Starting an e-business has its advantages: The cost of entry is low, and the audience is boundless. Of course, your competitors also have the same advantages. That's why you need to learn how to stay ahead of the curve. On the Internet, that's no easy task. Technology moves at break-neck speed, and information abounds. There are also more than 20,000 companies vying for customers, and the majority of them are not yet even making profits. Do you need to be competitive? No. You have to be faultless. Competitors are looking for spaces that you are not filling, and your eye needs to be even more discerning than theirs.
The bottom line is that e-commerce presents a whole new playing field with new rules that constantly change. The winning teams need to be more than quick; they need to be agile, as well. You want to get in the game? Here's your rulebook.
Outline:I. What People Look for Online
To motivate people to shop online, there has to be a clear reason, or advantage to booting up their computer rather than heading to the local retail store or shopping mall. In addition to having just an advantage over physical stores, online retailers also need to have a competitive advantage over other merchants on the Net.
There are thousands of ways you can set your company apart from the competition; the only limit is your creativity. However, there are some simple basics that consumers look for when they come online. If you aren't providing at least one, if not all, of these basic benefits, someone else will:
Credibility
Surveys have shown that most online shoppers are more concerned about being ripped off by incompetent or fraudulent Web-based businesses than they are about having their credit card numbers stolen. In other words, they aren't afraid of using their credit cards; they are afraid of a bad business. Without a person to talk to, a storefront to visit, or sometimes even a physical address handy, shoppers have to use instinct to judge whether they are dealing with a reputable entity.
Of course, all businesses should be reputable, but some people trekking into the online arena for the first time are on edge about who to do business with. Although people will adapt in time, it is wise to take every precaution to ensure that they feel 100 percent secure about shopping with your site.
To overcome fears, your need to look legit, and that means making sure you have the following elements in place:
Personal Domain Name - Sites that piggyback off of other domains, such as AOL or Geocities, can seem temporary and non-commercial. People fear that these shops will be here today and gone tomorrow. In cyberspace, there are no signs of real duration, but a domain name does create a higher comfort level.
To acquire a unique domain name, simply visit Internic. A domain name costs $70 for two years, and you will need to know some technical information when registering, so you may want the help of your Internet Service Provider. There are many other companies selling domain names these days, but beware — quite a few are fraudulent. Internic is reliable and offers offline assistance.
Good Product Descriptions - When people walk into a store, they usually know what they are looking for and can judge a product by picking it up and reading the product label themselves. Online, consumers don't have that luxury. Make sure that product descriptions are clear and informative so that the customer knows exactly what he or she is purchasing. Also make sure that any other content surrounding the site is well-written and contains no typos.
Answers to Commonly Asked Questions - Anticipating questions is usually a sign of experience, since consumers assume that the company has already been asked these questions. Developing a simple frequently asked questions (FAQ) page can stave off a lot of concerns that your customers may have about doing business with your company. In addition, you may want to create separate pages for questions regarding security, privacy and returns.
Real-World Address Information - Offering customers a way to get in touch with you will suggest to people that you are a real entity, even if you don't have a physical location. Make sure to include a phone number (toll-free is best), fax number, e-mail address and mailing address. Note: A phone number is especially important because you may want to accept first-time orders over the phone, in case someone needs some extra comfort before diving headfirst into e-commerce. Odds are, the next time they buy it will be from the Web. And a street address lends more credibility than a Post Office box.
Trust is the most critical component to doing business on the Web. In the real world, consumers have the Better Business Bureau working on their side to make sure that companies follow the rules. Online, a new non-profit association called TRUSTe watches over the use of data collected by businesses over the Web. The association has some heavy supporters behind it, including AT&T, Netscape, Lands' End, Wired Digital and NetGrocer. By abiding the association's rules regarding the use of data collected on your site, you can display the TRUSTe logo. According to TRUSTe, consumers who are comfortable and knowledgeable about how their data is being used are more likely to give accurate information — and more likely to buy. Of course, there is a fee for guaranteeing such comfort through TRUSTe, and dues are based on company revenues. For instance, annual fees for retailers with less than $1 million in yearly sales is $750, and retailers with annual revenues of more than $l00 million pay $5,000 annually. Tip: If you have $100 million in sales, chances are you don't need a seal of approval from this |
Overall, obtaining a higher level of commitment — by familiarizing people with who you are and what your business is about — will suggest that your Web business is legitimate and serious about doing business for the long term.
