Just called back, wow, so many replies.
Just at moment to say I am 2 hours behind on emails so cannot type more than this.
I write the website for adults not idiots... that's what I say. Some people find it childish or silly, but most enjoy it. No one died buying a car, so this is not life and death. Cars should be fun.
Just my opinion but you have to polarise people a bit, you will never win all customers so you may as well go for target market. Mine is ABC1/2 with some good attitude, sense of humour and optimistic outlook. I can't afford to have 100 moaning minnies waiting for cars. Cars go wrong and dealers can be unreliable so people have to be flexible. So I don't want misery guts.
That's the main reason i try to attract my kind of customers. i hope ultra-sensible types witll go and moan relentlessly at someone else
- Ling
Just at moment to say I am 2 hours behind on emails so cannot type more than this.
I write the website for adults not idiots... that's what I say. Some people find it childish or silly, but most enjoy it. No one died buying a car, so this is not life and death. Cars should be fun.
Just my opinion but you have to polarise people a bit, you will never win all customers so you may as well go for target market. Mine is ABC1/2 with some good attitude, sense of humour and optimistic outlook. I can't afford to have 100 moaning minnies waiting for cars. Cars go wrong and dealers can be unreliable so people have to be flexible. So I don't want misery guts.
That's the main reason i try to attract my kind of customers. i hope ultra-sensible types witll go and moan relentlessly at someone else
- Ling
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0
Just called back, wow, so many replies.
Just at moment to say I am 2 hours behind on emails so cannot type more than this.
I write the website for adults not idiots... that's what I say. Some people find it childish or silly, but most enjoy it. No one died buying a car, so this is not life and death. Cars should be fun.
Just my opinion but you have to polarise people a bit, you will never win all customers so you may as well go for target market. Mine is ABC1/2 with some good attitude, sense of humour and optimistic outlook. I can't afford to have 100 moaning minnies waiting for cars. Cars go wrong and dealers can be unreliable so people have to be flexible. So I don't want misery guts.
That's the main reason i try to attract my kind of customers. i hope ultra-sensible types witll go and moan relentlessly at someone else
- Ling
Ling you are a woman after my own heart, I, too, would like to get rid of hard work customers.
Your site and ethos are an inspiration to me. Thank gawd I didn't say anything nasty about your site like I usually do about websites. Phew.
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So your original reaction was a bit premature then
Well I still think the design is awful but the website content is pretty good.
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Hahahah, you will soon love to hate me!
You know, i post on Automotive Management forum wwwDOTam-onlineDOTcoDOTuk (bloody forum won't let me say URLs), and they HATE my guts. Because I expose a lot of overcharging and methods. The car industry hate me. Except the few suppliers I have. They think only a franchise dealer should sell a brand of cars; imagine having a Heinz Beans shop, and not having them available anywhere else.
But I like people like Martin Lewis, my view is customer is the boss. But I am quick to tell customers if they are unreasonable.
My view on websites... I wrote a I page article for the North East Directory, I cannot link to it so I'll paste it into a post below. Pleeeease don't anyone say I'm posting to spam, i just don't want to retype it all in replies. But I do often wonder why websites have defaulted to a fairly standard format. Most make me slash my wrists. Pls read below. If you don't want it there, I'll remove it.
- Ling
You know, i post on Automotive Management forum wwwDOTam-onlineDOTcoDOTuk (bloody forum won't let me say URLs), and they HATE my guts. Because I expose a lot of overcharging and methods. The car industry hate me. Except the few suppliers I have. They think only a franchise dealer should sell a brand of cars; imagine having a Heinz Beans shop, and not having them available anywhere else.
But I like people like Martin Lewis, my view is customer is the boss. But I am quick to tell customers if they are unreasonable.
My view on websites... I wrote a I page article for the North East Directory, I cannot link to it so I'll paste it into a post below. Pleeeease don't anyone say I'm posting to spam, i just don't want to retype it all in replies. But I do often wonder why websites have defaulted to a fairly standard format. Most make me slash my wrists. Pls read below. If you don't want it there, I'll remove it.
- Ling
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My Article in Directory 2007: - Ling
I'M Ling and I work from the Internet, I even live inside my website. Most business websites are terrible. Boring and useless.
