Business on the Internet
There has been much news about the Internet and doing business on it. Is it possible to carry out a successful Internet business or is the Internet a passing fad? Will the Internet become part of your cable network? Many people, experts and corporations have mentioned the Internet, and depending on their point of view, attested to it's viability or belittled its importance If one were to look at statistics one would conclude that the number of Unique commercial domain names (you can buy a domain (trademark?) name at any time) has exploded; however the actual number is inflated by many commercial servers, corporations or private individuals who have purchased own a large number of different domain names. Many have purchased on speculation (sometime in the future they may be able to resell their unique name) or they think that someday they might use it. At the end of 1995 there were 2500 unique commercial servers in the United states operating as Internet service providers. Half of these numbers are less than six months old.Some commercial sites are profitable: of 1000 that replied to a survey 31% said they were operating at a profit. All commercial servers were offering Business consulting and web page publishing as part of their enterprise. Many had sold Internet connections to individuals at home or at their office.
As individuals become accustomed to the use of the Internet and how to use it's tools they will spend less time "surfing the net" and more time looking for items or services that are of interest only to them. They will spend more time "shopping" at their favorite sites.
Bill Gates of Microsoft in his book The Road Ahead has suggested a development of a new generation of robot "search engines" that are uniquely configured to search out those items or services that are only of interest to you. These super search engines would "cruise the net" 24 hours a day and only send back things to your computer that they had been asked to find.
There appear to be two main schools of thought on how the phenomena growth of the web can be explained. The first school applies the usual five stages of industry growth to the Internet. These stages are 1. Pure unadulterated growth; 2. Consolidation and organization of all the major players to continue to provide a steady growth; 3. Market maturation and stagnation; 4. Decline and 5. death. These folks would have you believe that the present chaos on the net is a result of stage one; rapid growth.
The second school believes that the basic assumptions of the first school are in error, there fore their analogy cannot apply. The 5 stage growth model assumes a constant growth economy (many of you will know what happened to Canada's constant growth), and a central controlling or regulating body to set some limits on the model (that doesn't exist). A third characteristic of the Internet is the difficulty in capturing anyone to stay at your web site as any user can click to another location for any reason or no reason.
The biggest obstacle to all parties on the Internet is the sheer size of it and the massive information available. Robot search engines are at work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, merely trying to categorize the information.
A profile of the average Internet user suggests a person with a good deal of disposable income; is well educated and most often a member of a two income family. If you want to appeal to that type of consumer, than you need to provide intelligent, timely information and a reason to return to your web site. The Internet consumer is a person who prefers an interactive mode over a passive mode. They may initially like some "bells and whistles" but would rather seek quality information about a product or a service that is of interest to them.
How do you reach the "Internet consumer"? Your "business page" should be easy to find or in the area where your customer "lurks". The target audience for your business should be described and the page content directed to their interest. They must think it was their idea to visit your web site. There are some resources available on the net which deals specifically with business net information : Entertaining lessons (www.stoogenet.com) In How NOT to do Business On the Internet