Srirangan

The sim­ple answer to this would be to offer a good ser­vice that adds enough value at a rea­son­able price to keep them hooked. The core ser­vice and the pric­ing will play a crit­i­cal role.

Of course the key aspect would be the User Expe­ri­ence. It is one thing to have a good ser­vice but another to “serve” it well enough. Usabil­ity, clean design and the gen­eral “feel­ing” the user gets after using the ser­vice must be taken care off with proper User Expe­ri­ence design.

For web based ser­vices, user con­ve­nience is also very impor­tant. Make sure you pro­vide mobile access. Make sure the user can sub­scribe for RSS feeds into Out­look (or whichever reader he/she uses). Make sure user can opt in for newslet­ter or peri­od­i­cal alerts via email. In short make sure your ser­vice reaches the user at his/her convenience.

Sup­port. Quick, accu­rate, help­ful sup­port always adds that lit­tle extra that make users feel wel­come. It also ensures that users can actu­ally use your ser­vice effec­tively. Your clients are pay­ing their hard earned money, they deserve proper sup­port. The impor­tance of proper sup­port can never be stressed enough, espe­cially if the prod­uct is tech­ni­cal keep­ing the aver­age user in mind.

I think I’ve cov­ered some of the gen­eral points that apply to all. Of course this is not an exhaus­tive list and there’s always scope for doing more.