I say that a website should be constantly organic - be alive, fluid, evolving and most of all, have a personality. If not, then it's dead.
Building a website is one of the easiest skills in the world to learn. You can copy source code from any website. It's free! Simply add content and stir.
I maintain my website myself, minute-by-minute. Certainly in my own industry, my website is head and shoulders above any other car sales website. That's because I feed it all the time, like a pet spider. It is never finished, and never perfect - but everything works and I never upload bland rubbish. Every day it changes.
The best way to create a successful website is to make it entertaining, useful and accurate. And the best way to do that is to work from it, yourself - because if you can use it, then your customers can.
If your stock or data database is supplying your website with information (it should be), then work from your website. Make your website your business access point, for everyone. Your staff should find prices or availability from your website and use it for communication with customers. A website is simply a useless and boring sales brochure unless you can do something with it. And websites are SO cheap!
For example; my customers can browse live car deals on my website and get a live RSS feed, (that's where I check my own figures and work from) so it's always 100% accurate and up to date. 99 out of 100 of other websites in the world contain old static information. Plus, they are boring.
My website LINGsCARS.com gets around 50,000 unique visitors every single month, and many of those interact with me by text chatting as they browse. I monitor the website, constantly. Customers ask questions and it's a wonderful feeling to be chatting as they browse my website. Using this technology I can also "push" them to pages they might otherwise not see, and close them by answering queries.
You want website ideas? Well, stop patronising. I treat customers like adults, not idiots - but that doesn't mean we can't have fun while they look at my car deals! There's a series of "Chop Gear" spoof movies, roadtesting new cars and freely available. I offer free lunch to 10 visitors every day and send them noodle with chopsticks, Chinese Nescafé and a small pudding. They apply online, and this is very popular, even with high-rollers and company directors. As is my "Free Money" promotion - I post out Chinese Yuan banknotes and Chinese Polo mints to applicants... where else can you get those?
If website visitors enjoy playing my quiz and reading my blog (a blog is SO important for Google to index), then they can send me poetry. I publish it online and send them a genuine 1960s Mao's Little Red Book as a reward. Many businesses would kill to get this much customer participation. My visitors spend up to one hour browsing my website, and still they can't "do" it all. Eventually, they may even have a car from me!
A great idea is to publish every customer letter you get. Visitors can browse over 450 customer letters on my website as well as 100 press articles. Wow! I often wonder why every business does not allow this kind of access to information?
So go ahead; kill your old static website, grab a lively student, give them £500 and tell them to get on with it. Stop using these flashy corporate web firms. You'll be extremely happy with your customer's opinions of the results! They don't want perfection; they want a useful and entertaining time.
All this web activity takes time but it's fun and it pays off. I rent more than £1.5m worth of new cars every month.
I'M Ling and I work from the Internet, I even live inside my website. Most business websites are terrible. Boring and useless.
I say that a website should be constantly organic - be alive, fluid, evolving and most of all, have a personality. If not, then it's dead.
Building a website is one of the easiest skills in the world to learn. You can copy source code from any website. It's free! Simply add content and stir.
I maintain my website myself, minute-by-minute. Certainly in my own industry, my website is head and shoulders above any other car sales website. That's because I feed it all the time, like a pet spider. It is never finished, and never perfect - but everything works and I never upload bland rubbish. Every day it changes.
The best way to create a successful website is to make it entertaining, useful and accurate. And the best way to do that is to work from it, yourself - because if you can use it, then your customers can.
If your stock or data database is supplying your website with information (it should be), then work from your website. Make your website your business access point, for everyone. Your staff should find prices or availability from your website and use it for communication with customers. A website is simply a useless and boring sales brochure unless you can do something with it. And websites are SO cheap!
For example; my customers can browse live car deals on my website and get a live RSS feed, (that's where I check my own figures and work from) so it's always 100% accurate and up to date. 99 out of 100 of other websites in the world contain old static information. Plus, they are boring.
