Some e-business advice…
Over lunch, I was reading my text Electronic Commerce - A Managerial Perspective (Turban, et. all) for my IT-enabled business course. They mentioned a few lessons-learned for creating a successful e-tailing operation: don’t ignore profitability, manage new risk exposure, watch the cost of branding, do not start with insufficient funds, create an effective website, and keep it interesting.
I think all of these are pretty good advice, but they somewhat ignore the ecosystem of the web. So, here are my additions based on what I have observed with e-business.
1. Be Open—A retailer hoping to do business online must be open. This is a lesson described in Wikinomics and it certainly applies here. What does this mean? If you are selling a product online, do not put restrictive terms-of-use on the content your company produces for its website. This includes text, brochures, and most importantly multi-media (images, demonstrations, and videos). For bloggers, this material is a life-line for describing your products to their audience.
For example, take a look at the terms-of-use for CB2, one of my favorite furniture retailers. If you were a blogger, you might think twice about posting a picture of one of their products. But, if you do a quick search on blogsearch.google.com, you will see a lot of sites doing just that. This might be the intention of the retailer. But by having restrictive terms-of-use, they miss out on a lot of free press that may have led to additional sales.
Contrast the CB2 example with Microsoft, a company that has more than its share of bad press. It has a whole section of its site dedicated to the press that includes releases, images, and RSS feeds. It was because of this that I felt comfortable, as a blogger, posting an image in my post about the Zune.
2. Accept Criticism—I think one of the fears of being open for retailers is the (somewhat) irrational fear of criticism. If I was a retailer, I would look at this criticism as simply free research.
Take for example, the case of Palm. They had been a leader in PDAs and had some early success in the smart phone arena. But, as often happens, some new players came into their market and they were no longer the king of the hill. Engadget, a popular technology weblog, criticized the company in an open letter entitled Palm: It’s time for an intervention. Not only did Palm respond to the letter, but the company made substantive changes based upon it. And, its new device the Treo Pro, is getting a warmer reception than its past devices. This is an example of how a company accepted criticisms and actually turned that criticism around to create a better product.
3. Provide easy access to information—After you have become more open and learn to accept criticism, the final stage is to provide easy access to information. If you want to lure content creators, you should have an often updated RSS feed detailing information about your company and your new products. This is the easiest way to disseminate information about your products and your company.
If you followed lesson one, you should know by now that the feeds should not have any restrictive terms-of-use attached to them. StlToday provides a how-not-too on displaying feeds for your site. Restricting use of your feeds will only reduce its dissemination and destroy any potential of receiving traffic from useful content mash-ups.
So, there it is. I personally believe to be successful in e-business you must (1) be open, (2) accept criticism, and (3) provide easy access to information. Do you agree?
