Welcome to the revolution! "Believe the hype! There is no question that within the span of a few years in the mid-'90's, the Internet and the World Wide Web became the most important new communication media since the television, and ones that are fundamentally reshaping contemporary understanding of sales and marketing."1 "The strangest aspect of this revolution is that so few people seem to notice its happening. Yet, within the next few years many of our basic assumptions about commerce and industry will be overturned."2
Every night the news profiles some new dead dot com and terms like "gold rush" and "pioneers" and "new frontier" are used. What business wants to be a guinea pig or go the way of the dodo? This is not Star Trek and your business isn't the Enterprise "bolding going where no one has gone before". Sound business principles dictate caution. And business on the Internet has few precedents and little to hold on to in terms of accepted wisdom or tried-and-true practices. However, a recipe for failure in the new e-world will be not having the presence of mind to distinguish the hype from the substance. Two characteristics to look for in a losing venture: 1) a company that doesn't take risks in terms of direction and technology, and 2) a company that takes the wrong risks. If something must be done; why, and how?
Your customer is online. One firm estimates that a new user logs onto the Internet for the first time every 1.6 seconds.3 The first quarter of 1999, AOL reported 15 million users on its service alone. At the end of 1998, America Online commissioned a study to help better understand the impact of the interactive medium. The America Online/Roper Starch Cyberstudy 1998 found that online communication is now permanently imbedded into how we communicate at work and home. Individuals and companies use the web to buy, sell, recruit staff, submit and receive resumes, solicit bids, and make referrals. Most people think e-commerce means online shopping, workaholics pointing their browsers to Amazon.com to order an emergency present because they forgot someone’s birthday again. But web shopping is only a small part of the e-commerce picture. People are using the Internet for fast, efficient access to information. They use that information to make better informed decisions and to increase their buying power. If your customers are online or will be online soon, then your business should be also. When they want information about your product or service, they will find it. Will they receive that information from your website or your competitors?
In the end, e-business is not nearly as much about technology and flash, as it is about individuals, and how well you speak to them. No other communication medium gives a company the chance to relate so intimately with prospective and existing customers as the web does. You don't even have to rely on customers coming to your site to get them the information they need. By offering a variety of e-mail notification options, you can then turn a customers e-mailbox into an extension of your website. The object of a good company website is to establish an ongoing relationship with the customer. Do this by being helpful; help your customer find what he is looking for quickly and efficiently; whether that be information or an item to purchase. When your customers leave your site, they should know more than they did when they got there.
1. Bruner, Rick E. Net Results: Web Marketing That Works
2. Peppers, Don and Rogers, Martha Ph.D. The One to One Manager
3. Zeff, Robin Lee, Aronson, Brad. Advertising on the Internet, 2nd Edition