If you build it, they will come. Or will they? What are the key elements that make up a commercially    successful Web site? How do you build sites that generate customer demand and increase sales volume?

Hello there. Let’s talk about strategies for developing a successful ecommerce Web site.

As we replace face to face communication with our electronic commerce tools, we need to ensure that we don’t sacrifice the relationships those opportunities have provided. Face to face communication allows for the obvious issue of customer service, but it also allows for upselling, hands on maintenance of customer loyalty and more. Replacing front lines sales channels with Web pages opens the company up to unprecedented global reach, but there has to be thought about replacing or supplementing the value of face to face communication. Although many people compete successfully in the ecommerce frontier on price, there are many other components of the consumer relationship that have to be replicated or supplemented for the ecommerce experience to successfully migrate from the present day online world of early adopters to a fully mainstream audience.

One means of enhancing a consumer’s experience is to create a community on the Web site. Likely you’ve heard about Amazon.com. One of their most successful strategies was creating the opportunity for users to write book reviews. Users not only can search for books by title and topic; they can read the comments of other users and post their own. While people bemoan the replacement of the local bookstore with the behemoth discount seller, the online bookstores are able to provide the best of both worlds. The personal touch of recommendations and reviews combined with the heavy discounts of volume dealers.

Another way to create a community is through the use of forums. Forums have been very successful on the Sympatico Web site. Every minute another post is added to the site. Sympatico does a great job of both moderating these groups as well as bringing great comments from users forward onto the homepage and other key areas in order to draw even more traffic in.

Another technique for developing a successful ecommerce site is customization. Customization means allowing the user to create a personalized view of the information on the site. If you allow the user to create a personal profile, they will invest the time to customize the content. And once they’ve invested the time to create a personal profile, they are more likely to return regularly. For example, the My Shokkoran site allows the user to create a customized view of the news categories that interest them most, plus their astrological sign, weather in several cities, top stocks, and sports scores. Yahoo reports that while only 10% of their users use their personalized services, that 10% uses the site five times more often.

Personalization is a strategy for targeting the consumer with information relevant to them. A great example of personalization comes from the online advertising arena. Using products like NetGravity or DoubleClick, sites target ads that best match the users demographic profile. For example, ads about minivans can be shown to a woman with children. Imoney (internet money) is building features that respond to an individual users needs. For instance, there’s a news release about a specific stock an imoney user is tracking. He receives an email displaying the news and a prompt to buy or sell the stock. Let’s say it’s a month before a consumers existing car insurance policy expires. With personalization, alerts will remind him to renew his policy and provide him with a way and means to contact you directly..

Transacting on the Web doesn’t have the human component, it is important to ensure that the user feels that the site is as fresh and as up-to-date as receiving a " Sears catalog " in today’s mail. Dynamism can be a cost-effective way to add a sense of relevancy and freshness to your site. A changing date, a what’s new announcement, a product blurb, a quote from a happy customer, these are all bits of content that can be quickly added to the homepage to let the user know the content has been recently modified and is maintained. One of the problems with the Web is that it is hard to tell the date of when something was created. You don’t know if the prices you are seeing are valid, if the product is still available, and so on. By creating the impression the site is dynamic, the user will have more faith that the information is valid.

Content is a key component is any successful Web site. The online world has evolved as a source of information, and that is a defining characteristic of the online consumer. The number one thing people look for when shopping online is detailed information about a product or service.

Although selling financial products is ultimately what imoney is about, content is used to provide groundwork for the user and facilitate that process. An entire section called knowledge base provides an in-depth educational guide that works for both the person new to personal finance and the seasoned investor. Another section called timely information provides all the current rates a consumer would need in addition to the Financial Post, Reuters, 680 News and other business news. The content on imoney is purely a value add. It’s a highly trafficked and the strategy is "once they bookmark us " they will come to us for a transaction.

Provide content for the consumer who is looking for it, but be sure it is relevant to the consumer’s needs. A site shouldn’t contain information for stockholders unless it is directly relevant to a stockholder consumer.