My website LINGsCARS.com gets around 50,000 unique visitors every single month, and many of those interact with me by text chatting as they browse. I monitor the website, constantly. Customers ask questions and it's a wonderful feeling to be chatting as they browse my website. Using this technology I can also "push" them to pages they might otherwise not see, and close them by answering queries.
You want website ideas? Well, stop patronising. I treat customers like adults, not idiots - but that doesn't mean we can't have fun while they look at my car deals! There's a series of "Chop Gear" spoof movies, roadtesting new cars and freely available. I offer free lunch to 10 visitors every day and send them noodle with chopsticks, Chinese Nescafé and a small pudding. They apply online, and this is very popular, even with high-rollers and company directors. As is my "Free Money" promotion - I post out Chinese Yuan banknotes and Chinese Polo mints to applicants... where else can you get those?
If website visitors enjoy playing my quiz and reading my blog (a blog is SO important for Google to index), then they can send me poetry. I publish it online and send them a genuine 1960s Mao's Little Red Book as a reward. Many businesses would kill to get this much customer participation. My visitors spend up to one hour browsing my website, and still they can't "do" it all. Eventually, they may even have a car from me!
A great idea is to publish every customer letter you get. Visitors can browse over 450 customer letters on my website as well as 100 press articles. Wow! I often wonder why every business does not allow this kind of access to information?
So go ahead; kill your old static website, grab a lively student, give them £500 and tell them to get on with it. Stop using these flashy corporate web firms. You'll be extremely happy with your customer's opinions of the results! They don't want perfection; they want a useful and entertaining time.
All this web activity takes time but it's fun and it pays off. I rent more than £1.5m worth of new cars every month.
Upvote
0
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J
JustOneUK
- Original Poster
- #61
Looks like the official Ling Fan Club has just been launched
HEH, I stumbled upon the site about 18 months ago, it was a mess then!
I have to be honest I was going to watch the footie until I called out to the missus, "holy s***, it's Ling"
"Who the f*** is Ling?" came the reply.
When I told her that the Dragons would definately put up the money, it became quite interesting. The problem is who wants to sell that high a % of something that is already a success?
Good for her not selling out, but then again I think it was more a marketing move just to get some traffic to her site, she neither wanted or needed the money. Get £50k for 5% with a couple of dragons on board and your a winner, walk out on the Dragons (who should research these things) and your a winner too.
The only thing that interests me... what's the competition like for this sector?
James.
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I like Bulldog's comment about 'anti-brand'.
It's a similar market approach to that taken (albeit in different eras, different industries and different technologies) with Easyjet, Virgin in the early days and (dare I say) even Apple and Amazon (and arguably Microsoft) when they all started. Their 'anti-brand' approaches rapidly became brands and immitated brands - so it will be interesting to see whether this 'going against the established flow' tactic progresses with web sites.
Thoughts anyone?
It's a similar market approach to that taken (albeit in different eras, different industries and different technologies) with Easyjet, Virgin in the early days and (dare I say) even Apple and Amazon (and arguably Microsoft) when they all started. Their 'anti-brand' approaches rapidly became brands and immitated brands - so it will be interesting to see whether this 'going against the established flow' tactic progresses with web sites.
Thoughts anyone?
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Stephen and Bulldog...
Well, I must say I do work with my husband Jon (he is back end of pantomime horse) but he also has other interests (shareholding in car supermarket - nothing to do with me). We decide the brand together.
I think you are both quite right. Really my brand is still evolving. This ties into an earlier post which asked "what's the competition like in this sector?".
Actually damn heavy! There is a portal site at wwwDOTcontracthireandleasingDOTcom and if you look there you will see dozens of contract hire businesses posting/advertising. That portal makes A FORTUNE for the guy who owns it. I pay £1250 a month +VAT to advertise, and it pays me back.
But most of the competition run terrible websites (they are not really online businesses, they are normal businesses with websites.) They all post phone numbers, for example. A dead giveaway.
