Which Web Business Model Is Right For You?
By admin | March 20, 2010
Let’s say you’re a furniture dealer and youve decided to sell your products online. What sort of web business model is most suitable for you?
Web business models differ as to the kind of skills and the specific responsibilities involved. Each model also has a particular source of profit. The three most common web business models are:
=>selling physical products =>offering services
=>information delivery.
Product Sales
This is the web business model that comes to peoples mind most easily thanks to major product sales sites like amazon.com or online malls like neimanmarcus.com. This model is about selling physical products that the merchant must ship to his customer upon receiving an online order.
The three main ways to carry on a business under this model is by web storefront, auction site and online mall (a site that sells products from different vendors).
Service Sales
Besides selling products, you can also sell services online. For example, many web designers have their shops which market their web designing service set up in cyberspace. With the popularity of small businesses, especially home-based ones, conducting business via the Internet, there are a number of sites offering services for web business owners. For instance, screensaverbranding.com designs a screensaver that you can offer as a free download to web users to brand and market your web business. Another example is websites offering to write your web copy, so that your site is filled with language and emotion that will entice your prospects to click on the buy button.
Information Delivery
There are several ways, which you can make money by delivering information online. The most common method is making people pay in order to view the information you have posted on your website. This method is used by major companies such as lexisnexis.com as well as home based business owners. On the latter, examples include:
=>Cory Rudls Secrets to their success site where customers pay for an online subscription to Corys in-depth interviews of webmasters who have made it. Making it is defined broadly to mean webmasters who have cracked the search engines to those who make $300,000++ a year.
=>Neil Shearings private site that includes amongst other articles and tools his ad testing reports. These reports share vital information on where to advertise online and where not to put your money. Jim Daniels private members site that comes with his Make A Living Online package also has a section reporting on his web advertising results. See http://adhomebase.com/make-a-living.htm for more information.
=>The Affiliate Bootcamp, which covers extensively all angles related to how to earn a paycheck every month marketing other merchants products. For more information, visit: http://www.AffiliateBootcamp.com/g.o/valtay
Of course, e-commerce possibilities are only limited by the boundaries of your imagination. And there is no rule saying that one or two or even all of the above models cannot be combined. If you come across a model that I haven’t mentioned, you are most welcome to email me at clientservices@adhomebase.com. I will share your insights with the other readers together with a plug for your site too. 
Valerie Tay is the editor of BizBytes Newsletter. Written in an easy-reading style, this ezine is packed with practical and powerful tips on building, growing and marketing your business. New subscribers receive a FREE bonus eCourse. http://adhomebase.com/bizbytes.htm
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Big Business Web Design Disasters
By admin | March 20, 2010
When you think of the world’s most successful businesses, what names come to mind? Most likely, consumer-oriented giants such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Sheraton, Disney, IBM, and General Electric. Not only have they spent billions on advertising to buy their way into your head. They offer convenient products and services that have made them a part of your life.
But when you think of the most successful web sites, what names come to mind? Names like Google, Yahoo! Amazon, AOL, Kazaa (for better or worse), and Hotmail.
The late-1990s mantra about the web being a disruptive technology that would destroy traditional companies may have been overstated. But a decade and a half into the web’s existence, it is clear that the world’s leading corporations have been sidelined on the web.
The biggest shopping site is not walmart.com but amazon.com. The biggest map site is not randmcnally.com but mapquest.com.
Established companies have usually only been able to buy their way into this market through acquisitions (as with Microsoft’s purchase of Hotmail, which it used as a base for creating MSN).
Why, with few exceptions, were the world’s most successful web sites not launched by the world’s most successful corporations?
Many Big Name Companies’ Web Sites a Vast Waste of Time for Visitors
The McDonald’s web site talks about food, but has no real menu. The Coca-Cola USA web site has no clear ingredients list or nutritional information, no recipes for floats or mixed drinks, no company history, and nothing else useful to people who like Coke. All that information has been inexplicably located on the “company” page, which on every other web site is used for investor relations. The Johnson and Johnson web site has useful information if you can access itwhen the author attempted to open it, it crashed two different web browsers (Internet Explorer and Mozilla) before finally yielding (to the Opera browser).
Many big-name companies’ web sites offer lessons in what not to do in web design. The biggest lesson by far is not to sacrifice usability in an attempt to look cool, and never forget why your users came to your site in the first place. McDonald’s may be the world’s largest restaurant chain, but it didn’t get that way because of its web site.
Why Big-Budget Websites Are More Often Bombs than Blockbusters
The web sites of many successful corporations (both B2C and B2B) are like big-budget Hollywood movies that spend millions on stars and special effects, and a quarter of a percent of the budget on the script. Worse, the special effects of blockbuster web sites are far more annoying than impressive.
Special Effect that Bombs Number 1: Flash!
When web sites don’t offer any contentany useful information to readwhat do they put up there instead? Spinning Coke bottles. Chicken McNuggets and French fries that zoom out toward you when you position your cursor over them. Changing pictures of generic-looking office buildings and men in suits (on the web site of real estate giant CB Richard Ellisbut that essentially describes the generic look of many corporate web sites).
Of course, Flash can be used as a way to present contentwords, both printed and recorded, and pictures that actually illustrate something. But more often, it is used to impress. And most often, it ends up annoying. Who wants to spend the better part of a minute waiting for a rotation of generic pictures of smiling models?
Special Effect that Bombs Number 2: Splash Screens
You type in duracell.com expecting information on batterieswhich you will find, if you have the patience not to hit the back button while the site shows a picture of a battery revolving painfully slowly.
On http://www.mcdonalds.com you’re met with pictures of happy children playing with Ronald McDonald and a menu to select what country you’re from.
Johnson’s and Johnson’s web site shows a logo before automatically redirecting you to the main pagethat is if it doesn’t crash your browser first (which happened when the author tried to access the page on May 2, 2004 ).
Another way big consumer corporations’ web sites from Schick to Mercedes-Benz to Thomas Cooke waste your time with splash pages is by making you choose what country you’re visiting from. This could have been detected automatically, or at least, useful worldwide content could have been placed on the homepage, with an option to choose a country prominently displayed.
Splash pages are the internet equivalent of making patrons wait in line out front before letting them inside. Unless a site belongs to a night club or a professional services firm with too much business, keeping people outside can’t be a good idea.
Special Effect that Bombs Number 3: Overbuilt or Badly Built Dynamic Functionality
Every web surfer has a story about a shopping cart that malfunctioned just when they were about to click purchase on something they really wanted. Or a detailed form that lost all the information after the submit button was pressed.
Sometimes, malfunctioning dynamic content can distort the way an entire site presents itself. If the dynamic content is so complex that it presents problems for many users, it is unlikely the dynamic content is worth it. When I visited disney.com in May 2004, my first greeting was a message that your computer is sufficiently up-to-date (or not) to handle the site.
In short, you may want your small or medium-sized business to get as big as Coca Cola or Disney, but you’ll never get there if your website looks like theirs do.
About the author:
[Formatting: for web, please use “website content writer” as the link’s anchor text (visible link text)] Joel Walsh’s business, UpMarket Content, lets him partner with web designers and other creative people, as a website content writer: http://UpMarketContent.com
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