Price
Price, more often than not, motivates a shopper to buy, and making sure that your prices are competitive on the Web is crucial. Boutique shops that offer high service with matching price-tags can't succeed on the Web as they can in real life, since high levels of service don't really exist, or at least they are not as highly valued, online as they are in a small merchant's shop.
According to Anthony Cospito, founder of PowerGeneration, Inc., a Massachusetts-based Internet-strategy consulting firm, "If your prices are a great deal higher (or lower) than the market, then you must communicate why, and should still have other strong value-adds to fall back on, such as excellent customer service, greater selection, etc."
Online, you can be sure that your competition is going to sell at rock-bottom prices. Customers expect to pay for shipping, and they expect to wait for the product to arrive, therefore the real hook for many Web sites is their bargains. One company garnering publicity from their low-price policy is Onsale.. The computer reseller offers computers at the manufacturer's wholesale price. Instead of skimming their profit off an inflated cost, the company relies on advertising revenue generated from its site.
The Web also gives customers the power to make comparisons with little effort. Services such as bottomdollar.com help consumers find products at the rock-bottom prices by doing a cross-comparison of the major sites on the Web. However, Cospito says, when it comes right down to it, "you cannot compete on price alone, even Wal-Mart (the low-price leader) prides itself on superior service and high inventories."
New price-comparison services are even being offered at the online site locations of The Washington Post and Newsweek magazine. Called Marketplace, the service permits users to search for products available for purchase on the Web and to compare the prices offered by each online merchant. Users can also browse through a directory of online retailers, organized by categories including books, computer hardware, computer software, office supplies, music, electronics, fashion, gifts, videos, toys and sporting goods.
As prices get more competitive online, Web shop owners need to be smarter about how they price their products. So what formula can one use? Deferring to the law of economics, the price for a product or service hinges on supply and demand. This is determined by assuming that businesses will produce more products at higher costs and fewer products at lower costs — and assuming that consumers will do the opposite. Where the two curves meet is where the price is derived.
Determining that point is never an easy task, however. To start from scratch and conduct market research and surveys can take months. Therefore, most business owners simply study what competitors are charging for similar products and services and either copy the price or take an average price from several competitors. Certain factors, such as quality and demographics of your market, will effect price to a degree.
If the price you choose doesn't seem to be working for your audience, try lowering it. However, there is a point when lowering price will increase your sales but not increase profits. The price right above this value is where you ideally want your products to sit.
Convenience
Ease of use. Say it again. Ease of use. Customers coming to your site should be able to find products easily. That means that customers should be required to make the minimum possible amount of clicks between your products and the ordering page.
Your site also needs to have a dummy-proof navigation system. No one wants to get lost in cyberspace. The home page should be laid out as a map to the rest of the site. Within each section, buttons should be present on each page so users can get from one section of the site to the other quickly and effortlessly. Don't let your customers search for contact information, either. Putting an e-mail address or link that reaches your customer-service department at the bottom of each page is not overkill. If you have a lot of pages in your site and don't have a search engine, consider adding a site map for easy navigation.
Make it extremely easy for people to get to your home page from anywhere on the site. |
When it comes to design, simple is best. Some Web users still don't know what items are hyperlinked, or clickable, and what are not. So while a complex graphic map may look cool, your users may not know what they are looking at.
Depending on the breadth of your product selection, consider using pop-up menus for product selection. L. L. Bean, for one, makes browsing easy by using drop-down menus to offer instant access to literally hundreds of product categories on a single page. The alternative is to simply run long text listings or ask their customers to click through multiple levels to see the complete product line - neither of which is desirable to busy shoppers.
Without question, round-the-clock, Internet-savvy customer and post-sales support are the keys to cultivating customer loyalty. Once the order is committed, users should be immediately thanked onscreen — and their orders should be confirmed. You'd be amazed at how many e-commerce sites don't bother to say, "Thank you." Instead, they display a coldly generic "Return to Shopping" button. Another key component of customer loyalty is trust. Make a point of telling your Web site visitors exactly what you're doing with the data you collect from them. |
Prices should also be easy to identify. Place prices clearly next to products as well as on their order form, and make sure to give customers their order total before asking for their credit card information. Customers don't want to play a guessing game.
