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The challenges facing Just-Another-Site.com
So you're cruising down the aisle of your local grocery store when you notice there's a special on cereal. Hmmm, should I opt for the safety of Kellogg's cornflakes (Mom would), or save the two dollars and try out the new brand (what if the kids hate it and I end up eating this for the next month)?
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 These kinds of buying decisions face us nearly every day. The choices you make are often influenced by the effectiveness of the product's branding: you associate this product as being as good as homemade, comfort you can count on, value-for-money, quality guaranteed.
And if you find the array of goods available in brick-and-mortar malls bewildering, the sheer variety of goods and services begging for your attention in cyberspace is simply mind-boggling. Comparative shopping is available at a mouse-click. It takes a few seconds to find out who's got the new Harry Potter at the best price and cheapest delivery. Which means that e-tailers have to work that much harder to get and retain your business.
To be a brand in cyberspace is especially difficult, and especially crucial, noted venture capitalist Bill Davidow in an interview with Red Herring. The path to brand-building in cyberspace is littered with failed dot-coms, many of whom may have achieved high name recognition, but failed to build a brand.
"People want to connect with the brand. They want to have that relationship. The key is to take the inhuman Internet and have an icon that reaches out and grabs them," says David Heller, AskJeeves president of marketing, in Business 2.0. AskJeeves has a human face: a butler who will seek at your command (and we'd all like one of those, or at least I would)!
Customers don't want to feel they are interacting with sterile bits and bytes that simply pump out "one-size-fits-all" responses. They need to establish a relationship with the company, build up trust in the company's products and services. But the road to brand loyalty is paved with pitfalls, especially in the still developing realm of e-commerce. Those of us who've bumped into dot-com incompetence can simply click and go elsewhere. In e-land, it's easy to be fickle. Which is why e-marketers have to be really focused on providing consumers with a good e-xperience.
The development of personalization technologies is working towards individualizing and customizing the online experience for every e-shopper. But that's not enough. Technological bells-and-whistles should be matched by good, solid, old-fashioned service. "Call me" buttons should allow customers to speak directly to a sales representative. Responses to customer inquiries or complaints should be dealt with swiftly and efficiently. The site should be geared towards the needs of the target market and its evolution should mirror customer needs and expectations.
"The companies that pull off great branding understand what people want to experience, and that's when you get this deep psychological penetration," notes venture capitalist George Zachary, in Red Herring.
"Business is about people. A service succeeds when it makes significant numbers of people feel their lives are somehow better than they would have been without that service," according to Harry Beckwith, author of The Invisible Touch.
Can your company do that? Ask Jeeves.
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