Notes from 47th International STC Conference
Orlando, Florida, May 21-24, 2000

The Next Step: From an Information-Driven Site to a Customer-Driven E-Commerce Web Site

Amey Celoria
IN Web Ideas

The presenter is a successful self-employed graphics specialist with extensive experience in Web site design.

Session Description: This demonstration was a step-by-step overview of a corporate Web site's evolution from an information-driven site to a site driven by customers' needs and e-commerce initiatives.

• E-commerce is the next wave in Web design.
• The presenter cited the Clue Train Manifesto: A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct results, markets are getting smarter--and getting smarter faster than most companies.
• Clue Train's 95 Theses: Markets are conversations. They consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
• Common mistakes
   
• Not taking the Web medium seriously
• Trying to do everything for everyone
• Technology for technology's sake (e.g., unnecessary special FX such as Flash misused)
• Brochureware
• The Introverted Web site (e.g., customer doesn't care about your company's infrastructure)
• Taking yourself too seriously.
• "Customer service is not about technology; it is about dialogue." -- Jennifer Freedman and Ruby Sudoyo
• Eyewire.com -- excellent source of unusual patterned clip art.
• The human element: customers are human, with needs and problems.
• The goal of an e-commerce Web site is to develop cyber-relationships with customers. Effective Web sites build relationships between an organization and its stakeholders. The way to build those relationship is to focus on the site's visitors.
• Honesty in e-commerce (as in any commerce) creates trust and brand loyalty.
• One-to-one marketing: "Industry studies indicate that a 5% increase in customer retention rate can improve the lifetime value of a customer between 25 and 100%." -- Frederick Reichheld
• Profile exposure = revealing of personal info by stakeholders. The more customers divulge about themselves, the less convenient it becomes for them to switch to other providers.
• Emotional connections...by leveraging common interests, an organization provides its stakeholders with a reason to keep returning to its Web site.
• Web sites can deliver. "Customers are attracted to these Web sites because it gives them an outlet for creativity, instant access to and potential recognition among an audience of millions." -- Steve Coffey of Media Matrix
• Personalize a Web site:
   
• Give the site a byline
• Put top executives online
• Listen and respond
• Provide choices in content
• Give the visitor control
• Track information and preferences
• Tailor offers based on the profile database
• Encourage inter-stakeholder relationships
• Make navigation easy
• Keep improving
• Web site evolution: from brochureware (branding) to e-commerce (selling) to e-business (relating).
• Customer characteristics: People like to participate ("flappergate") and they like to see themselves.
• You must give customers access to the entire company...Accounts Payable, Customer Service, Public Relations, the whole organization...an open Internet forum, not a gatekeeper mentality.
• Customer loyalty pyramid
   
• Beginners: First-timers to the site, just browsing or searching for info. Tentative, need direction, looking for comfort. Allegiance is with the site that sent them, not your company.
• Intermediates: They have started participating in the site and have purchased at least once. May participate by submitting a review or joining an online discussion. They are looking for people to relate to and often want the site to adapt to them.
• Experts: Most desirable customers...they work together with other customers, serve as mentors, etc. They give you credibility, because they don't work for you. Even if you get a "squawker," it's still better not to stifle the dissent, because its very presence on your site tends to enhance your credibility.
   
• "Junkies" -- Goal-driven. They come in, get what they want, and get out
• It's best not to constantly change the front page and the basic navigation (preserve continuity), but the content should be refreshed.
• "Residents" -- Spend hours on a site, gravitate toward others with common interest, support each other, love to be recognized, are often introverted. They tend to give to the community what they themselves want most in return.
• "Guides" -- Volunteers, community leaders, monitors. They take a degree of responsibility within the online continuity. They have allegiance to their flock, not the company (they are not paid). If they take a position with a company, they are called hosts, but they are still more aligned with their flock than with the company.
• Horizontal e-communities: Based totally on demographics. Usually not as strong as groups of stakeholders with shared interest. Tighter bonds are formed by giving visitors the opportunity to break into smaller, SIG-like groups.
• Vertical E-communities: Based on psychographics. Visitors share common interests, activities, or values. They tend to be smaller but more concentrated--and more likely to develop strong bonds among members.
• When Amazon.com was first cranking up, one of the ways they built up their cyber community was running an audience participation promotion. Readers made daily contributions to an online "novel by committee" that developed in real time. The title of this literary masterpiece was Murder Makes the Magazine. John Updike wrote the first few paragraphs; for 44 days customers sent in candidate follow-on paragraphs, and Updike picked the winner each day. The result was 5 to 10 thousand submittals per day, in 1996 -- when the Web was just taking off. A strong cyber community resulted.
• The funerary industry is largely untapped for e-commerce. In some states, bring this industry online will be difficult because licensed morticians have a stranglehold on the business. Still, recent court cases augur well toward an opening up of competition in this sensitive (and also profitable!) line of work. The presenter told how one mortuary featured a casket with a large tag painted on it: "Return to sender." Online memorials are another e-commerce opportunity that has barely been tapped.
• Portals = little vendor "booths" in an online marketplace, often centered around a certain line of products (e.g., wedding support). Portal owners pay about 6% to the marketplace site owner.
• Examples of successful e-commerce sites and chat communities:
   
• Dell Computer. Probably the most profitable e-business on the Web. On the home page, visitors are immediately drawn to their group before looking at the computers or encountering any prices or sales material. Thus, people are routed to their areas of need; they feel comfortable; and they buy. The whole architecture is driven totally by user need, user preferences, and user desires.
• Cafe Utne. The Utne Reader online. A place to explore new ideas. Won the Webby Award for best online community. Wide range of topics.
• eMarketer. Message board of items relevant to e-marketing. Threads (74) can be searched. There are many repeat contributors; experts identify themselves in their areas of expertise.
• webICQ. One of the earliest examples. Visitors groups for every topic imaginable. Purely for chatting...a very large group of users.
• mtbREVIEW. Customer reviews of mountain bike parts, supplies, companies, etc. Message boards for any topics related to mountain biking. Companies can advertise and sell their parts through the site.
• eGroups. Visitors can join groups or start their own. Visitors answer each other's questions. In the Italy section, Italians help travelers plan their trips, offering intimate local insight and knowledge. Won the Readers' Choice Award.
• Ad sales depend on hits, click-throughs, dwell time. There is no universal unit of measure for viewership/readership and no objective validation agency (such as Nielsen ratings that drive TV advertising prices).
• Search engines are no longer a very good marketing medium, because the number of hits is becoming so astronomical that even if you max out every possible programming ploy to get selected, your chance of getting into the top 10 or 20 items listed is infinitesimal.
• Mass media advertising is an effective way to promote Web site visitation.
• Your Web site URL should be on every business promotional product, brochure, business cards, advertisement, etc.
• Web references on e-commerce:
   
• The ClueTrain Manifesto
• Futurize Your Enterprise
• The Online Community Report
• The Virtual Community
• Reading list
   
• Futurize Your Enterprise, by David Siegel.
• Community Building on the Web, by Dr. Amy Jo Kim.
• The Virtual Community, by Howard Rheingold.
• Hosting Web Communities: Building Relationships, Increasing Customer Loyalty, and Maintaining a Competitive Edge, by Cliff Figalio.
• Conclusion: For long-term Web success, companies must move to become customer-driven communities.