Finally, but most importantly, make sure customers are easily able to purchase products once they find them. Having several methods of payment options is the best way to cater to your clientele. At the bare minimum, give customers a phone and fax number to either call or send in orders. Mail addresses are another option, but the time it takes for users to mail a check may deter people who are coming to the site for timely service. Despite sensationalized scares about fraud and security, credit card options are the most popular.
To take purchase convenience to the next level, invest in shopping-cart software, such as those available from Americart or Cart 32. Some of the best software packages allow users to browse through the store, adding products to their "wish list," only to be able to narrow them down and choose their favorites at the time of checkout.
Another way to make the selling point quick and easy for your customers is to build a secure off-Web database to recall customers' past orders. For instance, Northwest Airlines stores the following information about their registered users:
Collecting data makes it convenient and fast for repeat customers to log on and schedule their next flight. Information about where they are departing from is already stored in the computer, and at checkout, the customer only needs to verify that the credit card information is up-to-date.
Customer Service
Since online competition is always just a few clicks away, the standard for customer support must be higher for the Web than it is in the offline world. The most essential aspect of customer support on Web sites is responding to every request for information with accurate answers or corrective actions within competitive time frames. Despite that logic, market watcher Jupiter Communications found that 42 percent of the top-ranked Web sites either took longer than five days to reply to customer e-mail inquiries, never replied, or were simply not accessible by e-mail.
"This effort illustrates that many Web sites have been unable or unprepared to respond to the flood of user questions that come in via e-mail from their sites," says Ken Allard, group director of Jupiter's Site Operation Strategies. "Answering thousands of questions per month is an enormous challenge for sites offering complex products and services, especially if they never had a traditional call center. Yet, companies that delay responses to user questions instantly lose a significant degree of credibility and user loyalty, and not responding perpetuates the consumer notion that using the Web site is not a reliable method of doing business with that company."
One way to solve the e-mail deluge is to take advantage of "auto-acknowledge" software that responds to all incoming requests stating that the question was received and estimating a time frame for how long it will take to respond to the question.
While e-mail is the primary communication tool, it is not the be-all, end all of customer service. "A lot of companies think they can just throw up [an] e-mail [address] on their Web site, and that is customer service," said Maria La Tour Kadison, a senior analyst at technology market-watcher Forrester Research, in a June 1998 article for Computerworld. "But there needs to be a mechanism in place to handle that e-mail in a prompt, effective fashion. Sometimes that means an immediate response or personal attention. Often, it means both. Up to this point, consumers have put up with a lot. They've dealt with [the annoyance] because they are early adopters."
Unlike traditional retail stores, Web-based shops have a hard time convincing customers to become repeat shoppers if service isn't up to par. With competition abundant, consumers reason that there are other places to surf and shop. Luckily a new wave of software tools is becoming available just in time to provide real-time help similar to what consumers expect from telephone assistants.
One of those products is CustomerNow from New York-based SiteBridge Corp. Recognizing that most online shopping takes place at home, where there is only one phone line, CustomerNow enables users to set up a live link to service reps while still connected to the Web. In addition, it also gives reps the power to control a user's browser and guide the customer through the site. For instance, if a shopper is looking for a certain sweater and doesn't see it, he or she would click on a help button, and a window would pop up allowing the lost shopper to have a real-time chat with a customer service rep. If he or she asks, "Where can I find the red wool sweater?" the rep could actually take over the consumer's browser, lead them to the page where the crimson sweater is, and then even take the customer to a page to finish the sale. The price of such highly fandangled software starts at $1,000 per customer-support person.
Besides CustomerNow, several other companies now offer similar products, which Forrester Research has dubbed "telWeb" software. Among the larger players are Webline Communications and Aspect Communications.
WebLine, which was formed in 1996 after its founders won the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's annual $50K business plan competition, offers software that integrates corporate call centers with the Web. Aspect 's product line, called Web Agent, is designed to let customers contact agents directly through text chat, Internet telephony or call-back request..
