The customer was king in the realm of e-commerce when Internet visionary Ms Patty Seybold addressed more than 200 business leaders in Dublin this week.
Speaking at the ceo.forum in University College Dublin, Ms Seybold outlined how the Internet could be used to make life easier for customers. The event was hosted by Deloitte & Touche and Enterprise Ireland.
"Lots of companies think about their websites in terms of functional items, like shopping carts, and they don't think about the process for the customer. They need to organise information about products to make it easy for the customer to make decisions," she told The Irish Times.
The management of good quality content has emerged as one of the most important components of a successful website and Ms Seybold even suggested that that bastion of Internet propriety, Amazon.com, left a lot to be desired in the area of content management.
"They are doing a poor job. You know the books are there, but they just can't be found."
While much Internet activity can be outsourced to specialists, including technology implementation, security and design, she recommends retaining two key components of the website - the customer information database and content.
Ms Seybold, the author of Business Week best seller, Customers.com, says: "The customer database is the crown jewel of any organisation, everything revolves around that. And only your company understands what customers need to know about your products, so it should control the content."
Another classic mistake is leaving a company's IT department to drive the e-commerce initiative. She says the key to success is ensuring the process is directed and managed from board level down.
What has also emerged is the importance of integrating information generated through the website with call-centre and customer-support activity. Ms Seybold says this is proving to be one of the most difficult tasks in creating a successful website.
She cites the example of Boo.com, the newly launched retail website which carries major brand names for sport and street wear. It had to delay its expected launch date by around six months in order to get its call centres up to speed before the business could get under way.
She also warns that the decision to incorporate the Internet as a revenue model will not reap immediate rewards.
"I believe it's absolutely possible to have a profitable e-commerce strategy, but don't expect to make money in the first three years. Whatever you spend each year, you will spend again the following year, and maybe even double it. You don't maintain a website, you redesign it as it evolves."
Once a commercial website is up and running successfully, Ms Seybold says it is often the case that it becomes the driving engine of an organisation.
"Many of the pioneers say their e-business project, which originally ran separately, is now driving the entire redesign of all internal processes, from design and manufacturing to distribution policy."
With recent advances in technology, Ms Seybold says it is important to remember when designing a website that its reach can be extended to wireless devices like mobile phones and palm tops.
Probably the most interesting aspect of Ms Seybold's presentation was her public admission that Internet portals may be overrated.
Portals are best described as gateway access points to the Internet which are supposed to attract all manner of credit-card waving consumers if they are done properly.
But Ms Seybold proclaimed: "If you build it, they won't come." Portals since their inception, have been advertising driven, which had the net effect of pulling people away from the portal, or deterring them from visiting it in the first place. Quite simply - much like the real world - serious consumers don't have a lot of time to hang out at Internet portals.
Ms Seybold outlined instead the digital market model which focuses on niche consumer requirements. For example a site specialising in outdoor travel might offer not just clothing and equipment, but holiday travel packages and accommodation from multiple vendors.
"People want to do all their related shopping in one place with a single checkout transaction. They can place multiple orders with multiple companies, but do one set of order tracking." Ms Seybold cited BuildNet.com as one of the first examples of an operational digital market.
Another emerging model for e-commerce is the syndication of content and transaction capability to other websites. This makes up-to-date product information and purchasing available through thousands of websites.
Ms Seybold outlined the concept of Manufacturer's Aisles where a company offered its range through a retailer, but supplied all of the product information in real time. Any online orders are automatically relayed to the manufacturer, giving it ownership of the branded experience. Keds.com is currently operating a similar system through J C Penney in the US. Looking further into the future, Ms Seybold envisages Scenario Nets built specifically to meet purchasing scenarios. For example if someone wished to buy a house, they need to find it, furnish it, mortgage it, landscape it and insure it.
A Scenario Net will allow users move from website to website conducting their necessary transactions, but bringing their accumulated customer information with them, so they do not have to re-input the details of their scenario for each purchasing experience.
Ms Seybold, who operates an e-commerce and technology consulting firm in Boston, touched on a lot of potential versions of the current reality, but the central theme running through each, was convenience to the customer.
Despite the roller-coaster pace of Internet change, there is something reassuring that one of the constants remains the consumer. As in the real world, the same rules apply, the customer still is king.
