Hi! I’m Kelly Erickson, owner and Creative Director of VisionPoints, The Experience Designers. It’s our job to deliver Experience audits and website user testing, strategic positioning, content, and design solutions for your business.
Why?
To make marketing to and connecting with your customers easier than ever before—and to create measurable growth for your company.
We’d love to partner with you to make this the best year ever for your small business, but first…
Got questions? Easy answers about your Experience Design:
• “Do we need this? What can great Customer Experience do for our company?”
• “Does VisionPoints work with startup companies/ entrepreneurs?”
• “What do clients typically come to you for? Do you deal with the issues I’m having?”
• “How will we work together?”
• “Which Solution should I choose?”
• “How do you bill me for my eye-opening Solution?”
• “What if I have questions after I’ve got my finished project in hand?”
• “Where are you located? Can you work on our office/ hotel/ store/ restaurant in East Oshkosh?”
• “Can we call you? How about ‘snail’ mail?”
• “I still have this one, little question.”
“Do we need this? What can great Customer Experience do for our company?”
Glad you asked! Great Customer Experience can help your company grow by driving repeat business and larger sales, creating loyal fans, and encouraging word-of-mouth referrals that lead to more business, to start the cycle again. In short, creating a great Customer Experience—or as we like to say, Maximum Customer Experience—may be the last big edge you have in today’s tight-on-time, tight-on-money economy.
By the way, you’ll notice that this page is filled with links for additional information on many of your top questions (after reading any link, just hit your browser’s “back” button to come right back here and continue reading these Frequently Asked Questions), and here’s the first: a page we created to answer this question in depth, called Do you need Maximum Customer Experience?
“Does VisionPoints work with startup companies/ entrepreneurs?”
Yes. We can help you position your company for success right from opening day. For an in-depth answer to this question, read Shh! Only for startup businesses! But keep it a secret, please. We don’t want established businesses to think we’re only giving you that last big edge!
“What do clients typically come to you for? Do you deal with the issues I’m having?”
Clients come to us for one of two reasons:
Things are changing at their company; or
Things aren’t.
In essence, that’s it. Some companies are growing at a rapid rate and clients want to manage the growth and keep it rolling. Some companies have seen sales stall—and stay stalled, even when it seems that other folks’ sales are picking up.
Some clients are trying to break into new markets or make changes to their customer base. Some are trying to figure out why they’re losing the customers they had, and whether they were ever aimed at the right target in the first place.
Clients may be expecting a move or adding to their products and services, going through a change in their ownership, or trying to decide about shifts like a change in name or website changes.
If it’s time for a change in tactics, it’s time to contact VisionPoints. We’ll help save time, money, and energy, by carefully directing your Customer Experience so you’re able to deliver delight to your customers, every day.
Still curious? Here’s an article I wrote some time ago, dealing with many little things that we get asked (and some that we don’t get asked enough): If you were my client I’d say to you. I should warn you, though—it’s an article full of tough love!
“When can we start?”
You can start right now by thinking about your goals and how your business is currently growing. Gather the information we’ll be digging into: that might be only your web address, or it might include your printed materials and any other marketing or planning information we’ll need to see, depending on the Service that suits your needs. (Rather see your choices in chart form? Click here.)
That way, we’ll be ready from our first conversations to help you Go Where Your VisionPoints.
We require about a one- to two-week lead time before we can schedule your Website Audit, Web Experience Solution, or MicroScope project. After that, you’ll receive your completed project in just 1–2 weeks.
The Pinpoint Positioning Report and complete Experience Design Solution require a slightly longer lead time (2–3 weeks) to get your project onto our schedule. How fast these finished projects are in place depends on complexity: your company’s size, your goals, and the depth of the changes necessary to take your Presence from concept to completion. A small company with smooth approval process and moderate needs, redesigning and redirecting but not starting from scratch, can expect to be finished with the complete Experience Design Solution in as little as three months.
When we schedule your project, we give you an estimated date of delivery—and I’m proud to say we’re often able to deliver early! Just use our contact form to let us know you’re ready to get started.
“How will we work together?”