Although there is no substitute for one-on-one interaction, there is new software that comes close. NeuroStudio, a package from San Francisco-based Neuromedia, allows businesses to create a virtual service representative (VSR) that can quickly answer customer's questions.
When customers access a Web site with NeuroStudio, they are greeted by this computerized help representative. Customers then type in questions, and the VSR displays the answers. Moreover, the VSRs are designed to improve with experience, like real help, so that they can anticipate future questions and generate solutions more quickly.
Neuroscience, which starts at $339, hides the sophisticated technical features so non-technical people can focus on developing the content, rather than on tough programming problems. Furthermore, it eliminates the cost of hiring a friendly staff of assistants to answer calls 24 hours a day.
Back to OutlineII. Building Repeat Business
Keeping Content and Site Information Fresh
The best way to keep consumers coming back to look at your site is to give them updated information that they can use and that interests them.
Travelocity subscribes to that logic. The online travel agency isn't just another online booking and ticketing service; it is also a place where travelers can research different vacation spots. In a weekly section called "Destination Guide," travelers get the scoop on all the stats on the environment, where to go, when the best time to go is, and suggests other reading on the destinations.
Don't underestimate the importance of content, says Mahoney. Garden.com was heavily focused on the retail aspect of their site until the company realized that unique product selection wasn't enough for the Web consumer. Consumers on the Web want information. To give them the data they crave, company administrators created an entire magazine. The content has been so well received by site members that Mahoney says the company is even talking to a publisher to bring the virtual Webzine onto offline newsstands.
"The magazine has become an essential part of the site," she says. "They know it is going to be fresh content that they are coming back for."
Create a Newsletter
Want to take content to the next step? Try a newsletter. Newsletters are an in-depth and more committed way of delivering content and information to your customers. Although a newsletter's main goal is to establish your company as an authority or an industry resource, it can also directly effect sales by including links to popular sellers or products that match up with the e-mail recipient's profile. Although the newsletter does not directly sell any products, it does establish your company as an authority and a resource in the category. If you can deliver expert information that is useful, customers will be more likely to remember you when it comes time to buy.
Naming Your Newsletter According to many experts, creating a name that has a lasting identity is important for the success of your newsletter. Unless your site name has a lot of public awareness, don't name it after your site. Think bigger.. Think sizzle. Garden.com, for one, named their weekly newsletter "The Bloom Times." Jim Wilson, author of "How to Start a Newsletter," an article that appeared in the Virtual Promote Gazette, would applaud their efforts. "If you can't sell yourself, a newsletter will not help you. You need to step to the forefront and stand up and show some attitude," Wilson wrote. "Think big and name your newsletter big. Something that people will recognize when it shows up in their e-mail box." |
Before starting a newsletter, objectively evaluate your site using the following criteria:
Keep in mind that there is a big difference between a weekly brochure advertising special promotions and a bona fide newsletter. A newsletter is a mailing that informs, educates, or helps your customers in their daily lives. The purpose of the newsletter is to put yourself in front of your customers as a provider of good information. They'll repay you by purchasing from you at a later date.
There are different types of newsletters that get different types of results. First, there is the "Look What's New. Click Here For The Full Story" type of newsletter. This format involves posting the actual newsletter content to your Web site in HTML format and sending out a newsletter that has a teaser for each new article you want them to visit. MotherNature.com sends out a newsletter that works in this manner. Story teasers look like this:
THE ARTHRITIS "CURE": HELP OR HYPE?
That's the claim, but can natural supplements really reduce pain and help restore damaged cartilage?
CARBO-LOADING: TOPPING OFF YOUR FUEL TANK
Knowing how much carbohydrate to consume before, during and after competition
and training can boost athletic performance.
On the flip side, your newsletter can also feature complete articles. This does not build immediate traffic for your Web site, but it is the easiest way to get a lot of information to the entire subscriber community all at the same time. Bonus: If the content is educational in nature, people will be more likely to print the issue out and file it for later reference, giving you a way to make a longer-lasting impression.
While information is the primary goal of the newsletter, keep content short and sweet. The average viewer is being swamped with information, and your newsletter has a much better chance of being read if it doesn't look intimidating. Keep it targeted and to-the-point.
