CONTENTS:

What sales & marketing returns does your web site provide? - feature article

Cockroach marketing : good practice

Designing Web Usability - book review

Are you an e-virgin? - e-chat

From the Editor......

I’ve enjoyed editing expertise and now, as a colleague would say, it is 'pumpkin time', time to leave this party to others. Cambashi is taking responsibility for this newsletter and will be working on the hand over before the next issues in the New Year. BrainSells is turning its attention to another venture. People grow businesses. Through a series of interviews, BrainSells will explore the challenges they face and the lessons they learnt. Marketing a venture capital funded IT start-up, building demand for a new ASP service, successfully drawing readers into yet another white paper.

Selling IT to industry

In this issue, we look at web sites for selling and promoting complex solutions. What are issues? content? graphics? context? In the feature article we look at the weaknesses of most current web sites and offer a quiz to see if your company is an e-virgin. The good practice looks at how Solid Edge has mixed direct mailing with the Internet with great success, while our book review gives you practical advice should you not come out too well in our e-virgin quiz.

Quote for today:

'Crises tend to be highly formative experiences' Norman R. Augustine

What sales & marketing returns does your web site provide?

We’re disappointed that so many web sites selling and promoting their company’s products break basic rules of the Internet. For example, they are slow to respond and they present information from the seller’s viewpoint rather than the visitor's. Editor: See our e-virgin quiz to test your site against the consensus of good practice.

Giving the job to graphics designers rather than information engineers causes many of the problems with these web sites. The web is a completely different medium to print. Fancy graphics and plug-ins are the enemy of fast downloads. They don’t attract visitors because if you are loading the page, you’ve already performed the action equivalent to picking up the magazine.

The message is to spend money on intellectual content not on presentation. In reality, the visitor loading the link is at the stage of looking at the magazine contents page to decide whether or not to persist with the web site. At this point, most visitors really want independent dispassionate information rather than glitzy sales messages.

Too few sites really analyse the visitor’s motivations. We are all trained to blank out advertising fluff and will go off to look for third party sites if we don’t trust the brand or if the site does not convey the brand values that we already perceive. It makes web sites particularly hard to use to deliver a new, direct, marketing message.

Until last summer, most IT enterprises spent money on web site investments without too much justification. Management teams knew they had to do something. They often spent several thousand Euro on what seemed like a step in the right direction. Nobody had maps so all directions seemed right.

With autumn, IT enterprises got more cautious. Web site money is now a serious expenditure. It has to come from somewhere. Now questions abound about where the money should come from and how to calculate and justify the return on the investment: Reduce field marketing? Cut back on physical collateral? Divert budget from trade shows and advertising? Accept reduced profits? What are appropriate justification methods? What is the risk of failure?

There are now success stories that check out, but disaster stories abound. Most enterprises still learn by doing rather than from others' experiences. As a result, management is factoring a big risk premium into those justification calculations.

Enterprises base their justification for investments in public web sites to sell and promote goods and services on improving sales productivity. These potential improvements come from several sources:

• Intermediaries and their margins are removed from the path between customers and the supplier;
• New markets that were economically inaccessible can produce additional revenues;
• Administration costs can be reduced by linking automatically to fulfilment of the orders;
• Market share can be gained by responding to direct customer feedback.

However, in practice e-commerce is much more difficult to implement than immediately meets the eye. Cambashi estimates that the typical web site today is only able to display basic product information. Few can allow prospective customers to configure options and actually place an order — let alone get it fulfilled. And this is just the first step; e-business is much more than e-commerce. But don’t just take our word for it. Use our e- virgin quiz to rate you and your competitors' web sites.

Mike Evans mike.evans@cambashi.com

Cockroach marketing

"Cockroach marketing" is a recognised marketing strategy. Users download a "free" lightweight product for simple tasks and then upgrade to a paid product with additional functionality. It is an evolution of telesales techniques using the power of the web. Suppliers of more complex tasks like 3D Computer Aided Design found teledirect selling methods inadequate. It proved difficult to persuade significant numbers of prospects to invest enough time using the product to see the benefits.

Unigraphics Solutions' Solid Edge business unit "try and buy" campaign has generated significant new unit sales. They have 117,000 registrations in 15 months after sending out 900,000 free CDs using traditional direct mail and magazine cover techniques. Solid Edge introduced a step by step series of products. The entry point is a free product that still retains the 3D approach and look and feel of the user interface. It is limited in the size and complexity of the problems it can handle. There is also a computer assisted learning package. Users have to register over the web to get a key that unlocks the CD so Solid Edge knows the trial users.

There is then a cheap 'paid for' product upgrade available over the web that removes many limitations. Customers who register for this product are prospects for the dealer channel to upgrade to the full solution.

Cambashi think the keys to this success are that:

• the initial CD is not a demonstration but a free, basic, but useful, product backed up with courseware;
• there is a step by step "open the kimono" approach upgrading the user as they become more sophisticated. They are not forced to learn all of a very complex product in one step;
• web based marketing integrates with the dealer channel.

Solid Edge is too big for most users to successfully download, so initial web registration results in a CD being delivered by snail mail. As time goes on, we would expect developers to work around this problem by designing products as a series of components that can be downloaded on demand. This will provide even more gradual steps in learning, commitment and price for the try and buy user.

Mike Evans mike.evans@cambashi.com

Designing Web Usability : book review
Jakob Nielsen, Paperback - 432 pages ( 3 December, 1999) New Riders;
ISBN: 156205810X (£34.99 at Amazon.co.uk)

Jakob Nielsen has written a well-structured, comprehensive guide to web usability. Easy to read and full of useful tips, this is an essential read for everyone involved in or considering web site design. Common sense abounds, reminding designers that user satisfaction is key to success. Occasional humour makes the book all the more enjoyable.

HTML code is rarely mentioned, a refreshing change allowing the reader to concentrate on the "Why?" rather than the "How?" of web design. Nielsen's persistent use of "live" snap shots from numerous sites clearly corroborates many of the viewpoints expressed. However, although the content is objective, a lack of detailed references detracts from his convictions.

The major areas covered are page, content and site design, all with user requirements at the forefront - it could be said that the user perspective is literally thrust in your face! Ease of navigation and fast download times are two of the key points established. Other notable topics include consideration of users with disabilities and the international significance of the Internet. The concluding chapter incorporates Nielsen's future predictions for the web and the impact it will have on both businesses and our every day lives.

Ignore this book at your peril if you are hoping to capitalise on Internet opportunities!

Melanie Bradley melanie.bradley@cambashi.com

Are you an e-virgin?

Cambashi has prepared a light-hearted, self-assessment quiz for organisations that wish to benchmark their e-commerce achievements. It is written in the style of a magazine quiz entitled: Are you an e-Virgin? Despite the levity, some serious issues are explored. It can be found on the Cambashi Web site. We rated Cambashi’s own site using this quiz and to our relief, we just made it into the e-streetwise category. Obviously, we are now trying to make our site even better and progress to the e- evangelist, by practising what we preach.

e-Virgin Quiz

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