Avoid Being A Dot-bomb

There is very little difference between a dot com success and a dot-bomb is a mixture of several elements taught in grade 9 business courses.Most of the reasons e-commerce businesses fail are amazingly obvious, and commonly overlooked. Of course, hindsight is 20/20.

The first step, and the defining factor for many businesses is, how do we define "e-commerce success"?

There are some common answers:

- The website needs to make a profit

- The business needs to meet the owner's income - passive income - goals

- Who will pay for the product or service?

- Why didn't the visitor buy the product or service from another website?

The last two factors are vital to any e-commerce business success.Not everyone who visits a website want to buy the product.However, thousands of people who never find the website want to buy the product.The key is to find out how those people search the web, what forums they participate in, what newsletters they belong to, where they have their 'private space', and how can you meet their needs.

Customer Service

The #1 reason why e-commerce businesses fail is because the business owner believes that customer service is not important in an ecommerce business. Nothing is farther from the truth.
Online customers have a choice. They can buy a product from the guy in their forum or who visits their myspace site, or they can buy from a perfect stranger who cannot be contacted.

Customer service in the www world is built on communication.Free chats, answering questions in forums, holding workshops, free information in blogs, newsletters, and even teleconferences are just some of the ways that people come in contact with the web owner.

There is an unwritten rule that 'there are no returns on the net.' That is why communication is so important.Most e-commerce businesses are not about the product, the information, the or the service.It is about the relationship between the business owner and the customer.

That is why sites like www.myspace.com, www.youtube.com ,www.communati.com and other large communities are so successful.

Image

Image is part of the customer service.The image shouldn't be condescending or 'I have it all and you need to buy it.'Instead, it should be 'I figured this out and I'll share my information with you.'

The site must be designed to look and function with the professional edge. That is why many e-commerce sites are building their own Web site mambo.com or Joomla.com platform, using professional templates. There are other content management systems to help owners manage their web content, forums, blog and chat rooms, but these are two of the most popular and most suitable for beginners.

Target Audience

Most Dot Com utilised the latest technology,built the best websites, and forgot to tell their target audience how to use the site.All sites should have several navigation paths that let users find their way around.

They should also include a FAQ with basic and advanced questions.A full time business could also employ a live chat, or a video tutorial that will help users learn how to use the site.Always include a site map that has direct links to important pages in the site.

The next element should be 'instant' samples. This doesn't need to be a part of the product, but it can be power point presentations.In fact, one strong sale's tool is a MS movie maker slide show of the content in an article, or a power point presentation. This gives extra 'value.'Also, the audio features make it possible to add streaming audio/podcasts to the website adding extra value for the visitor.

However, do not use the function, some people disagree. An obvious example, the network functions, limiting the user is a JavaScript and Macromedia Flash. Equally important is to ensure that in IE and Firefox web site works. Of the world most people do not use IE browser, but the use of Firefox.

Payment Gateway

The next factor that needs to be addressed is the payment gateway. Most people are entering their credit card information, fear in a site. Therefore www.paypal.com and eBay store are so popular. The webmaster can assure their customers that their information secure and protect their money.

This is another way that an ecommerce business can put their customer's needs first, and improve customer service, while improving their chances of success.

Customer Power

Ignore the customer's number-one way loose future sales. Customers are the most powerful marketing tools. Good customer label's website Technorati and Digg. They talk about them on their blog. They suggested that the most popular sites and services, while chatting with their friends. A satisfied customer will be by word of mouth 10 times faster, and farther than the 10 000-per-click advertising dollars pay.

Learn how to master the skills of web-based customer service. Learn how to make your customers think that only your reason for running a business is to solve their problems. Finally, learn to become part of community websites, and protect your business from becoming another dot-bomb.

Note, Avoid the Fundamental Attribution Error

Being masterful at giving feedback requires that managers are able to separate fact from fiction and reality from perception. There is a powerful principal discovered by social psychologist which often blurs the boundaries when people seek to answer the question of why someone engages in a particular behavior. The principle is called the fundamental attribution error and it relates to how motive is assigned to the actions of others. It the simplest turns the principle states that we assume people behave as they do because that is the way they are. If someone reacts in a short tempered fashion it is because they are a rude and intolerant individual. Conversely we do not apply the same standard when explaining our own actions. Our own short temper is explained as resulting from having a bad day, or being tired, or having a headache.

In his book Intuition, David Myers relates the results of an experiment conducted by David Napolitan and George Goethals in which subjects were asked to interact with another individual who was a collaborator in the experiment. The collaborator was instructed to act in either a warm and friendly or a cool and aloof manner. As might be expected the subjects perceived the collaborator as being either warm and friendly or cool and aloof depending on how they acted. What is surprising is that even when subjects were told before hand that the collaborator was going to be acting a role, the subjects still believed that the collaborator's real personality was consistent with the role they were playing. This illustrates how powerful the tendency is to take the behavior of others out of context.

Inferring the character and motives of others from their actions is not a bad thing to do. It is part of how we make sense of the world and learn to deal with the individuals that we encounter. The pitfall is that while we consider the circumstances when explaining our own behavior when it comes to the behavior of others we gravitate toward an explanation that attributes their behavior to their basic nature without considering the context and situation in which the behavior occurs.

For the manager who is responsible to assess performance and provide feedback, the message is a cautionary one. It is important to realize that committing the fundamental attribution error by assuming someone's behavior is always a result of who they are and ignoring the context and situation in which the behavior occurred is too simplistic. It is important to consider both the context and the situation in which the performance occurred. A normally polite individual can become rude and short tempered when trying to meet a tight deadline. This behavior can be disruptive and have a negative impact on the work team, the organization and even the customer. While this is clearly not acceptable performance and should not be excused, to focus solely on the issue of rude behavior is to miss the mark. The stress of the deadline that contributed to the behavior is the root cause of the unacceptable performance. Effective performance feedback from the manager will address the impact of rude behavior because that is the performance issue but also will focus the discussion of performance improvement around strategies for managing or eliminating stress. Management's responsibility is to produce results and focusing on root cause by avoiding the pitfall of the fundamental attribution error is one of the tools used by masterful managers.