If you provide any sort of e-mail or newsletter to your readers, make sure to include an easy-to-find-and-operate unsubscribe option in each mailing.
Other Methods for Encouraging Repeat Visits
To ensure that people are coming back to your site time after time, there are other strategies that you can implement. While these are only limited by your creativity, here is a brief list of ideas:
III. Building a Community; Going Beyond Repeat Customers
Community is the new buzz online. And although you may not be interested in building up relationships, building communities helps drive visitation, which improves the opportunities for sales, and takes advantage of the interactivity of the Web - its prime differentiator from other selling mediums.
As Josh Sinel, co-founder of Blue Barn Institute, a community consulting company, told Wired in a March 1999 interview, "Community should be nothing new to corporations. It's how you answer your e-mail, how you handle customer service. Almost everything we do is about responsiveness."
In talking to 25 online merchants and 25 brand marketers, Forrester found that 60 percent have or plan to offer community-building features such as chat, message boards and members-only areas within the year. But it found few were using interactive tools to create what it calls a "dynamic selling environment," using frequently asked questions, message boards, chat and online presentations to drive sales, or real-time technologies to update merchandise and personalize content for individual customers.
For a community to be successful, you need to have a category that will engage people - make that lots of people. Communities don't work in ghost towns. Throngs of people, not to mention resources, are needed to get a community to work for an e-commerce business.
If your business is suited for building a community, be prepared that the community will come first: foster the community, and the sales will follow. Your site will not have to use a hard-sell approach to hock its wares online with strong membership support. Build the community, and the members will become your best your best salespeople, giving you positive word-of-mouth promotion.
Remember, though, that building a community is not easy, and just because the Internet supports interactive communications doesn't mean that you need to use them. First, you need to set goals. Ask yourself what you are trying to accomplish. Do you want to:
You may want to do all of them, but answering the questions above will help you decide what kinds of interactivity will be best suited to your company and clients' needs.
Some other points to keep in mind when building a community of people include:
Case Study: BabyCenter
One of the most successful communities born out of an e-commerce site is Baby Center (
"Expectant and new parents are members of a special club, and their needs are distinct from parents of older kids, particularly if they are first-timers," explained Glickman. "Access to comprehensive, trusted information is critical to this group and not easily found on the Web today. BabyCenter.com fills this void. We offer the most complete resource and a supportive community specifically for new parents and parents-to-be."
In one of the most incredible cases of community, the site helped a couple in Missouri deliver a baby online in December 1998. According to a company report, bad weather prevented the parents from travelling to the hospital. The husband called a doctor and during the wait, he turned to the Web site's chat area for encouragement and advice from online group members. As they waited for the doctor, chatters answered questions from the nervous husband about how to make his wife comfortable and be prepared in case the birth began before the doctor arrived.
Besides just a popular chat area, though, Baby Center has created an entire suite of tools and content areas to engage and encourage visitors to participate in buying products from the site.
The Resource Center - A collection of information on pregnancy and infancy, national baby Yellow Pages and the ability to search for the right article or tip. Open 24 hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week, the Resource Center is an accessible support center for the questions and anxieties that come with being a new parent.
Personal Pages - Through a powerful database, the company can deliver each repeat visitor with a custom update for each week of pregnancy and infancy with helpful hints, developmental updates, age-appropriate reference materials, and links to discussions with other parents facing the same issues.
The Baby Name Finder - A tool that lets parents search for baby names by gender, national or ethnic origin, starting or ending letters, number of syllables, meaning, popularity, and a range of other options.
Interactive Tools - Tools to help calculate baby's due date, budget for baby, make key decisions such as saving for college and buying life insurance, plan for immunizations, and learn how much weight gain is normal.
Ask-An-Expert Service - A panel of health professionals and other specialists respond to specific questions. Panelists include a husband-wife team of obstetricians, a family doctor, a lactation consultant, a pregnancy exercise consultant, a childbirth educator and pediatrician, author and baby behavioral expert.
A Supportive Community of New Parents - BabyCenter.com offers discussion groups on dozens of subjects as well as by due date or birth date. This allows each parent to connect with others who understand their situation or are interested in the same topics. BabyCenter.com also allows parents to add their comments to any article, poll or other feature area on the site, making it a truly warm and open place to visit.
