Harvey from Capital Print asked me to write an article about e-Commerce. I have elected to use this opportunity to briefly highlight and raise some of the issues that an organisation needs to consider when having a presence in the cyber world.

A web site should serve as a strategic avenue for business; it is a storefront with no geographical boundaries.

A web site is an investment for an organisation, prior to making an investment; logically it makes sense to “do your homework”. The objectives of a web site, or more correctly “Internet e-Commerce” should be to increase profitability and productivity, and more desirably to gain and sustain a competitive advantage. Analysis of a business; its function and processes, goals and future direction, will provide the homework (strategy) aspect for the application of design to Internet e-Commerce.

In order to realise and attain this level an understanding of; the business, processes, and the business goals are required. A web site needs to be viewed as an arm to integration and interoperability of back office systems. This may require business re-engineering; the automation of back office systems, DBMS (Database Management Systems), email and legacy (existing software) systems, or it could be that new processes/policies are put in place, a policy such as “all emails are answered within 24 hours” (I have lost count of the times I have sent an email through organisations sites with simple questions, fortunately I did not hold my breath for replies), to having the contact details for the correct person/department to email for differing parts of a business, an example is when organisations have the Webmaster (person whom maintains a web site) as the only contact on their site, it is highly unlikely that the Webmaster is going to have access to, and be able to answer admin/accounts queries, nor is the Webmaster able to tell if the company still stock those widgets in blue!

A web presence should serve to boost an organisations image, as well as gaining trust (I’ve already mentioned profitability and productivity). A web site is more than just a brochure in digital form, it is a vehicle that should have a good reason for customers to visit and be able to bring them back - one could view this as “the moment of truth” – I believe this is an important key factor to a successful site.

There needs to be awareness of a site, through promotion on company stationery, advertising, or a monthly newsletter. Which brings me to my next point; being current, that is up-to-date. Visitors to your site should be able to view the date that the site was last updated, to when it will be updated again, a monthly newsletter can act as a vehicle to do this. But a word of warning; keep those newsletters short and concise, thus avoiding email overload! A newsletter should be formatted with headings, followed by a sentence leading into the topic/product, with a hyperlink (a click-able link to your site). As this then allows a person to decide if this interests them (as the Internet is dictated by users, i.e., customers, not by business), these are methods to gain clicks to your site, and customers are more likely to visit if the topic/product interests them. Also worth noting is that people love the word “free”, that’s bound to entice more clicks to your site.

There are many other issues in the design of Internet e-Commerce; culture, language - both written and programming, privacy policies, legalities, security, meta tags (used by search engines to allow for more accuracy in listing a site within their indexes), usability, speed (wwwaiting for pages to download), staff and user acceptance (fyi: this is a biggie), training, feedback, etc., But alas! This is intended as an article, not a book ?

25th November 2001