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Ecommerce is not about
selling
by Claudie Clot, CEO of advancis.com
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1. Poor e-business practices
Poor e-business practices are
generally poor business practices. Case in point: Internet marketing
services. Statistics show Internet marketing programs have not
helped small businesses in 1999. Does this mean that Internet
marketing is not appropriate for small businesses? Probably not.
The problem is that the majority of Internet marketing programs
they implemented had no chance of producing results from the
start. Yet, these programs were sold anyway.
Sure, there have been questionable
business services before, but the sad thing is that even some
of the Web's biggest players have adopted a strategy where the
focus is on selling and not necessarily making sure that the
program would produce results for the company buying it. As a
result, the number of small businesses who advertised on the
Web in 1999 was down 10% from the previous year (source: Dun
& BradStreet). This figure is quite disappointing but
not surprising. Foolish would be the manager who continued to
implement marketing plans that did not work. But more importantly
it also demonstrates an important facet of doing business on
the Web: if something does not work, you know right away. Vendors
are consequently being punished faster than they are in the real
world. This leaves them no chance to generate enough repeat sales
per customer to cover their investments.
This WE-TAKE-YOUR-MONEY-AND-DON'T-REALLY-CARE-IF-YOU-MAKE-IT.
THERE-ARE-MILLIONS-MORE-LIKE-YOU. SO-WE-WILL-GENERATE-REVENUES-
BY-SELLING-TO-THEM-INSTEAD attitude
is not exclusive to companies offering questionable Internet
marketing services. Take e-commerce solutions vendors. Some want
to equip your site with all the bells and whistles supposedly
needed to do commerce on the Web. This might be fine for some
companies, but it rarely is for the majority especially for small
companies. Again, the focus is on the sale, not necessarily matching
solution to the need.
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