Interactive Tools
Static pages on the Web are no more rousing than pages of a newspaper or magazine. Allowing your customers to interact with the medium, and with you, is the reason the Net is a compelling place for business to be. The most well-known examples of interactivity are the directories and search engines like Yahoo! and Infoseek.
While most entrepreneurs aren't going to build their own search engines, there are some simpler innovative tools that companies are developing to catapult their sites beyond the everyday. For instance, some online clothing retailers use virtual mannequins or dressing rooms to let customers "try on" outfits just like they would in a retail store. Although shoppers can't gauge how well the clothes will fit their body dimensions, they can get a good idea of whether the pieces and colors of an outfit match.
Garden.com also developed an ingenious tool that benefits their customers. Design-A-Garden is a Java-based application that allows consumers to plan their own garden. Users are given a graph, which they can modify to the shape of their own garden, and can choose and position plants. The tool also offers tips on which plants thrive better in certain areas.
After planning their garden, users can then go to the online store and purchase the foliage to create their own dream garden. Nancy Mahoney, vice president of marketing at Garden.com, says the tool is exceptionally popular on the site since it allows customers to play with over 900 varieties of plants in their garden (a larger assortment than most nurseries) without making a commitment. Besides that, Design-A-Garden also lets users save a garden plan in case they want to refer to it or make adjustments later.
Customized Features
More sophisticated than mere tools, some sites build customized solutions and products for visitors based on information that they plug into registration forms.
There is no magic formula to delivering that kind of personalization, says John Lynch, of Synnetry, an online marketing firm. The beauty of the Web, he says, is that it allows companies to take on new edges that they wouldn't be able to in the real world.
Take, for instance, a client of his that sells dog food. In the real world, a pet food company does not have many choices about how it can position its product. Online, however, a broad range of options present themselves. In this case, it was to position the company as an animal nutritionist expert. The site walks visitors through an analysis: Is the pet a dog or cat? How much does it weigh? How old is it? Once the information is entered into the database, answers are compressed, data is cross-referenced and up comes a form that tells the user based on the information entered, what particular type of food the animal should be consuming.
When you have a tool like this, Lynch says, "then it isn't just a bag of dog food, but you have nutritional care for your animal."
Besides that, Lynch says that there is no way that the companies would be able to gain that edge in the real world. "What pet storeowner is going to carry that message for the pet food manufacturer to the pet food buyer? Through the Internet, they are allowed to create a better position for themselves then they could if they were going through regular distribution channels."
When trying to decide on what tools will be of interest to your customers, ask yourself the following questions:
Once you answer these questions, then you need to think about how you can address those interests and concerns that effect their demographic. For instance, Village, a site devoted to women only, knows that career, health, fitness and relationships are some of the most important things on the minds of their community members. Therefore, the creators of the site have developed numerous tools helpful to its client base:
Personal Health Report - A tool to help users make better healthcare decisions. This customized and private report allows users to receive a current health status and offers recommendations on how to make healthy lifestyle changes.
Decision Maker - Women have tough decisions to make in their day-to-day lives. This tool helps users decide between two tough scenarios by asking questions about the importance of the influencing factors to help them reach a decision.
The Cupid Report - Gives users a detailed report on how well suited they are for their mate in terms of romantic, sexual and communication styles. The tool also compares the astrological signs of the partnership to tell whether they are star-crossed lovers.
Debt Reduction Planner - Provides a realistic picture of the user's debt, followed by a plan to pay it off.
The site also has tools to help women choose baby names, chart pregnancies and find recipes.
Message Boards and Chat
Getting people talking is probably the first way to start building a community. Online conversations usually develop through two methods: chat and message boards. Chat is a constant streaming of dialogue in real-time that ends up looking like subtitle scrolls from a movie. Message boards are a bit more primitive, with viewers choosing a topic of conversation and posting responses to the issues. Messages are threaded in a way that responds to the main topic or to another's response.
The benefit of message boards is that they are less complicated to implement and are available to audiences with less-evolved browsers. Many freeware and shareware programs also exist to help you set up message boards and create threads.
