What direction is eBusiness moving toward on the web?
Interview of RayPower, CEO, in Business Management Middle East
The number of websites in today’s society exceeds 100 million, so it is fair to say that companies have generally embraced the concept of using the internet to further expand their businesses.
However, with so much activity, can we identify what direction eBusiness is moving toward on the web? Many companies are going through the cycle of updating their websites to stay in step with visual elements that demonstrate an array of qualities such as maturity, stability, professionalism or whatever words they use to describe the image they want to convey. There has also been a trend, particularly by the larger companies, to pack websites with so much content that they have become mammoth creations, sometimes with thousands of pages!
Does this mean that our companies are going to continue toward larger and more complex websites? Does this mean that finding information ten years from now is going to be even more complex than it is today? Or, is there a solution already at hand?
The possibility had crossed the mind of one company, ActiveReception.com, who have likened the current growth of the net to the clogging of a main artery... it’s only a matter of time before the heart attack happens...
i.e. the Internet is soon to be so full that doing business efficiently on a company’s website is going to be less and less efficient.
What ActiveReception suggested is to tackle the efficiency of information-handling and communication using the strengths of the net synchronized with a company’s internal knowhow to maximize the flow of information, whilst keeping the bulk of product information neatly managed.
To unpack this a little... The ActiveReception.com team took a look on how business is conducted in the real world between prospects and businesses.
To give a couple of examples; a person walking onto the lot of a car dealership will be greeted proactively by a salesperson or, in a large corporate style environment, a receptionist may be on hand to greet an initial inquiry. In ether case, the initial inquiry will qualify the prospects’ needs or question and address them accordingly.
To achieve this online by putting all company, management, product, media and historical information in one place requires an extraordinary level of navigation and the impetus to dig around for information is placed on the prospect, which just doesn’t happen in the physical world. In short companies are expecting their prospects to act as their own receptionist.
In the real world, a potential client is greeted by a person who knows how to handle the inquiry and what needs to be done to deliver the right information and conduct business most efficiently.
So, if that’s the right way to do things why isn’t it modus operandi online?
It would seem that the ActiveReception.com team came to that conclusion and have delivered a rock solid answer. Operators use a very user friendly console that literally allows a company in real time to monitor traffic on their website and initiate a conversation with all prospects, just as they would in the real world.
What this means to companies is that by using such a solution they can break through the barrier of the website where, until now, a feedback form or email address has passively waited for someone to make an inquiry.
Effectively, when a company uses ActiveReception their website turns into a facility that can provide the very same interactive process used in the physical world given in the examples above. So, what does this have to do the future of the web?
Well, there are two tidy ideas that are being used by ActiveReception’s clients and they fall into two distinct categories, SMEs & Corporations. Whilst this is very unsurprising it has started to show two very clear and interesting trends that businesses are setting which could have a significant impact on the shape of the web over the next few years.
Firstly, SME’s. They are the most susceptible to having stagnant websites that become outdated or a heavy burden to maintain. As a consequence they do not get any return on their online investment and don’t compete as effectively as they could. Businesses in this segment have taken on a refreshingly simple approach... stripping their website down to a single splash page that contains only the basic data required to tell a visitor who they are, what they do and where to find them... plus of course, a very visible button or graphic that shows they are using ActiveReception along with their opening hours; just as though it were their real world shop or office entrance.
The reasoning from most SME’s being that it’s only their competitors that care about background company information and other data normally used to fill websites for the sake of it. The bottom line is, when there is traffic on a company’s site they can talk to the visitor and tell them everything they need to know to win their business.
Corporations may also be moving to put less information in the public domain and manage the delivery of content directly; i.e. what the visitor needs is what they are given; no need to search a site endlessly for answers, a simple click on an icon and they can be chatting to a company representative immediately; the operator can then do one of many things that will facilitate the inquiry and ensure that the prospect is drawn closer to a point of sale.
What this means is that the solution marries together the efficiency of the net, the power of a PC and the company knowledge of a sales or front line representative, culminating in a personal service that overcomes the sometimes faceless feel of corporate websites.
If we are all striving to connect with our customers then ActiveReception is the clear way forward; in anticipation of the future-web... perhaps a lot of uncluttered, nicely ordered splash-pages with a mega-knowledge-base managed efficiently and out of sight of the prospect... just like in the real world.
So, perhaps the web will look more like the efficient side of a real world interactive process than a complex and all encompassing self-serve collection of behemoth websites.
Oh, and to top it all, they’ve made it on-demand so it doesn’t even need to be installed.
Could it be that they have just fine tuned the future for us all?
About Ray Power
Ray is the architect of ActiveReception.com, with a technical background in satellite communications and a business acumen that has proven itself through a series of successful start-ups, Ray characteristically brings about unique and practical solutions in all that he does.
Ray is also the founder and Chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce, Macedonia.
Magazine website:
www.busmanagementme.com
Product website:
www.activereception.com
