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I've been telling my clients for a while now that sites like Groupon and Google Offers weren't going to be good for the long term growth of their businesses. Now the NYTimes has confirmed it.

Most businesses want to create relationships with their customers and provide them with a high level of service. That would allow them to earn enough money over the lifetime of their relationships with those clients to support that high level of service.

"Deal" sites, however, are drawing in the type of customers my clients don't really want–and worse, they are training those clients to be loyal only to the next deal.

Furthermore, "deal" customers tend to be very fickle and are more likely to post a tepid or negative review on sites like Yelp.

Before worrying about Yelp, Google Places or any other website that has user reviews, you should be finding out what your customers or clients think about you.

I do this with an 'end of project' questionnaire which has a range of questions that covers all of the services we provide. It's designed with two goals in mind:

First, I want feedback from my clients on where they think we could use improvement and where they think we excelled. I really take their feedback to heart and implement better practices where necessary.

That's how I finish proposals I've written for website projects.

"You will get cheaper bids. I guarantee it."

I want my potential clients to know that I know that my bid will probably be the highest they receive.

But that's fine. My clients don't come to me for bargains.

They come to me for outstanding results in all phases of their project including website design, website development, programming, website copywriting, system architecture, testing, debugging and internet marketing.

We build complex websites and that demands a team of seasoned professionals. And guess what? Those very talented people are highly compensated.

When you meet people, do you say "I cut corners" or "I don't really care to look my best" or "I might not look professional, but I actually am?"

Of course not.

The other day I was talking to a lawyer who was impeccably dressed in a fancy suit and seemed very well spoken. I was thinking that I would hire him if I ever needed help in one of the areas he specialized in.

When I got back to my office, I took a look at his website...and was really disappointed.

It looked like it was done by a high-schooler (maybe it was). Even worse, it looked like it was done by an untalented high-schooler. The design was poor and the content was riddled with typos.

I just received a phone call and pretty much the first thing this person asked was "How much does a website cost?"

That's like calling an auto dealer and asking "How much does a vehicle cost?"

Well do you need a sport car, compact or SUV? Or maybe you need a tractor trailer?

What other features do you need for you car?

Do you live somewhere with inclement weather? Will 4-wheel drive be required?

Do you travel a lot? How important is gas mileage? Do you need a roof rack? 

You get the idea.

I received a call today from a potential client. They needed a few things fixed on their website and hadn't been able to get any kind of response from their agency.

My first thought was that maybe they were a "problem" client who complains about everything while not paying for anything.

Then he told me that they had spent $50,000 on their website and were not able to get simple things fixed in 6 months! "Did you say you spent $5,000 on your website?" I asked. He repeated "$50,000."

Wow. $50,000 for a website and you can't get service or even courtesy.

What's up with that?

I was speaking to an architect last week about how his SEO guy promised to get him top position on Google.

"That's amazing," I said.

"What about the other 10,000 SEO guys who are promising the same thing to their architect clients? How can they all promise their clients the top position?"

Recently, we started asking our new clients to fill out a questionnaire about our sales process.

We ask about what we did that was good; what we did that could use improvement; how we could make the complicated process of buying an advanced website easier.

I was surprised by the consistency of answers given our clients' wide range of industries and experience.

"Was there a sales process?"
Almost to a man, the answers we received back were "we liked that there was no sales pitch."

I've been selling and marketing things for a long time, so there is a process, but it wasn't until I started getting this feedback that I really took a moment to think about it.

It was clear that our clients aren't buying a website (but they don't know it; at least, not yet).

I have a huge network and the privilege of knowing some of the best people that you would ever want to meet. They are great at what they do; they take very good care of their clients. In general, they are just good people.

Yet when it comes to the ethics of email marketing, some of them have fallen prey to the dark side of the force.

How?

Recently, the NY Times had a tech article saying email-based sites are dying as we move towards more informal, faster means of communication like texting and IMing.

Still, I know many of you are continuing to use email for the bulk of your daily business correspondences, and that's why I'd like to talk about simple email etiquette and best practices.

Let's start with some basics:

Email Subjects
I get so much email from people with a subject that doesn't really describe the content of the email or worse: no subject at all. We're all busy, and it's extremely helpful when I'm scanning a long list of email to be able to pick out the one I need. If you don't want to write a good subject for me, do it for selfish reasons, because a compelling subject line virtually ensures your email will be read.