Chat Products ChatBox, EmeraldNet Inc. ConferenceRoom, WebMaster Inc. ICQ Mirabilis Ltd. Jat SenseNet Inc. Rooms ichat Inc. |
Besides being less technically challenging, message boards also don't depend on large amounts of members. Forrester Research states that sites need a minimum of 2,500 visitors per day to support message boards (which averages 3-5 messages a day), while 55,000 visitors are needed on a daily basis for chat (which averages approximately 5-15 chatters at any given time). Visitors can come in and out to read about what is going on at the site, and they can interact with other people without anyone even being there by simply posting a response. Chat, on the other hand, requires people to be on the site and conversing at all times. Nothing sends users away quicker than an empty chat area.
Operating multiple chat rooms requires substantial resources to plan and staff interesting events, and to moderate interactions as necessary. To further complicate matters, the chat-software market is not yet mature. Few currently available technologies combine an excellent user experience and easy integration with stability and scalability.
If you are going to add chat to your community mix, one good idea is to try to secure celebrity chats. By getting people with star power behind them, more visitors will be compelled to come to the site. Additionally, celebrity guests are more likely to accept an invitation for a guest appearance for publicity's sake when all they have to do is log onto their computer for one hour.
If you're really ambitious, these online discussions can set the stage for additional community-building devices, such as face-to-face events, parties, meetings, discussion salons, whatever's appropriate. Mahoney from Garden.com says that community members from chat areas on the site have held three separate parties to exchange ideas and gardening tips up close and personal. "We've even had a married couple who told us that they met in our chat rooms," she says.
If you think starting a community is something that would jumpstart sales on your site, but you cringe at the amount of time and energy it will take to create and monitor a cyber-active space, you may consider hiring a firm to do it for you.
Manhattan's Blue Barn Interactive has helped its impressive client list develop solutions and moderate different areas of their Web site since 1995. Behind the ritz and glitz of sites like Martha Stewart Living, the Children's Television Workshop — the online home of Sesame Street — IBM and even the NFL Super Bowl, is the careful eye of Blue Barn.
The company excels at helping customers keep conversations humming along by extending the help of their 100+ moderators. The moderators spark interaction by stepping into a conversation to get it back on track, and recognizing how to stop flame wars before they start. They also are skilled at mentioning the client's products in the flow of conversation without seeming obvious.
The price of such services is $10 to $15/hour, and the cost is worth it to companies that know that chats can get out-of-hand quickly. Marcy Kaye, co-founder of Blue Barn, says that moderators are necessary because everyone participating in a chat group is not amiable.
Mischievous hackers lurk in chat areas, impersonating visitors and hosts while booting people off the system. One quick-thinking Blue Barn monitor recognized a bad situation brewing and posed as a Web newbie. The moderator asked enough questions about the site's functionality to distract the hacker from causing more damage.
Kaye says that stepping into your company's chat area for one hour per day is not enough. Moderating is necessary to make sure people are using the chat and discussion areas in ways that are productive and will promote more traffic - not drive customers away.
Back to OutlineIV. How to Gather Intelligence/Demographic Information to Better Understand Customers
Collecting Information With a Survey
The most straightforward way to collect information about your customers is with a registration form. Registration allows you to collect better information about your users at a cheaper price.
While some sites require registration for entry, it is better to let visitors opt in since some users are hesitant to be identified, and others see it as a waste of time. Allow part of your site to be accessible so that visitors can get a feel for what your site has to offer, and let others be accessed only by surrendering some personal information.
Be careful about the information that you do collect, as well. Respect the visitors who are giving you information about themselves by not selling their names to mailing lists, and have a statement form that clarifies your privacy of information policies.
If nothing else, try to obtain a ZIP Code from your users. Users don't seem to mind handing out their 5-digit number, and existing databases already store oodles of good information based on postal codes, such as average household size, income, consumer preferences, etc.
Collecting Information through servers technology
What is a Cookie? A cookie is an identifying tag that is handed out to users via the Web site's server. Many browsers store the tag so that when the user logs on the next time, the server will identify the person from his or her last visit. Cookies don't allow the server to know personal information unless the user filled out a previous registration form. Cookies are mainly a help to marketers who want to know how often individuals are returning, what they read, and what they purchase. The information can greatly help marketers and designers know which areas of the site and which products are popular, and which are not. |
Every good server creates a record of everything that happens on the server. These are called log files. The server creates one massive file containing every activity that occurred on the server.
