WHY GO TO THE WEB?
The Web opens up a whole new market for goods and services. It creates opportunity for a multifaceted arena that offers new efficiencies for sales, marketing, customer service, shipment tracking, inventory monitoring.Choice has always been the Holy Grail for consumers.
Today’s consumers have a wide variety of commerce choices: traditional businesses, mega discount stores, catalogs or direct market mail, and the Web.
The Web, taken as a whole, is a powerful medium where consumers browse, research, compare, and then buy online or, after doing their “window shopping” online, make the purchase at a brick-and-mortar business. Businesses that keep in mind the consumers’ desire for choice, and integrate into their website the appropriate means for customer interactions, will succeed.
This being said, the Web will not open vast new markets for every business. However, it can extend a significant degree of power to businesses that recognize how to leverage the efficiencies of this new arena.
A good example is 3Com (www.3com.com) which, through its website:
• Offers products and services to a global audience.
• Provides many different technical support features online.
• Offers software downloads including drivers, updates and fixes, which prior to the
website would have been mailed to the customer.
• Offers an online store.
• Provides an educational center with online courses.
In short, 3Com’s business and customer base didn’t change — the Web changed the way 3Com services its market it did not create a new market.
Still, overall, 3Com’s business is enhanced by its web presence.Big companies with plenty of technical expertise and buckets of money have always been able to build their own e-commerce systems, complete with a secure server, a high-speed Internet connection, and custom software.
The Web opens up a whole new market for goods and services. It creates opportunity for a multifaceted arena that offers new efficiencies for sales, marketing, customer service, shipment tracking, inventory monitoring.Choice has always been the Holy Grail for consumers.
Today’s consumers have a wide variety of commerce choices: traditional businesses, mega discount stores, catalogs or direct market mail, and the Web.
The Web, taken as a whole, is a powerful medium where consumers browse, research, compare, and then buy online or, after doing their “window shopping” online, make the purchase at a brick-and-mortar business. Businesses that keep in mind the consumers’ desire for choice, and integrate into their website the appropriate means for customer interactions, will succeed.
This being said, the Web will not open vast new markets for every business. However, it can extend a significant degree of power to businesses that recognize how to leverage the efficiencies of this new arena.
A good example is 3Com (www.3com.com) which, through its website:
• Offers products and services to a global audience.
• Provides many different technical support features online.
• Offers software downloads including drivers, updates and fixes, which prior to the
website would have been mailed to the customer.
• Offers an online store.
• Provides an educational center with online courses.
In short, 3Com’s business and customer base didn’t change — the Web changed the way 3Com services its market it did not create a new market.
Still, overall, 3Com’s business is enhanced by its web presence.Big companies with plenty of technical expertise and buckets of money have always been able to build their own e-commerce systems, complete with a secure server, a high-speed Internet connection, and custom software.