Another important strategy for an ecommerce site is to provide customer service channels. Two things are required on every ecommerce site. The opportunity for the user to send email and a well-written section about any customer service concerns a user may have. In addition to that, and while this may scare some, it is required as we move into serious levels of online transactions, is a staffed customer support team. The imoney is unique in that we have a 24-hour a day call centre. The number is prominently displayed throughout the site just in case the online help features aren’t sufficient. With the number of users who are still novices joining the ranks, it’s an important investment for a commerce site to provide the means for a customer to call and ask questions. It provides an invaluable means for consumers using the site, but it has also provided us with an invaluable channel for user feedback.

Today’s online consumers need education and reassurance. Much of the media’s attention on internet privacy and security has contained more hype than fact.

A successful commerce site will provide an assurance about the privacy of their personal information and their transaction behavior. This can be addressed by developing a privacy policy, which is a statement about what information is being collected and how it is being used. Establish links to this policy from obvious places like the homepage and pages requiring personal information. An explicit "SPAM" statement will also reassure the user that it is safe to provide your site with their personal information.

Also, users still require strong assurance about the security of their transactions. Your site should contain easily accessible, clearly written material on what security measures are being employed by the site. If cookies are being used, a section devoted to how you use cookies and their harmlessness should be in a site FAQ.

Providing a quality experience on the Web site is essential. We now know that a) the dominant method people acquire browsers is via bundling with hardware, software, and Internet Service Providers and b) the majority of users never switch browsers (even among users who have been on the Internet for over three years). Even though the 4.0 browsers are over a year old now, over 50% of money’s traffic visits the site with a 3.0 browser. Even though the features of the 4.0 browsers are enticing, simple design is still the rule of the day for most sites.

Over 3000 people in the a survey answered questions of what they thought the most frustrating experiences to online shopping were:

                • Sites are too slow

• The layout is confusing

• I couldn’t find what I was looking for

This list should be a no brainer for us as we work to improve our sites. We all suffer from the slowness of the Net, but we can control the number of graphics we use, optimize the quality of our HTML, and devote proper bandwidth and CPU resources to our Web servers. As for a confusing layout, using the Net is still a fairly new thing for many Web users. Our designs have to be clear and simple, and our use of navigation extensive. Clear well-written copy is another aid to helping the user navigate the site and find what they are looking for.

In evaluating the potential successes of ecommerce sites consider the adaptability quotient of the online ventures. Adaptability to the Net means does it make sense to conduct that transaction online as opposed to other mediums. For example, people regularly state that ecommerce is best suited to the things that you don’t need to touch and see in order to purchase them, like travel or a book. However clothing sites like Lands End have done quite well. Catalog shopping is a major business and consumers have the opportunity to learn more about a product online. 

Some concepts just make sense for the Web. There was a great survey done in a recent edition of Yahoo Internet Life that compared doing things the "Old Way" versus the Net way. Three tests were conducted for finance matters - buying a stock, converting currency, and refinancing a home mortgage. The author reports, "For following and buying stocks, tracking financial news and markets, moving money around, and banking, the Internet is taking over. The only time I found that the Net failed was when I wanted specific financial advice - I had to call a broker." The Net Way aced the report card.

The Internet adaptability ratio of imoney is high: handling your finances through the Web is a natural fit. Imoney is about many things, chief of which is putting control where it belongs — with the consumer.

How do you do that? By being a premiere interactive ecommerce website where consumers can access timely business news, personal finance resource material, analytical tools and conduct online transactions directly with participating financial companies.

My strategy is simple: combine the best unbiased information and product with a comprehensive selection, so that the consumer makes their first and only stop when they are searching for any product or service on your website.

Why is money different? One reason is that we’re comprehensive

The service has breadth and depth within the credit, investment, and insurance sectors. With the imoney service, people can get information on and purchase a wide range of products from mutual funds, stocks, GICs and mortgages through to car insurance and personable product lines.

Second, consumers also have free access to a wealth of educational information, business news, economic research, as well as the use of our comprehensive range of analytical tools. What we’re doing is automating the whole buying process.

CONCLUSION:

I haven’t discussed about advertising and marketing methods of bringing people in to your site. That is a whole other discussion. But I do hope that I have provided you with some strategies you can employ to leverage your online channels even further. I realize that some of the ideas I have suggested such as personalization and customization require significant technical development, however I believe creative methods would allow the same ends to be achieved.

I hope this has given real insight on my mission for you the consumer and the small business person.