They trade under ambiguous titles like "ABC Leasing" or "Highway Leasing". Makes me wonder: "Who runs these companies?". So, back to the brand: I decided to use me, as I have a USP in the motor industry. It was Chinese Bird, it has developed into Mental Chinese Bird
Just digressing I will say the rest of the Motor Industry HATE this. They cannot fight against it, if they attack me it may be seen as racist/sexist/David-Goliathy, they cannot duplicate it, I have just hit a nail on the head, by accident of birth. In private on industry message boards they are vicious and spiteful. In public they do things like contact MD of Mazda and get me blacklisted because I am marketing their cars "too cheap" - says local dealer. I cannot get Mazdas officially now, have to go through back doors. This may be illegal practice but goes on all the time and no one will admit these secret lists exist....Back to post:
I mean, everyone is a BIT mad, eh? Plus we can have fun with it, and it excuses mistakes. The rocket truck was an inspired idea, and I just don't know where that came from... the London Bus was more considered - I wanted to sponsor some events (at the moment Rallycross Championship) and needed a display stand. Every one I looked at was more than the bus.
Look, I am not a guru, wise person or leader here... I (we with hubby Jon) just risk some cash and think "what the hell". I am way behind most on business skills. However, I know my industry is actually very little about the cars - that is something that 99% of the others miss.
Like Virgin airline, I just WANT to fly Virgin rather than BA or China Soutwest or KLM. I'm not sure why, nothing to do with the planes... or really the service. Just rather give my money to RB, even though I know he doesn't own all of Virgin Atlantic.
Does this make sense?
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Ian,
Yes they have. About 6 people. I am really undecided. Truth being, I don't actually need cash as long as I avoid the traditional marketing (£000000's advertising) route.
Also, I must be careful about growth; no good flooding myself with business and bogging down (she says after DD
).I have found a BSc student from Sunderland Uni, a php/mysql/ajax/web whizz who is part time employed at £10/hour (for quality) and is recoding my site. So that as well as sales (which it seems to do well) it will handle all the processes. For eg, the customers will UPS-track their order. But with candy, like small funny vids, rewards for complying and uploading stuff like driving licences, goodies for using that and not emailing etc etc. Every few hours if they log on to check (cars are emotional and have people chomping at the bit, they want them yesterday but can't do that...) they will have new message, film, question (I control them with questions - if I want to slow someone down, I ask big question or request 3-months bank statements faxing or emailing - that keeps them busy for 1/2 a day
). I must get customers into habit of asking the webpage, not asking me. They will see if it is real-me or the dalek-me answering. I've written my mysql database, my God is that structure big to cover every eventuality, and now we are building pages. This is a separate topic, but it will be nearly Web2. Just to say, no other car company will have ANYTHING to touch this. They are all 100% manual which drives up their costs as they need people/offices etc.Anyway, then I can double throughput easily with less work than now.
So THEN I may need investment. But with a 45 day average payment cycle, increased sales soon generate capital to re-market with. And with no stock, premises (home office), staff (except Mark the geek) or debt, it all depends on the speed I want to grow. I think. Unless you think different. please advise, any opinions on this subject are VERY welcome.
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Sorry to flood... but while I am here, re webpage design - of course there is no right and wrong really.
But I wonder why it has all defaulted to a "standard". You know? One menu down the side of services/products, then the standard FAQ, Contact Us, across the top.
Each page has one picture, it has to be clean, calm design etc... and often the webteam throw in a useless flash entry page "skip". Everyone skips, I think.
But most of these standard webpages are pretty useless in providing stuff. Like my 200 car price list formats onto A4 sized page for printing, but not many people allow that. But it is useful. Also, I give A-Z or price order. Not many people allow that, but it is dead easy to code. I am always frustrated by the lack of info/answers on webpages, plus most are static and just built then left and people say "we have a web page". It was written by consultants usually. The menu often includes "mission statement". I prefer "mantra" because it's shorter... and then I poke fun. Please tell me, who seriously will read the proper one (apart from MD) and be impressed?
The reason I say all this rubbish is that I have just read about the Apple iPhone. Apparently it has just one on/off button and everything is done on context screens on the big display. Get this: to resize a photo, you touch it with your thumb and first finger and pull them apart, and it zooms bigger!
