Trying to create an easy to use platform that caters for the majority of the freight forwarding, shippiong and transport community was never going top be an easy task. I’m a big fan of 37 signals and their latest book Rework really brings home the message that sometimes less is more.
Even in the early stages of freightoption we have received numerous suggestions of things to add, & extra features which are fantastic & these are always strongly considered or added to our ‘dream list’ of features we could add at a later date. But for now our focus is on making the website a simple but powerful tool in speeding up and improving the freight quotation process.
The front end redesign is nearly complete & we are currently finishing the testing phase & hope to release very soon.
We’ve held back on pushing the shipper sign up process due to this, but feedback received from the small number of shippers already signed up is very positive. We will be launching a Google adwords campaign from next month & are excited to see what that can add to our marketing efforts.
As always any comments or feedback, either here or via the Feedback link on the site are extremely valuable & we will try to respond to everyone.
As more companies, and individuals create their own blogs, they are starting to replace the more familiar Trade press as the best source of news & views for the freight and shipping industry.
Below is a list of some of the Industry blogs I read on a regular basis (in no particular order)
GCaptain Blog – http://gcaptain.com/maritime/blog/
Ryan Skinners excellent blog – http://5956n.typepad.com/59_56_n/atom.xml
Handy Shipping Guide – http://5956n.typepad.com/59_56_n/atom.xml
Supply Excellence – http://www.supplyexcellence.com/blog/
Entertaining blog, from the Master of a merchant ship – http://anujvelu.blogspot.com/
Anyone have any other good ones I should be following ?
Ryan Skinners excellent blog, featured this post on using social media to empower maritime sales reps – http://5956n.typepad.com/59_56_n/2010/01/5-steps-to-empower-your-marine-sales-force-via-social-media.html
A lot of the information can be employed by freight forwarding companies, who are typically slow to embrace new technology.
Company Website
This should be obvious, and although nearly all companies will now have a website of some sort, there are a huge number of terrible ones out there. This is a mixture of having one done years ago & sticking with it, having one done by a friend of a friend, or simply not receiving the right advice. With the falling costs of technology & web design, there is no excuse now not to have a professional, clean, simple website which is a great advertisement for the company. A simple few page website can be done for as little as £299, with all singing all dancing online quoting ones for under £2,000.
Have key employees register their profiles on LinkedIn and actively make connections. Join the relevant industry groups (there are a huge amount), If a small amount of regular effort is used to complete profiles, connect & contribute, LinkedIn can be a great resource to make new contacts & clients.
Twitter & Facebook
Companies seem scared of letting employees have access to these sites, as they think they will spend all day on their avoiding work. I think that if an employee does not want to work, he or she will simply find another way to waste their time & this is part of a bigger issue within the company rather than these websites ! If properly used they can both provide a great way to build your online brand, find new clients & respond to customers in real time.
The search facility within Twitter is particularly powerful, and is a great way to find out whats happening in the Industry.
Email marketing
This is one area which is very under utilised. I’m not talking about purchasing lists of thousands of companies & spamming. But most Transport comapnies have a huge database of clients they have dealt with at one time or another. They need to make a plan to record the contact information (including email) and use it in an email marketing campaign for something specific, whether it’s a new service or special offer of some sort. There is very little cost for doing this & can achieve fantastic results. With free tools on the market, such as mailchimp which can produce professional templates, this is something that every freight company should be doing.
By making a small amount of regular effort, and learning from companies & people who are doing it well, it can make a huge difference to both gaining new customers & keeping existing ones.
Been a while!
Have been focusing on getting the website tested and building a base of transport companies to quote on freight rate requests, so the blogging, Twitter etc had taken a back seat.
I aim to now be making regular updates on whats happening with Freightoption, as well as posting on any other issues that pop into my head.
April has been a huge month, Paul Parkin has joined the team in charge of Sales and Marketing, and was charged with hitting a target of 50 signed up Transport Companies by end of Month to provide a base of users who would be able to respond to quote requests by the Shippers we have waiting to use the site. We wanted to have a broad range of providers covering Courier, European Road, Ocean & Air. We focused on the UK market, but have also have companies signing up from China, India, Thailand, USA, Canada, Netherlands, Australia & many more. I’m pleased to say Paul hit this target with time to spare.
We received a lot of good feedback during this process & one of the key points was that our registration process was too long winded. The idea was to ask for lots of information so users could build a detailed profile, but we are currently changing this to a quick & simple registration process with facility to expand your profile with as much detail as you wish. We are also overhauling the Home Page & front end of the site, to be quicker & feature some key information like current jobs, & news, you can never stop improving.
These changes mean that we have slightly delayed the big roll out to shippers, but it will result in a smoother experience for all to hold on for a couple more weeks.
Am currently putting together a user guide for Transport companies, with suggestions on how you can get the most from the site, best practices on completing your profile & responding to quotes. Hope to have that out to all registered users by end of next week.
Greetings !
Always seems strange typing away to an audience who isn’t really there yet. Hopefully that will change very quickly as the site grows.
If your reading this, your very likely to either be an importer or exporter of goods, alternatively you may be a transport company who move said goods. The aim of this site was to bring you both together and make everyones lives easier.
The How it Works page on the main site provides a good explanation of what the site does (matches those wanting freight quotes with those who provide them) & the FAQ is a work in progress, as i’ll be adding any questions that arise as we go along.
Just to give some background on how the site came to exist. I have worked in the freight forwarding industry for over 14 years and the majority of this time was spent in a pricing or quoting capacity. Seeing the success of the various financial price comparison sites – Moneysupermarket.com, Gocompare.com etc – was sure that this could be applied to the freight industry (despite it being famously slow to embrace new technology). Freightoption.com is the result of this moment of insight.
I have deliberately not copied the same business model as the financial sites mentioned, as I do not think this is the best solution for our industry, I also think that by avoiding charging a commission on each quote or each successful quote that it keeps the prices transparently real, i.e not incorporating the commission & it means that the two parties can have an open dialogue as we do not stop contact details being exchanged.
The site is totally free to use for both parties, though when the site is out of Beta testing and i’m happy with the level of demand, a subscription option will be available for Transport companies who want to use the site in more depth, this will be necessary to help develop the site & pay for the service. Any transport company not wishing to pay a subscription can still use the site with the free membership.
I value all feedback positive or negative, and any suggestions on improving the site will be seriously considered. My goal is for Freightoption.com to be ‘The online destination for your freight quotation’ and I need your feedback to make that a reality.
Please feel free to email me – mark@freightoption.com
Or leave comments below.