262 Chapter 12 Running an E-commerce Site n Provide services or digital goods n Add value to goods or services n Cut costs Sections of many Web sites will fit more than one of these categories.What follows is a description of each category, and the usual way of making each generate revenue or other benefits for your organization. The goal of this section of the book is to help you formulate your goals.Why do you want a Web site? How is each feature built in to your Web site going to contribute to your business? Online Brochures Nearly all the commercial Web sites in the early 1990s were simply an online brochure or sales tool.This type of site is still the most common form of commercial Web site. Either as an initial foray onto the Web, or as a low-cost advertising exercise, this type of site makes sense for many businesses. A brochureware site can be anything from a business card rendered as a Web page to an extensive collection of marketing information. In any case, the purpose of the site, and its financial reason for existing, is to entice customers to make contact with your business. This type of site does not generate any income directly, but can add to the revenue your business receives via traditional means. Developing a site like this presents few technical challenges.The issues faced are simi- lar to those in other marketing exercises. A few of the more common pitfalls with this type of site include n Failing to provide important information n Poor presentation n Not answering feedback generated by the site n Allowing a site to age n Not tracking the success of the site Failing to Provide Important Information What are visitors likely to be seeking when they visit your site? Depending on how much they already know, they might want detailed product specifications, or they might just want very basic information such as contact details. Many Web sites provide no useful information, or miss crucial information. At the very least, your site needs to tell visitors what you do, what geographical areas your busi- ness services, and how to make contact. 16 525x ch12 1/24/03 2:57 PM Page 262 263 Types of Commercial Web Sites Poor Presentation “On the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog,” or so goes the old saying. 1 In the same way that small businesses, or dogs, can look larger and more impressive when they are using the Internet, large businesses can look small, unprofessional, and unimpressive with a poor Web site. Regardless of the size of your company, make sure that your Web site is of a high standard.Text should be written and proofread by somebody with a very good grasp of the language being used. Graphics should be clean, clear, and fast to download. On a business site, you should carefully consider your use of graphics and color, and make sure that they fit the image you would like to present. Use animation and sound carefully if at all. Although you will not be able make your site look the same on all machines, operat- ing systems, and browsers, make sure that it is viewable and does not give errors to the vast majority of users. Not Answering Feedback Generated by the Web Site Good customer service is just as vital in attracting and retaining customers on the Web as it is in the outside world. Large and small companies are guilty of putting an email address on a Web page, and then neglecting to check or answer that mail promptly. People have different expectations of response times to email than to postal mail. If you do not check and respond to mail daily, people will believe that their inquiry is not important to you. Email addresses on Web pages should usually be generic, addressed to job title or department, rather than a specific person.What will happen to mail sent to fred.smith@example.com when Fred leaves? Mail addressed to sales@example.com is more likely to be passed to his successor. It could also be delivered to a group of people, which might help ensure that it is answered promptly. Allowing a Site to Age You need to be careful to keep your Web site fresh. Content needs to be changed peri- odically. Changes in the organization need to be reflected on the site. A “cobweb” site discourages repeat visits, and leads people to suspect that much of the information might now be incorrect. One way to avoid a stale site is to manually update pages. Another is to use a scripting language such as PHP to create dynamic pages. If your scripts have access to up-to-date information, they can constantly generate up-to-date pages. Not Tracking the Success of the Site Creating a Web site is all well and good, but how do you justify the effort and expense? Particularly if the site is for a large company, there will come a time when you are asked to demonstrate or quantify its value to the organization. 1 Of course, an “old saying” about the Internet cannot really be very old.This is the caption from a cartoon by Peter Steiner originally published in the July 5, 1993, issue of The New Yorker. 16 525x ch12 1/24/03 2:57 PM Page 263 264 Chapter 12 Running an E-commerce Site For traditional marketing campaigns, large organizations spend tens of thousands of dol- lars on market research, both before launching a campaign and after the campaign to measure its effectiveness. Depending on the scale and budget of your Web venture, these measures might be equally appropriate to aid in the design and measurement of your site. Simpler or cheaper options include Examining Server Logs: Web servers store a lot of data about every request from your server. Much of this data is useless, and its sheer bulk makes it useless in its raw form.To distill your log files into a meaningful summary, you need a log file analyzer. Tw o of the better-known free programs are Analog, which is available from http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~sret1/analog,and Webalizer, available from http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/. Commercial programs such as Summary, available from http://summary.net, might be more comprehensive.A log file analyz- er will show you how traffic to your site changes over time and what pages are being viewed. Monitoring Sales: Your online brochure is supposed to generate sales.You should be able to estimate its effect on sales by comparing sales levels before and after the launch of the site.This obviously becomes difficult if other kinds of marketing cause fluctuations in the same period. Soliciting User Feedback: If you ask them, your users will tell you what they think of your site. Providing a feedback form or email address will gather some useful opin- ions.To increase the quantity of feedback, you might like to offer a small inducement, such as entry into a prize draw for all respondents. Surveying Representative Users: Holding focus groups can be an effective tech- nique for evaluating your site, or even a prototype of your intended site.To conduct a focus group, you simply need to gather some volunteers, encourage them to evaluate the site, and then interview them to gauge and record their opinions. Focus groups can be expensive affairs, conducted by professional facilitators, who evalu- ate and screen potential participants to try to ensure that they accurately represent the spread of demographics and personalities in the wider community and then skillfully interview participants. Focus groups can also cost nothing, be run by an amateur, and be populated by a sample of people whose relevance to the target market is unknown. Paying a specialist market research company is one way to get a well-run focus group and useful results, but it is not the only way. If you are running your own focus groups, choose a skilful moderator.The moderator should have excellent people skills and not have a bias or stake in the result of the research. Limit group sizes to six to ten people. The moderator should be assisted by a recorder or secretary to leave the moderator free to facilitate discussion.The result that you get from your groups will only be as relevant as the sample of people you use. If you evaluate your product only with friends and fam- ily of your staff, they are unlikely to represent the general community. 