August 2006 Newsletter

A corporate website can be an invaluable tool for connecting with your customers, giving your business a highly visible public presence, and complementing your other promotional and publicity activities. Once it's appropriate for your business, adding an e-commerce component to your web presence can greatly improve the overall value of your website and your business. However, having an e-commerce component (or "e-store") will also add to your administrative and managerial duties. So before adding e-commerce capabilities to your website, here are five points to consider:

1. Be Clear on How e-Commerce Fits Within Your Business Strategy.

First, ask yourself whether it truly makes sense to try to add an e-commerce area to your website. An auto repair shop or hair salon can't sell repair or hairstyling services online (though quality websites can serve as excellent promotional and informational tools for those types of businesses), but a flower shop or organic food store can. You should identify which of your product lines you can effectively market and sell through your website, and focus on doing a good job with those items....

One of the most popular (and perhaps overused) terms used in the media during the past year has been "Web 2.0". A recent search of the term in a leading search engine yielded tens of millions of hits. Upon closer examination, it might appear that the term has almost as many meanings as well. This article highlights several common concepts and themes amongst the various definitions of "Web 2.0", and invites you to consider how you might apply these concepts to your website, and better service your website customers.

Web 2.0 - No simple definition.

To understand Web 2.0, it might be helpful to first clarify what the term doesn't mean. First of all, "Web 2.0" doesn't refer to any one particular thing. There are no formal standards or guidelines for Web 2.0 implementations, and there is no governing or accrediting body to determine whether something is or is not "Web 2.0". Web 2.0 isn't an entirely new set of technologies. In fact, some recent and very popular Web 2.0 applications have, at their core....

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