THAT is the kind of brilliant thing I like, but on website there is rarely any brilliant thing, just conformity. Ajax is one flash of the brilliance, and I have done it on my website back end, avoiding page refreshes when editing prices on a list of 200 cars (this forum should use Ajax - you would be amazed!! Everything would stay the same, except the page would not refresh, all the stuff would just appear by magic - actually your browser does it. But it is so good it seems like magic). And Ajax is free, it's just code you type in. Cost: zero.
But I wonder why it has all defaulted to a "standard". You know? One menu down the side of services/products, then the standard FAQ, Contact Us, across the top.
Each page has one picture, it has to be clean, calm design etc... and often the webteam throw in a useless flash entry page "skip". Everyone skips, I think.
But most of these standard webpages are pretty useless in providing stuff. Like my 200 car price list formats onto A4 sized page for printing, but not many people allow that. But it is useful. Also, I give A-Z or price order. Not many people allow that, but it is dead easy to code. I am always frustrated by the lack of info/answers on webpages, plus most are static and just built then left and people say "we have a web page". It was written by consultants usually. The menu often includes "mission statement". I prefer "mantra" because it's shorter... and then I poke fun. Please tell me, who seriously will read the proper one (apart from MD) and be impressed?
The reason I say all this rubbish is that I have just read about the Apple iPhone. Apparently it has just one on/off button and everything is done on context screens on the big display. Get this: to resize a photo, you touch it with your thumb and first finger and pull them apart, and it zooms bigger!
THAT is the kind of brilliant thing I like, but on website there is rarely any brilliant thing, just conformity. Ajax is one flash of the brilliance, and I have done it on my website back end, avoiding page refreshes when editing prices on a list of 200 cars (this forum should use Ajax - you would be amazed!! Everything would stay the same, except the page would not refresh, all the stuff would just appear by magic - actually your browser does it. But it is so good it seems like magic). And Ajax is free, it's just code you type in. Cost: zero.
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Ling - for a good look at brand / web offering etc - why not have a chat with JPMH? They are currently working on Blackberry and others.
Nik Myers is the 'M', Phil Harvey is the 'H' - see www.JPMH.co.uk
they have more innovative and market based ideas in 5 minutes than I do in a year.
I think what you are discussing is a lot bigger than just re-jigging a few web site pages - you could transform the whole car purchasing/leasing market.
No personal interest - just people whom I have seen do a good job.
Nik Myers is the 'M', Phil Harvey is the 'H' - see www.JPMH.co.uk
they have more innovative and market based ideas in 5 minutes than I do in a year.
I think what you are discussing is a lot bigger than just re-jigging a few web site pages - you could transform the whole car purchasing/leasing market.
No personal interest - just people whom I have seen do a good job.
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A
adam
- Original Poster
- #74
Well you're basically asking someone what would happen to their business if they got hit by a bus
Never hear that one everyday do you?
No but it is a good question and one that separates the "self employed" from the "business owner". No type is better than the other necessarily but if Ling is the business, it makes it a different proposition to lingscars.com being the business.
With Vendesent, people deal with me, yes there are others with me but I could close it down and start again over night with some writing that I do, sales, consultency etc. With Indoor Phones, the company is much more than me, the person does not come in to it. Some weeks I don't go in at all and don't do much on the front line but it carries on due to some great staff.
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Maybe I will get run over by my own London bus, heheheh.
If I got run over by a bus and died, what would happen to my business is this: .... - ? I wouldn't give a flying fluck, would I? (I'd be quite dead, and as a Chinese, we do not have some invented heaven/afterlife like (wierd?) Muslims/Christians/Bhuddists, we just die and that's the end, gone! Ping, Pong, Gone! To the worms.).
No offence to the made-up religions. Especially Muslims as they bite. Except please notice they don't bite the Chinese much. Not much fuss is made by the fundamentalists about the treatment of Muslims in China. They leave that WELL alone.
(Thinking about this, I wonder if there is a smaller number of virgins for a Musilm (man?) being killed by a bus (say 2, and 1 for a taxi), rather than the quite large number I see being claimed for being a martyr. And what does a women get? Not sure if I would like virgin men, they would be hopeless. Anyone here Muslim and would help me out without getting all worked up?)
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Young???
Actuall I get refused alcohol in Tescos and can get 1/2 price on the bus and in Cinema. But I am 33. That is not TOO young!
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