With VisionPoints’ exclusive services geared toward maximizing your customers’ online Experience, we’ve made working with us as simple as possible for you.
With a full Solution we start by researching your current Experience (“snooping,” or auditing, doing customer/staff/management interviews, competitive analysis, etc.), help restructure your offer if needed, do the content writing and design work, and take the plan through to redesigned interiors, graphics, and a sort of a staff handbook—planning for great customer service. So what used to be a bit better than random is integrated, purposeful, and looks great. Maximum Customer Experience = Repeat customers, loyal fans, and word-of-mouth referrals = More sales. Click these links to see if the Web Experience Solution or the complete Experience Design Solution is for you.
Lots of folks just want to work on one thing. We’re happy to take on just the auditing, research and planning, letting you put the plan to work in your own way, or we’ll design a reworked floorplan, for instance, instead of “let’s do it all.” With the knowledge we gain about your Ideal Customer, we’ve also helped companies to rebrand with a new name, URL (website address) or tagline so their customers catch the vibe they’ve always been trying to send! Click to read about our Website Audit, Pinpoint Report or the small-scope projects we call MicroScopes.
Step-by-step, here’s what to expect:
1. When you’re ready to proceed, you can fill out our simple online form (or click here for other contact methods) to let us know which package to schedule you for. Be sure to include your website’s URL (address) and for local clients, your business’ physical address (store address, for example) so we can get a head start!
You’ll hear from us no later than the close of the following business day. We’ll ask a few questions to clarify your needs, and send an invoice via email when we’ve agreed on the scope of the project. The invoice will arrive at about the same time as an email explaining the steps in your project, so you’ll know you’ve got everything in writing. When we’ve received your payment, agreeing to go forward, we’ll get started like this:
2. You send us as long an email as you’d like, with your business’ name and a little history, your website’s name and URL, your Purpose, your Ideal Customer… anything you want us to know. We keep this part informal so we can get to the heart of how you see your business today.
3. We’ll make our “fresh eyes” assessments, including taking a look at the business with your purpose/ concept in mind, and with a customer’s purpose in mind, sneak around to a couple of similar websites and/or business locations, and work on other strategic research as necessary.
4. Next, we conduct three user tests (both for websites and physical locations), and if appropriate, interview customers and prospective customers, to get perspective from the point of view of potential buyers.
5. You’ll receive our report via email (we’ll save the Earth and skip the postal service), breaking all this information down for you into simple categories:
Part one: Our evaluation
—Concept: Are you nailing it?
—Ideal Customer: Who’s with you and who’s not
—Competition: Where your customers really turn if you can’t grab them and convince them
—Usability/ accessibility: Can we get around, do what you want us to, and give you money or give you contact info
—Design issues: How much we get into design issues depends on the scope of the project we’ve agreed to, but for every project, we will talk aesthetics briefly, especially if it’s getting in the way
—Tweaks: The little details that can add up to big gains for you
Part two: User tests
Part three: Top recommendations for immediate improvements
For the Web Experience Solution, we’ll perform a much more complex audit, and you’ll also receive:
—Rewritten sales process and copy, now working harder for you, with reformulated packages if needed (to sell better and upsell better)
For the Pinpoint Positioning Report, we’ll do an in-depth evaluation of your physical space (interiors), your graphic design (printed & web), and the element most designers leave out—your “people” Experience—customer service!
—Short-term, big-picture, and when-you-get-around-to-it fixes: Your report tells you how to position your company here in the greater Philadelphia/ Delaware Valley area, including recommendations for improving graphics and interiors, and fresh marketing ideas to help you take control of your growth
The complete Experience Design Solution is our full-service Solution—research, focused strategy, and completed content and design work.
—All the benefits of the Pinpoint Report, with completed interiors and graphic design, and a customer service “roadmap” for you and your employees. Eye-opening research and your strategic, integrated design Solution.
6. You’re ready to profit from your new, customer-oriented sales process!
“Which Solution should I choose?”
Our handy Feature-Comparison Chart (where we also sometimes post special offers) explains your choices in a quick, just-the-facts style.
