BizSci Answers: Building an Internet Strategy
BIZSCI IN
BRIEF
For most companies, the Internet should not
be viewed as a strategy on to itself, but an important component in
a total market communications strategy. To improve your Internet
strategy, first prioritize the products you want to sell to
important market segments. Next, determine where you need to
improve your Internet assets to make it easiest for segments to
both find and buy your products. This is only the first phase of an
overall profit strategy that includes Profit Forms analysis and constant
optimization of the product-segment mix. WJones
Question
I am
researching
options for developing and growing my company's
website. Experience has
provided me with plenty of opinions on what to do, but I am
interested in formalizing to a greater degree my approach and am
curious about options for utilizing existing plans or tools for
defining Internet strategy.
Identify one, two or three market segments you consider important (i.e. multi-family home builder, independent contractor, residential home owner). Hint: start with one
Define which product classes you consider most important to sell to each market segment. Rank these product-segment combinations by importance to your profitability strategy.
Do some research about how easy it is to buy from your company.
- In step 1, determine for each market segment PRECISELY how much time, energy and money it costs to purchase the products you identified above from your competitors,
- In step 2, determine the same for your company.
Put your data in a table. For each product-segment, determine which is the easiest company to buy from (assuming you were the customer).
Now you are ready to define your Internet strategy. Using outside assistance if necessary, for each "product class"-"market segment" combination, determine what would be the cost to make your site A PART OF of the fastest and easiest possible transaction. This will require much business judgement as it won't always a be practical matter to simply add a shopping cart to conclude the transaction on your site.
For example: Assume it takes a week for a new contractor to get an estimate today because you must first wait for a faxed credit app, then after the credit app, spend days just getting the order right. It may make sense to create an online credit app and then make your online order form smart enough to ask the right questions.
Note: This is the short answer. You may find that ranking products by importance to profitability is easier said than done. You may also find there hasn't been much quantitative study as to which products should be targeted to each market segment. Finally, you may anticipate that some of your current markets are about to enter a lengthy slowdown, and thus need to find new segments.
Note: Don't forget to search engine optimize (SEO) each time you introduce a site improvement. Also, I recommend updating any dated content on your sites as soon as possible. Any visitor seeing dated content may think your site has been abandoned and may never return.