It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been busy travelling and trying to get on top of things since I got back. Part of my travels included the Internet Retailer show in Chicago. We went to this show last year and it was great. This year it was best show we’ve ever had.
One of the main reasons the show worked so well for us was we had a lot of happy customers at the show – including the show organizers (have you noticed a better search on the internet retailer site?). The most prominent of our customers was David Patterson from Edwin Watts who said some good things about us in the workshop on site search. I’ll post a copy of his presentation on the blog once I get it.
As a result of this and a lot of other work we were extremely busy on our booth. We had 7 hard working people from SLI there and at times we couldn’t keep up. Now we’re busy following up and building search for a lot of retailers. At the next show we hope to have lots more happy customers.
One of the things this show drove home to me was the importance of keeping our existing customers happy. Not only do we get rewarded through their continued business – but they’ll tell others about their experience with us which helps generate new business. At SLI we’ve always had the rule that requests from customers take precedence over anything else. We include prospects that have taken up our offer of a free trial in that group because once they’re trialling we’re providing a vital service to their users.
The show was a lot of fun. It was well organized and the retailers that attended are an amazingly positive bunch of people. I’m looking forward to the next one.