If you prefer to read the details of how Experience Design projects can benefit you and your business, check out our Services page, which also has links to individual pages for each Solution. We’re sure you’ll find the project that’s right for growing your business!
If you still have questions about which Solution is best for your business, just get in touch. We’re always glad to help.
“How do you bill me for my eye-opening Solution?”
It’s hassle-free for you. We’ll invoice you through PayPal after you’ve emailed to let us know you’re ready to proceed. PayPal is a completely secure online service that allows you to pay by credit card or check—choose whatever fits your business’ needs.
For the small-scope, fast-delivery Website Audit and MicroScopes, we accept payment in advance. For the Web Experience Solution and Pinpoint Positioning Report, a 50% deposit is accepted upon agreement; the remaining 50% is due before we deliver your completed solution. Because the complete Experience Design Solution is completely custom for your business and each one varies in complexity, this may be invoiced in several stages. We’ll detail that in our first conversations, when we’ve agreed on your project’s needs.
Email follow-ups for two weeks following delivery (1 month for the Pinpoint Positioning Report and complete Experience Design Solution) are completely free.
“What if I have questions after I’ve got my finished project in hand?”
We ask that you review your Audit or Solution upon delivery, and for two weeks after delivery (1 month for the Pinpoint Positioning Report and complete Experience Design Solution) we’d be glad to answer your questions as you explore and put our recommendations in place.
We’ve never put a cap on how many emails you can send back and forth to clarify, to say “what about this?” or make sure you’re on track as you implement changes. For web-only Solutions, it usually seems to take about two or three emails back and forth, so if it was twenty, we’d probably start to look at you funny. But we’d still be open to it—we want you to be completely satisfied with your Audit or Solution, so you can zoom forward with your revamped Customer Experience.
“Where are you located? Can you work on our office/ hotel/ store/ restaurant in East Oshkosh?”
We’d love to include you in our growing list of international clients. We’re located right in the heart of the Brandywine Valley in sunny Delaware, USA, about 25 minutes from Philadelphia, PA. (Click to read more About Us.) We’ve done Website Audits and Web Experience Solutions for clients all over the world—in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Spain, Australia… perhaps for you, next.
With projects like the Pinpoint Positioning Report and complete Experience Design Solution—integrating in-person and website Experience for traditional “bricks-and-mortar” companies—we prefer to stay East-Coast local—Delaware, eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, New York. We’ve been invited to work on projects as far away as California, but to be quite honest it adds layers of complexity in subcontracting, and travel expenses that make it impractical for most small business owners outside of our region.
Remember, as one of the very few Experience Design firms specializing in small business, we want to help jump-start your growth, so to keep our rates affordable, our “bricks-and-mortar” solutions will suit you best if you’re located in the DE/ PA/ MD/ NJ area—and no matter where you are in the world, we’d love to help you create Maximum website Customer Experience!
“You mention email a lot in these Frequently Asked Questions. Can we call you? How about ‘snail’ mail?”
The great thing about email exchanges is that everything’s in writing all the time. This benefits you—no misunderstandings; it’s easy to see who said what or check on progress quite easily. It’s fast—no waiting for the postal service or playing telephone tag. And yes, it benefits us too. But of course you’re welcome to contact us via phone or regular mail. Click here for other ways to contact VisionPoints.
“I still have this one, little question.”
Sure! If there’s anything else I can answer for you, please use the form below—or feel free to email me personally. If for any reason you can not see that link, the address is kellye (at) visionpoints (dot) net.
Maximize your profits with strategy and design to be in the right place when the right buyer needs you.
Whether you’re a do-it-yourselfer at wits’ end or a busy business owner who wants a full-service solution, we’ve got you covered.
You can deliver an Experience that truly matters to the people who want to buy from you—beyond “branding,” beyond “target markets,” beyond simple interiors and graphic design and buzz words like “Web 2.0.”
You need more customers excited about your product or service. We’ll uncover what you can do right now to change the way your customers think about your business. When they see, clearly and plainly, that you offer the solution they need, they’ll buy. Contact us now and let’s get started!
Best wishes for you and your growing business,
Kelly Erickson
