all, he is known for meeting the needs of boys and girls with different tastes all over the world.

Lesson: Does your current online store offer enough products to reach the prospective customers that are crossing your path?

Learn from Santa and your e-commerce efforts will be significantly more successful in the coming year.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Your customers and prospects see patterns and expect certain outcomes, if your marketing is the same-old thing people always see, they will assume they know the end result and will ignore your message.

I got an interesting piece of mail the other day that made me stop and think.

The envelope was a loud green color and had large letters on the front that claimed: “This is not Junk Mail”.

Oh, really?

Not junk mail?

Well, what is it then?

I opened the envelope and realized it was junk mail after all: an unsolicited offer for a service I don’t need or use.

While the company was successful in breaking through the noise of competing junk mail, it failed to follow through and deliver something of value to back up its “not junk mail” claim.

If you are to be successful in breaking through the noise of messages being thrown at your prospective customers, you need to break the pattern people are used to seeing.

Follow this pattern break up with something unique and valuable to the prospect, not just the same old message in a pretty new package.

The principles taught by William Edwards Deming helped bring Japan back from the wasteland of World War Two to the industrial and economic power it is today.

If his teachings can help a country recover that was devastated by war, think about what he can do for your business.

Among Deming’s teachings outlined in his book Out of the Crisis are 14 points that were focused on improving manufacturing.

When you apply these principles to your business, they can help optimize your business, improve your profits, and increase your customer loyalty.

What could your business improve if it created, delivered, and lived these points:

• Create a Constancy of Purpose Around your Customer’s needs
• Eliminate Inspection, Build Quality into Product
• Standardize and Train on Methods
• Partner with Like-Minded
• Continuously Improve
• Participative Management
• Drive Out Fear
• Eliminate Boundaries and Barriers between Departments
• Zero Defects
• Partner with the Front-line
• Measure Quality not Quantity
• Measure Inputs, not Solely Outputs
• Elevate the Data Constantly
• Management Must Support the Above

These concepts can be put to use on everything from manufacturing to call center management to how customers purchase your product.

Iterate over these points, one-by-one, and you will improve your business.