WhyWaitForever - London - Business

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Business

Major costs in any business are property (see WhyWaitForever - London - Property ), energy (see WhyWaitForever - London - Energy ) and communications (see WhyWaitForever - London - Phone ).

To many business analysts the Internet is a device for taking money from investors and giving it to advertisers. To venture capitalists the Internet is a device to take money from other investors ideally via an initial public offering. To many customers the internet is a slow, unreliable, insecure form of mail order catalogue.

The UK Government, Department of Trade and Industry,Consumer Affairs exists to ensure that all customers receive a fair deal.

Auctions

These are the major UK and US internet auction web sites. See Auction Net for details on live auctions including insolvency and bankruptcy auctions. Businesses as going concerns can sometimes be bought for amounts far less than would need to be spent in building a similar business from start-up. Auctions and discount houses have always been one way of disposing of excess stock.

Business Exchanges

Exchanges use the communications capabilities of the Internet to match buyers with sellers. Government and industry regulators have taken a keen interest since some fear that the Internet exchanges potentially allow cartels to be formed.

Distribution and Shipping

Few businesses can operate without shipping physical goods to other businesses and customers.

Email, Direct marketing and SPAM

The Direct Marketing Association is keen to sell using the telephone, mailings and emails only to those happy to receive the particular sales messages. They will remove anyone from their lists who asks them to. A company wanting to use direct sales should check their contact lists against the DMA lists. In the UK the telephone number for the Telephone Preference Service is 0845 0700707 and the telephone number for the Mailing Preference Service is 0345 0345999.

Unsolicited bulk email is an invasion of privacy. The following sites aim to advise and educate so that businesses operate in a responsible way and still achieve their commercial objectives.

Even emails that have been requested should be handled in a considerate way. It is better to provide in plain text format simple short sentences containing hyperlinks to the web pages in the sender's web site where more information can be obtained than it is to send long emails with large attachments. Even better for the company visitor statistics can show which parts of the email were most popular.

Attachments which are executable as programs or as scripts are obvious risks and in any event should be filtered out by firewalls and virus sweep programs. Even HTML formatted emails can contain malicious scripts which might run automatically when opened.

The email should always say where the email address was obtained from, when it was obtained and what needs to be done to prevent emails being received from the same source in future.

Marketing, Sales and Public Relations

Business success in this area is about brands and those that create and maintain successful brands. The best way to understand what lessons can be learnt from the success of others is to review the top globally successful brands.

It is a truism that the marketing mix of Internet customers are usually different than the mix of off-line customers. The most successful (and risk adverse and low cost) approach is usually iterative. An assumption is made about the customer mix. A web site is developed to test the assumptions (avoiding a heavy technology spend). The full range of visitor statistics are analysed. The assumptions are amended. The web site is evolved to exploit the most successful areas. The cycle is repeated.

Merchant and Customer Services

Businesses have enough to concern themselves without the need to handle the transfer of money between parties.

Security

This is the topic that will make or break electronic commerce. Security is highly technical subject. Company officers are liable for the consequences of weaknesses in this area yet many companies do not have in-house expertise in place to understand the issues let alone make sure steps are in place to address potential vulnerabilities.

The principles of separation of responsibilities, testing, testing, testing and multiple sites with multiple layers with multiple products all independently configured is still as valid with Internet applications as it was in times gone by.

There are many large ecommerce sites who have topologies of a series of databases (containing all the important information) behind load sharers behind proxies behind firewalls...and of course they use the highest level of encryption to connect to the clients.

Visitor Analysis

These companies offer software and consultancy to maximise visitors to web sites. More and more visits to most web sites are by web robots. It is important to classify visitor information into the categories that are important in the success of the web site. These categories usually include customers, competitors, suppliers and news gatherers.

WhyWaitForever follows the ABC audit guidelines in calculating unique user visits and page impressions. All visits by robots and development processes are disgarded prior to calculating the actual figures for the various categories.

The most important visitor statistic is the number of customers who complete a profitable on-line transaction that was not reversed at a latter time.

If a hotel reservation is made over the Internet but it is amended or cancelled via a later phone call the Internet reservation cannot be counted as a success.

Visitor analysis should identify domains, unique addresses, unique users (ABC definition) and page impressions. The most and least popular pages are key to understanding where improvements to the web site can be made. The searches that were used to find the site and the position of the site within the search results are key to understanding the effectiveness of the hidden "meta data" and the use of HTML tags. Where visitors go especially when they leave the web site is a measure of the "stickyness" of the site.

The best thing about visitor statistics is that they can be built into targets both for in-house developers and for external agencies. Maybe some contracts can be agreed specifying payment by results. If you find web design agencies who are willing to work in this way we would be very keen to hear about them.

Web Awards

This is a good way to understand the approaches that are perceived as best in web site design. Caveat emptor. Always, always check the web site of the web design agency. These invariably are designed for business to business. Always invite the web agency to demonstrate only through a modem whose speed is set to that used by most of your customers.

Venture Capital and Business Incubators

These companies offer business advice and finance to expand businesses. For those with access to Internet marketing and Internet technology skills the cost of entry to an Internet business can be low. Off-line marketing costs can quickly dissapate the largest war chest. High volume, low margin businesses leaves little room for error. Low volume, high margin businesses need time to establish the brand and the qualities of the brand. This time is usually shorterned by competitive threat.

General and Advice

Business Aims

The aims of business change little over the years. The first aim is to make a profit by selling services or products to customers at prices which are attractive. An aim of most business founders is to retain as much independent freedom of action as possible which driving forward the business.

For many years of the last millenium progress was stiffled by trades guilds, cartels, exclusivity and restrictive practices. Quite recently regulation has overcome many inhibitors. To some regulation has gone too far.

The near future is likely to bring freer markets with lighter regulation. Prospects are good for the business founder. Prospects are good for customers.