If your server is housed elsewhere, ask your Internet Service Provider about obtaining such logs. The information that they contain include:
To exploit the information that is collected, you can either thumb through it line by line or purchase software that crunches down the information to create more meaningful data.
Software tools can also reconstruct the usage patterns that individual visitors took during a particular visit. They can also tell you how long people stayed on individual pages and what navigational pattern they take through your site, which can provide insight as to the purpose for people coming to your site. For instance, perhaps your company sells auto parts, and you notice that most people are coming in and buying windshield wipers. Perhaps you would want to play up the fact that your site sells windshield wipers in subsequent promotional material, or you may even want to create a link to that specific area of the site from your home page.
Third-Party Audit Companies BPA International Nielsen Media Research |
Companies such as BigStar, an online movie and DVD store, uses its large in-house database to personalize pages for repeat customers. Based on previous visits, preferences and buying habits, the pages will look different. Featured movies and advertisements are targeted towards the consumer who is surfing the site. Williams says that this strategy allows the company to put in front of the consumer the products that he or she is more likely to buy.
Referrer logs are another important tool to collect marketing information that tells the site's administrator where visitors are coming from on the Web. This will help you know and foster the relationships that are promoting your site and giving it a higher profile. They can record whether people are finding your site through the search engines, paid advertisements such as a banner, partnership or link-exchange program, or unidentified sources.
If you do find that unknown sites are linking to yours, make sure to visit and contact the owner of the page so that you can increase your chances of staying linked when the person updates.
Beyond keeping records or having your ISP gather information, third-party audit companies also can be employed to monitor your site's activity. Although third-party audit companies are a more expensive way of collecting data, they offer more objective information and are necessary if you want to convince advertisers at a later date to buy space on your site. Third-party audit houses are not standardized, so make sure that you ask what kind of tracking they monitor before signing on. And be aware that some of these firms may also ask you to make changes to your site or add special software.
Back to OutlineV. Forever Under Construction
The only way to continually remain competitive online is to keep your site fresh. Changes to content should be made on a regular basis. Other major changes to the site should be made to bolster the company's identity, increase traffic, strengthen your competencies, and increase sales.
Before rushing ahead with any major improvements, stop and think. Ask yourself if the change is consistent with the site and your core values, and whether it will alienate users with slower connection speeds or older browsers. Also don't fall into the trap of investing in technology changes that are gimmicky and of little value. For instance, adding streaming audio to your site may be gimmicky, but if you are selling music on your site, it can help improve your relationship with customers by letting them listen before they buy. On the other hand, scrolling text on the bottom of a page is usually a complete waste. When considering new technologies, ask whether the tool will increase traffic or just distract customers.
Don't be afraid to admit what you don't know or don't have the time to manage. Outsourcing firms can assist in many areas, and when the ROI is there, it pays to have a dedicated in-house Web team to handle Internet initiatives from a strategy, design and technical perspective. There is no end to the possibilities when you are considering updating your site. Let the following list jumpstart some creative ideas.
VI. Mechanisms for Defending Your Site Against Competition
The best way to stay competitive is to just be smarter. Although you may already consider yourself a highly intelligent being, remember that competing sites are continually searching for new ways to be even smarter. Here are some points to remember:
VII. Resources
Leslie Heeter Lundquist, Selling Online For Dummies, IDG Books Worldwide, Inc., 1998.
Jacklyn Easton, Striking It Rich.com: Profiles of Incredibly Successful Websites You've Probably Never Heard Of, McGraw Hill, 1998.
Greg Helmstetter, Increasing Hits and Selling More on Your Web Site, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1997.
Tom Hespos, "How NOT To Build A Community," ClickZ, 11/17/98.
Jim Wilson, "How to Start a Newsletter," Virtual Promote Gazette, Part 1, December 12, 1997. Part 2, December 19, 1997.
Jonathan Steuer, "Tools for Building a Web Community," Web Techniques, January 1998.
IINet, Pointers on how to create business Websites that work
Back to Outline