Business and Rankings

What are “rankings”? Well, that’s the measure by the Internet search engines as to the “importance” of our web site or more specifically, our web pages. Search engines automatically go through our web site (and everyone elses) and parse through our pictures and text and decide through a very top-secret method (algorithm) how important our web site is to people who are looking for our products. If the search engines deem us worthy enough, they’ll list us high in their search results. If they do not deem us worthy (or less worthy than our competitors), they will not list us high. But that’s all boring stuff.

Yesterday and today I have been checking our rankings and positionings in the search engine results. There are 5 different search engines we concentrate on and when compared to how our two major competitors are doing, we have left them far behind. We were notified a couple of months ago that we were number one from our manufacturers and now we find that we are number one among our competitors. The jury is still out on whether we have another competitor to worry about coming up the ranks behind us but so far as I can tell, Water Value Company is number one (for the time being). So being number one means you have all those other guys nipping at your heals so to speak, and with some time there is a good chance they’ll catch up, but for the time being, it sure feels good!

How did we do this? There are multiple factors involved but for the most part, we treat our customers right. We have the best prices for most of the US made water treatment equipment, filters, testing kits and devices for the most part. And on the few products where we are not the lowest priced, we are only off by a few percent or less. It’s our determination to provide the best value for our customers that has finally shown results.

Many water treatment web sites out there will list their products and hype them up along with posting a decent price (far below retail), but what they fail to do is put themselves in their customer’s shoes. People, if the price sounds too good to be true then it probably is. If the claims made cannot be backed up by any other source, then they are probably false. And if the company cannot provide its customers with technical help and advice along with warranty support AFTER the sale, then they are not going to make it in this market.

There, if you’re a competitor and you’re reading this, you now know our “secret”.

New TDS Meter

What a busy weekend for water treatment equipment! Oh, at it was a great weekend for winter time in Michigan, over 50 degrees on Saturday! That’s very uncharacteristic for this area at this time of year. We are normally slipping around on ice and wading through snow. I’m thankful for this mild (so far) winter we’re having.

Oh, the EZ TDS meter by HM Digital is a fantastic new product designed with the casual residential user in mind. It’s inexpensive and as the name implies, easy to use. We have been using our sample model for a couple of months now, multiple times daily without failure or inaccuracy. These things are pretty nice. Check out this week’s Water Weekly for more specific information or go right to the EZ TDS meter page.

No end in sight for the Fleck 7000 softener sale. So long as sales volumes keep up for this high flow-rate system, we can keep selling them for less. Compare our prices.

We will be altering some networking this week but nobody expects any downtime because of it. Some of the emails this weekend might have been delayed a few hours but that should not have caused any trouble. We’re upgrading a few of our computers so system backups were required.

Have a great 2007 everybody and thanks for your support!

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Phone

Well, not funny really, just a bit odd.

The amount of orders we projected for last week turned out to be lower than the actual orders that came in. What makes this suprising was the fact that we had very little phone support for the entire week. There were no orders placed over the phone at all, they all came directly from the web site which leads me to believe that perhaps we can do without that highest of all overhead expense, the telephone.

Naw, we’ll keep it going. Most of our competitors have a toll-free phone number posted, but they don’t seem to answer it. How do I know? Because I call them constantly and I have yet to reach anything other than a recording. There is one exception but he does his  business over a cell phone and I can’t stand those things. At least he does answer though.

We answer ours anytime a call comes in and I or Jared are not on the phone with people asking questions. But I have heard from people who have called us and were not able to get a human to answer. Instead of leaving a message, they try back later. Because I can personally attest to being on the phone more than 90% of the time, I would imagine it to get frustrating for someone determined to hear a human voice. They would need to call several times to reach us at just the right moment, but it does happen.

I know it seems like I go on and on about the telephone here but it is our largest overhead expense and if that expense could somehow be removed, our costs would be lower which would save our customers money. On the other hand, I do realize the need for telephone support, but perhaps we could somehow reduce the amount of time each phone call lasts. Right now we are around 30 minutes per call and that seems excessive, but most of the questions being asked are legitimate. However, the answers to almost 100% of those questions can be found on the web site.

On another subject, we are pretty excited about the new Tomlinson designer faucets we started carrying. They have been selling in higher quantities than predicted and the two test faucets we were given have survived the abuse we subjected them to, plus they look good! Check them out on the web site under the reverse osmosis parts section.

Have a Happy New Year!