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Too often, Corporate America is too internally
focused when they craft their digital footprints on the
Web. It almost requires the customer to have already
learned the corporate structure and lingo to navigate
a Web site. Recently, I went online to look for a consumer
product produced by a major American manufacturer. After
I arrived at their online doorstep, I first had to select
the language in which I wished to communicate with them.
The site came back with another page asking for my choice
of continent, which I dutifully provided. The next page
continued the query, asking for the division I was looking
for. After a few more pages, I finally got to what I
wanted, but the company was banking on visitors' willingness
to persist despite the many opportunities to simply click
away - and that can be dangerous.
If you care about your customers, you probably don't
want to put all those hurdles in front of them. That
means that the first step in planning your Web site is
to define what your business is and who your customers
are. These are crucial strategic choices that need to
be made. When a real estate broker develops a Web site,
he must first articulate who his firm's target customers
are - the customers who have and will continue to contribute
to his success. A key objective of the Web site might
be to support his strategic decision to pursue specific
target markets. High net worth empty nesters looking
for in-city easy living have different buying criteria
and motives than young first time home buyers looking
to move into good neighborhoods with good schools. They
also have different financial needs, and differ in their
knowledge and sophistication in real estate transactions.
Likewise, a business-to-business engineering firm manufacturing
parts needs to clearly define their business and their
target customers. For example, their products may be
high-end specialty manufacturing parts developed to meet
high engineering specifications. Their competitive advantage
may include the availability of highly specialized equipment,
well-trained technicians and operators, and very experienced
engineering staff who can meet complex design requirements
with precision.
Your business, of course, has its own unique qualities.
But regardless of what your specific business is, a key
question to defining the architecture and design elements
of your Web site is asking: What is your business? What
is your market niche?
Another crucial question is: What goes on in your customer's
buying process? What factors affect their purchasing
criteria? Who are the decision makers? The gatekeepers?
What do they look for in their technical evaluation?
Their economic considerations? Profiling your customers'
demographics and psychographics is an important first
step in building a highly successful site. The next step
is structuring the site so it engages and impresses your
customers. If your site matches their needs, they will
follow your lead to relevant information about how your
offerings can meet their specific requirements, and will
answer your call for action.
Often businesses find that their different product lines
or services cater to different target customer groups.
You may decide to focus your Internet effort on pushing
specific offerings. In other cases you may want to address
the needs of all your major target customer groups. If
so, a good approach is to profile the key audiences and
identify their main objectives and their criteria for
giving your offerings a positive evaluation. Then design
the site so it will provide easy paths for each of your
audiences to follow. Structure those paths to match your
customers' points of view, and you won't spend the rest
of your time worrying that their next click will be on
your competitor's Web site.
Copyright Eva Chiu. Appeared
in Venturer and InfoAdvantage.
E-Business
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