Web Engagement: Connecting to Customers in E-Business

Web Engagement: Connecting To Customers In e-Business is a superb introduction to key concepts essential for successfully conducting business activities on the Internet. Bill Zoellick explains proven strategies for understanding customer needs and developing websites to meet and satisfy those needs. Novice Internet entrepreneurs will learn what Zoellick calls "personalization" and it's importance for buyers and sellers; how to utilize personalization and customization in a business-to-business web engagement; how to use web server log files and browser cookies to track what customers are doing on a particular website; how to divide customers into segments and groups in order to better meet their needs and enhance sales; and to identify, develop, and evaluate business objectives and how successful a commercial website is in meeting commercial goals. Web Engagement is a "must" for anyone new to e-commerce, and has a wealth of practical information for even the more experienced e-business operator.

In the past, e-businesses were treated as special cases. Profits were not considered an immediate or even short term requirement in the rush to build a brand and the business structure. Stock prices rose as horrendous losses were accumulated quarter after quarter. As is the case with such unsustainable dreams, once a bit of deflation takes place, it becomes a rout that engulfs even the strong players. However, those with solid business plans and sensible execution can survive and even thrive. Developing and maintaining a business on the web requires several changes in strategy from that of "traditional" business. You must be available ALL the time, you have about eight seconds to make a good first impression and second chances to succeed are rare. Throw in the problems of gathering enormous amounts of data, refining the value from that data, assuring the sources that you will not misuse it in any way and protecting it so that none of it is misappropriated and you have complexities that will cause you to reach for the headache medicine. Before you take that natural step you should do something that will provide more lasting relief, which is to read this book. Written at a non-technical level, all of these problems are examined in the proper context. The solutions are those that are sustainable, sensible long term approaches where the potential problems are identified. One theme that is a consistent and necessary point of emphasis is that you must not assume anything and even if an assumption worked in the past, it must always be reexamined. Businesses on the web generally make the bulk of their sales from a small percentage of their visitors, so the key to success is to characterize that group and look for and attract more of their kind. If this can be carried out, it is possible to increase revenue while reducing advertising effort and expense. This seems to be a point lost on so many e-businesses, where the goal seems to have been the generation of traffic without regard to the quality of that traffic. The best point was that if you have to give away things for free to attract traffic the most likely result is that you will give away a lot of free stuff for minimal gain. This book is filled with sensible, sustainable, non-technical information about how to survive and grow in the increasingly hazardous arena of business on the web. If it had been available and read by more people in the dot com world, the recent value adjustments of several companies would have been considerably tempered.

This book builds from a fundamental understanding of the Information collected from web customers to an explanation of what is possible and clarification of different approaches, and finally to guidance on how to get started. I found myself pleasantly surprised at the breadth of what was covered by the end of the book. This book is not just about what web data is available, but also about web business strategy. The web data is used as a mechanism to explain how a web business should be thought of.