And we don’t just mean how to market to them or take their money!

Unless your product can be delivered electronically, it’s important to consider the best way to store, package and ship to your customers before you even consider making an order or producing your stock.

One of the quickest ways to sink any business is to forget about logistics and customer service issues until you’re in the thick of dealing with them. Your customers won’t accept the excuse that you “hadn’t thought of that!” or “you’re just starting out!” or “you’ve grown faster than you expected!”

They just want what they came to you to buy… and if you can’t deliver, they won’t be back.

So before you launch any business, make sure you have:

• The space to store enough inventory to begin shipping to a fair amount of customers right away — and grow a little from there, too!
• The correct storage conditions so your product isn’t damaged or spoiled before you send it out
• Packaging that will ensure the safe (and fresh) delivery of your product — again, without any breakage or spoilage
• An exact calculation of your shipping costs to see if it’s worthwhile for your customers to order from you, rather than from your competition, or buying locally
• Ways for your customers to get hold of you if anything should go awry (telephone and/or fax, functioning email that you answer regularly, etc.)
• Strategies to deal with weather concerns, mail delays, border issues, international shipping concerns (if applicable)

By thinking through these issues in advance, you’ll not only launch your business on the right foot, but you’ll also be able to get a better idea of any financial or logistical commitments you’ll need to make before you earn a single dime. It may turn out that you need to rethink your product or chosen delivery method, or go back to the drawing board to work on your business plan a little longer.

While it might seem like a lot of fussy details to work out, by working them out in advance, you’ll skip any sort of nasty surprises.

We’ve discussed the ins and outs of logistics with many of the most successful Internet businesses online today — and shared their techniques and tricks with our clients so they can avoid “newbie” mistakes and startup hassles.

To learn from their experience and follow in some pretty big footsteps, head to Secrets To Their Success.

And as always, we’d love to hear from you in the comments. Tell us about your customer service challenges and successes!

This comes from the results of a recent study published in Psychological Science. The subjects looked at  two made-up names for food additives and had to decide which would be more harmful. Another experiment did the same thing with roller coaster names, asking which ride would be more exciting and more likely to make people sick. It didn’t matter whether the risk was something desirable (a more exciting roller coaster) or undesirable (something harmful in your food) — hard-to-pronounce words = risky.

Definitely something to keep in mind when you’re naming a product or buying a domain name! It also means you should check out all the copy on your site and try to replace any hard-to-pronounce words with more familiar ones. Use the common names for things. If you absolutely have to use a word that’s hard to pronounce, say what it rhymes with, or give the pronunciation (pro-nunce-ee-AY-shun). It’s also a good idea to break it down and say what each part of the word means so readers will get familiar with it. Two points here:

1. People view whatever is familiar as less risky and more comfortable.
2. People make decisions even when they have no information to base them on, so they’ll decide based on things like the “comfort factor.”

Clicking through to a website, deciding to stay or go, reading the copy, and buying the product involves a whole cascade of decisions. So everything about your copy has to make visitors feel comfortable.

That is, unless you’re selling roller coasters. (Click here for a good article on the study.)

Here are a few more rules for good copy:

• Short words beat long words
• Short sentences beat long sentences
• Short paragraphs beat long paragraphs
• BUT mix it all up a bit
• Verbs beat adjectives
• Active voice (I did something) beats passive voice (something was done by me)