16 525x ch12 1/24/03 2:57 PM Page 264 265 Types of Commercial Web Sites Taking Orders for Goods or Services If your online advertising is compelling, the next logical step is to allow your customers to order while still online.Traditional salespeople know that it is important to get the customer to make a decision now.The more time you give people to reconsider a pur- chasing decision, the more likely they are to shop around or change their mind. If a cus- tomer wants your product, it is in your best interests to make the purchase as quick and easy as possible. Forcing people to hang up their modem and call a phone number or visit a store places obstacles in their way. If you have online advertising that has con- vinced a viewer to buy, let them buy now, without leaving your Web site. Taking orders on a Web site makes sense for many businesses. Every business wants orders. Allowing people to place orders online can either provide additional sales, or reduce the workload of your salespeople.There will obviously be costs involved. Building a dynamic site, organizing payment facilities, and providing customer service all cost money.Try to determine whether your products are suitable for an e-commerce site. Products that are commonly bought using the Internet include books and magazines, computer software and equipment, music, clothing, travel, and tickets to entertainment events. Just because your product is not in one of these categories, do not despair.Those cat- egories are already crowded with established brands. However, you would be wise to consider some of the factors that make these products big online sellers. Ideally, an e-commerce product is nonperishable and easily shipped, expensive enough to make shipping costs seem reasonable, yet not so expensive that the purchaser feels compelled to physically examine the item before purchase. The best e-commerce products are commodities. If you buy an avocado, you will probably want to look at the particular avocado and perhaps feel it. All avocados are not the same. One copy of a book, CD, or computer program is usually identical to other copies of the same title. Purchasers do not need to see the particular item they will pur- chase. In addition, e-commerce products should appeal to people who use the Internet. At the time of writing, this audience consists primarily of employed, younger adults, with above-average incomes, living in metropolitan areas. 2 With time, though, the online pop- ulation is beginning to look more like the whole population. Some products are never going to be reflected in surveys of e-commerce purchases, but are still a success. If you have a product that appeals only to a niche market, the Internet might be the ideal way to reach buyers. Some products are unlikely to succeed as e-commerce categories. Cheap, perishable items, such as groceries, seem a poor choice, although this has not deterred companies from trying, mostly unsuccessfully. Other categories suit brochureware sites very well, but not online ordering. Big, expensive items fall into this category—items such as vehicles and real estate that require a lot of research before purchasing, but that are too expensive to order without seeing and impractical to deliver. 2 Use of Internet by Householders, Australia, Feb 2000 (Cat. No. 8147.0) Australian Bureau of Statistics 16 525x ch12 1/24/03 2:57 PM Page 265 266 Chapter 12 Running an E-commerce Site There are a number of obstacles to convincing a prospective purchaser to complete an order.These include n Unanswered questions n Tr ust n Ease of use n Compatibility If a user is frustrated by any of these obstacles, she is likely to leave without buying. Unanswered Questions If a prospective customer cannot find an immediate answer to one of her questions, she is likely to leave.This has a number of implications. Make sure that your site is well organized. Can a first-time visitor find what she wants easily? Make sure your site is comprehensive, without overloading visitors. On the Web, people are more likely to scan than to carefully read, so be concise. For most advertising media, there are practical limits on how much information you can provide.This is not true for a Web site. For a Web site, the two main limits are the cost of creating and updating information and limits imposed by how well you can organize, layer, and connect information so as not to over- whelm visitors. It is tempting to think of a Web site as an unpaid, never sleeping, automatic salesper- son, but customer service is still important. Encourage visitors to ask questions.Try to provide immediate or nearly immediate answers via phone, email, or some other conven- ient means. Trust If a visitor is not familiar with your brand name, why should he trust you? Anybody can put together a Web site. People do not need to trust you to read your brochureware site, but placing an order requires a certain amount of faith. How is a visitor to know whether you are a reputable organization, or the aforementioned dog? People are concerned about a number of things when shopping online: n What are you going to do with their personal information? Are you going to sell it to others, use it to send them huge amounts of advertising, or store it somewhere insecurely so that others can gain access to it? It is important to tell people what you will and will not do with their data.This is called a privacy policy and should be easily accessible on your site. n Are you a reputable business? If your business is registered with the relevant authority in a particular place, has a physical address and a phone number, and has been in business for a number of years, it is less likely to be a scam than a business that consists solely of a Web site and perhaps a post office box. Make sure that you display these details. 16 525x ch12 1/24/03 2:57 PM Page 266 . such as PHP to create dynamic pages. If your scripts have access to up-to-date information, they can constantly generate up-to-date pages. Not Tracking the Success of the Site Creating a Web site. as vital in attracting and retaining customers on the Web as it is in the outside world. Large and small companies are guilty of putting an email address on a Web page, and then neglecting to. small, unprofessional, and unimpressive with a poor Web site. Regardless of the size of your company, make sure that your Web site is of a high standard.Text should be written and proofread by somebody