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BeOnTheNet'sElectronic
Commerce |
Volume 3 Number 1 January 2002
ISSN: 1520-8095
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In This Issue:
Will your business be a "Steam Engine Railroad" in the "Age of Air Travel"
Online Buying & Selling - The Next Big Thing
Short Notes - A collection of interesting Internet E-Commerce quotes
Will your business be a "Steam Engine Railroad" in the "Age of Air Travel"
A couple of weeks back I ordered some software from Xoom. I was in no particular rush for it so I had it shipped UPS Ground. When It had not arrived within a week or so I thought I'd give them a call, I remembered that they had sent me a confirmation e-mail indicating that it had been shipped so I went back to that e-mail to get the order number etc.
Upon closer reading I realized that not only had they included the normal information but they had included the UPS tracking number and a hyperlink to a UPS tracking Query page on their Website with the tracking number already included I clicked on it from within my e-mail screen and within seconds was staring at the full blow by blow description :
- When it was picked up
- when it left Provo Utah
- When it was sent to Salt Lake
- When It Arrived In Denver
- When It left Denver
- When it Arrived In New Jersey
- When It Left New Jersey and that it was still in transit
I called the company, was on hold for a while, then spoke to a courteous customer service representative, who queried an in-house online database for the status of my order. Then she contacted someone else, by phone, to find out when it was shipped. Then she told me that, since we were coming into the holiday season and UPS was still recovering from the strike, to give it a couple of more days and call her at her extension if my package hadn't arrived.
At that time, I was pleased with the way I was handled by this customer service rep. But, think about it - she answered my call and queried the in-house database in about 5 minutes, then she called the warehouse to find out when the order was shipped and that person found out in about another 6-7 minutes. Then she explained the shipping date etc. to me and concluded the call ( another 2-3 minutes) . So we have the customer service rep's time 13-15 minutes + warehouse person's time 6-7 minutes plus my time, including initial time on hold, 20 minutes. 45 minutes of labor a year ago for a satisfactory experience for me the customer!
Would you say that given this week's experience that the Internet has "raised the bar" of expectation for this consumer? YOU BET IT HAS! In addition, Xoom and UPS, with this Internet system in place, are saving a bundle. Suppose 1 out of a 100 packages is slow, causing a call - how much money are both of these companies saving - not to mention the value of customer satisfaction.
In the 1940's railroads forgot that they were in the "transportation business" not in the "railroad business". The US government virtually had to force a myriad of small airline operator's to band together into larger companies so that it could construct national airmail delivery routes and contracts. Out of that pressure, came such companies as American Airlines and US Air. The railroads could have been into the Airline Business in a heartbeat with a minimum expenditure of capital . But they were not looking at the horizon.
Is your company looking at the horizon? An Internet industry guru ( Esther Dyson, I think) said in 1996 that "If you are not on the Information Super Highway by 1999. You will be road kill in the year 2000!" I think, in retrospect, that that prediction had much more meaning than most people gave it at the time.
How many of your competitors have web sites? How many of them are using it for something to advance their business as opposed to a simple corporate public relations site.
- How many are using the Internet and e-mail to forge closer bonds with their customers and suppliers?
- How many are selling merchandise directly from their web sites?
- How many are using Internet technology to provide superior 24 hour a day customer service.?
- How many are lowering their operating costs and increasing the productivity of their sales and service people?
Online Buying & Selling - The Next Big Thing
The 2001 online holiday shopping season came to a close with Americans spending $13.8 billion during the eight weeks in November and December, according to the eSpending report released January 7, 2002 by Goldman Sachs, Harris InteractiveSM and Nielsen//NetRatings.
In addition Overall customer satisfaction rose during the holiday season, as 86 percent of online shoppers surveyed cited that they were satisfied with their experience. Of those surveyed, 24 percent said that they had a better experience shopping on the Web this season compared to last year.
A recent NFO study of more than 2,000 consumers found that 72 percent of Americans rank convenience as the No. 1 factor affecting their decision of where to shop. With this in mind, many consumers are planning to spend less time in retail stores and more time online, especially in comparison to 2000, with three out of 10 respondents stating that they would spend more time shopping online this year. People are still planning on going into the bricks and mortar stores -- as long as they're convenient and affordable.
Surveys show that an area of particularly good growth are "niche" sites. Items that are novel, foreign, or difficult to find locally. Products that aren't just a little more convenient to find using the Web, but a lot more convenient. Think about it. 68% of people say that convenience is the number one reason for shopping online. Over 70% of people who buy online have found the item they are buying after using a search engine. Hard to get items that you might find for sale in only one or two places in a major metropolitan area, can now be found in minutes from the convenience of your home or office at any hour of the day or night. You can find that truly unique item or gift you are looking for in less time than it would take you to go to the nearest supermarket for a loaf of bread!
But, the time to act is now. Building an ecommerce site on the web is really no different from building a store in the real world. It's just faster and cheaper. However, that virtual store will still require time, effort and investment to develop and market it and build a following of customers. A simple thing like registering a web site with the multitude of search engines can be accomplished in a day, (A service we offer). That registration has to be followed up on, because you can't expect to see your site show up in many of the search engines in less than 2-6 weeks. Then once they do show up they may require resubmission and change to improve their relative positions.
Don't expect to put up a web store and be deluged with orders overnight. Even if you spend a lot of money on web advertising, it still takes time to get the word out. The novelty of getting visitors simply because you are now on the web has long since disappeared.
You must look at the web in terms of your overall marketing efforts. If you currently advertise in print media now, think about how long it would take to add a simple "www.mystore.com" to your current print ads. For a newspaper ad probably a week to ten days, for a magazine ad no less than 2 - 3 months. Hell, it would probably take at least a week to add a simple e-mail address to your business card.
In our experience the slowest process in building a web site is getting the information we need from our clients. Because, for most of them, time to work on their web site comes after everything else. Which means that they frequently go days between doing any work on it at all. A simple thing like determining what items to put up for sale can drag on and on. Most businesses do 80% of their volume with 20% of their merchandise. But, if you currently sell 1000 items, how many of you could come up with a list of your best selling 200 items within a day?
Yes, building a web site can usually be done quickly, but a web site developer can't build a web site in a vacuum. You must spend time with them. And, you must give your web site development a high priority in getting it done. So don't delay. It's too late to get in on the "ground floor" of the Internet. If you wait much longer to truly include the web in your overall marketing strategy you may find that time and your competitors have passed you by.
Short Notes - A collection of interesting Internet E-Commerce quotes
Andersen Consulting estimates that the online market for groceries and related expenditures – such as stamps, dry cleaning and film developing – could reach $85 billion by 2007.
The top 5 reasons people will buy groceries online:
- Convenience - 68%
- 24 Hour access - 66%
- Can Shop without leaving home - 60%
- Save time - 60%
- Save Money - 57%
- Source Netsmart Research
Negroponte Predicts Explosive E-Commerce Growth
Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology media lab, and famed Internet Guru said while speaking at the Electronic Commerce World trade show in Denver, that the prospects for e-commerce growth are greatly underestimated. He estimated that online revenues, by the year 2002, will exceed $1 trillion!
How many online?
A survey by Harris Interactive is interesting not for what it found, but for what it didn't find
-- specifically, no sizeable increase in the U.S. adult Internet population for the first time since
1994.
Are you online yet? Visit us at beonthenet.com and get a free consultation.
