The Beltway
Out here in the
fast lane are the applications and functions that define the web site.
There are new tourist attractions showing up every day. Since no attempt
at a complete list will be complete for very long, we''ve only shown a
sampling that covers both villages and the capitol cities.
- Survey: A web site is a great way to gather
information about things that interest you: Just post a survey and get
a few (hundred) thousand responses. Posting the results on the website
for users to see generally adds more page and ad views.
- Community Creation: Many web sites support
forums (bulletin boards as they used to be called) and chat. A good
way to pull in visitors and sell ads -- especially if your site won''t
be hurt when people exercise their free speech. The technology here
can be very flat or allow users to create animated characters to
represent them in chat space.
- Catalogs and Directories: Although there
aren''t firm distinctions here, a catalog is generally a product list
that leads to a purchase, where a directory is a searchable database
that leads to information or links. In B2B applications a catalog may
be hosted by the vendor, by a third party that brings together a
number of vendor catalogs, or by the buyer.
- Storefronts: If you''re selling to consumers,
the storefront is where you do it. Storefront software will probably
include support for building a product catalog and handling credit
card transactions.
- Auction: It isn''t all that long ago that eBay
burst upon the scene, and already there''s packaged software that lets
you put an auction on your own site.
- Marketplace: A marketplace brings buyers and
sellers together. For a company that has a presence in both camps this
could be an option for new revenue opportunities.
- Payments and Billing: This really is the
point of it all, isn''t it? In a consumer environment it''s a relatively
simple matter of accepting credit card numbers and passing them on to
a processor, and possibly interfacing with an e-money or wallet
vendor. The B2B world is quite different, with the need to access
back-end financial systems and the requirement to generate reports
that can be handled automatically by your partners'' back-end
systems.
- Human Resources: With risumi gardens like
MONSTER Board and HotJobs, there is every incentive for a company to
do more recruiting on the web. Placing ads on websites or in
newsgroups is just the tip of the iceberg. The more that resumes can
be accepted from e-mail or forms submissions and processed
automatically, the faster they can be in managers'' hands.
- Industry or Market-Specific Protocols:
Global, business-to-business E-commerce demands that information flow
easily between companies and between applications. And that implies
standards, created by impartial groups supported by all vendors. And
that could happen? But until then we get to choose between
proprietary, vendor specific approaches and vendors or partners
supporting one of a number of emerging standards.
So there''s a lot of territory to cover when someone says "We''ve got to do E-commerce
- everyone else is!" But a careful approach, starting with corporate and
IT strategies rather than jumping into a particular application or
technology and hoping that the next 10 initiatives will plug right in,
always has been, and always will be, the best chance for success. And
you''ll probably discover that E-commerce isn''t really so bad - these
days it''s found in all the best circles.
Dennis P. Geller, Ph.D is a Research Director with TechnologyEvaluation.COM''s E-Commerce Practice.
Dr. Geller''s research activities span all of electronic commerce.
Previously, he worked as the Senior Manager of Cahners Business
Information''s Electronic Media group. At Cahners, he was responsible for
adapting and integrating web technologies to serve as platform
components for all corporate websites, including ad serving, traffic
reporting and personalization.
This article originally appeared in Intranet Design Magazine
