GOODIES TO GO! ™
June 21, 1999 — Newsletter #33

Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors…

I’m back from my European vacation and it was a welcome few
days off. I saw London, Paris, Lucerne, Venice, Florence,
Pisa, and Rome. But now I’m back and must start writing
again.

I learned that in a country where you don’t speak the
language, if you simply learn the words for hello, good-bye,
water, toilet, and thank you, you can pretty much perform
the remainder of human communication by pointing. It’s true.

And you know what I didn’t see a lot of while tooling around
in Europe? Web addresses. Here in the States, anything that
warrants enough space to print the letters gets an
http://something slapped onto it. I asked a few people and
they informed me that, yes, the Web is there, but that it
isn’t as much a part of people’s lives as apparently it is
in the States. That’s just one person’s opinion. Still, it
was strange not to see all the www.something.com stuff.

However, that may not be the case for much longer. CNNiN is
reporting that the total number of Europeans online grew
from 17.7 million in 1997 to more than 35 million in 1998
(Dataquest, part of Gartner Group Inc.).

So much has happened while I was away. An on-line drug store
in Kansas sold drugs to underaged kids; a new Melissa-style
virus, worm.explore.zip, popped onto the scene; computer
stocks took a wicked hit; and IBM has stated that they are
coming out with a mini-notebook computer that will test the
fingers of normal-sized people, I’m sure. Can you tell I’ve
been reading through news archives?

The most interesting thing about the Web and my trip was
that my wife came up with what I think is a brilliant
business idea. She has always wanted to be her own boss.
Of the thousand or so ideas that she’s run past me, this
is the one we both really think will click. (Sorry, I can’t
tell you what it is or she’ll kill me!)

I can tell you that the business will be Web-based and that
she wants me to create the pages for it. Go figure. It has
absolutely nothing to do with HTML or what I do. So, I’ve
begun doing some research onto the world of Web business.
Yes, I know that technically I run a Web business, but not
like this. I sell advertising and give everything away for
free at HTML Goodies; her idea requires no advertising
banners (she refuses to have them) and involves selling a
product. After close to seven years in the Web business,
this is quite new to me. Luckily, I’m on summer break from
teaching or I’d have no time for any of this!

The technical end of it isn’t all that rough. I have no
problem with hiring people to do the work for me rather than
learning to do all the programming myself. In fact, I’ve got
a couple of people who are coming back to me with bids to
house the site. But what does one ask for? What do you do?
How do you make the site successful?

In my search for answers I came across a great article by
Dawne Shand, published on the IDG Web site. Instead of
telling me what I should do, she wrote about what I shouldn’t
do. I wrote a piece not too long ago about the top 10 things
you must do to be taken seriously as a commercial Web site.
This is a list of the top 10 things you must not do. This
offers a little more insight, I believe. (I added the little
commentary after each item.)

Do Not…

10. Ignore what already exists.

There’s a reason why Web businesses all look the same: They
work. Reinventing the wheel will simply confuse people, so
look at what the winners are doing and follow a similar path.
I can do that.

9. Create psychedelic designs.

If your 13-year-old kid looks at the site and gives a long,
drawn-out “Coooooooooool” then maybe you’ve gone a little
over the top. Make it all look like business: Clean lines,
white backgrounds. Stuff like that.

8. Build it to run slowly.

This is true for all Web sites in the world. Speed is what
we need. My wife and I have discussed the look of the site
in great detail. No frames. Limited graphics. No Java.
Function over glitz. We’re also thinking about paying an
extra chunk of change so that we will be the only site on
the server. Maybe even buying our own server. Yeah, she’s
really serious about this.

7. Neglect to offer a search function.

I can vouch for this one. Before Goodies had search, before
EarthWeb, people were screaming for one. When I finally got
one, I had to take it down because people were using it so
much that it was putting a strain on the server. If you’re
going to run a business, people want to be able to find what
they want fast. Make sure your searchable database offers
multiple fields for everything you’re buying. List everything
that describes the product, then allow people to search (see
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/database/ to make one
of your own).

You know what else I’ve seen that works? Offering suggestions.
Really. I found this strange, but apparently people like this.
Set up your database so that someone could come in and say “I
want to buy a present. Suggest a few things.” Make it so that
your database displays a few ideas for one reason or another.
That’s apparently very popular.

6. Confuse people at the point of purchase.

>From everything I’ve read, you need to make this part of the
business Web site conservative and extremely easy to follow.
Get it all on one page if you can. People are still very
nervous about putting credit card numbers into their
computer. Make it so they feel safe. If they have to go from
page to page then maybe you’re asking too much.

Another site said to only ask for information that is
required. If you start asking people’s age, height, income
level, and the like, they can get nervous and maybe crash
the sale.

5. Fail to acknowledge the sale.

This is equal to not saying “thank you” to someone at a sales
counter. Make it so that a lavish “thank you” e-mail shows up
addressed to the person. Also make sure that the e-mail
contains a list of what the person bought and how much it all
costs.

If you’ve ever bought something from Amazon.com you know that
they do this beautifully.

4. Neglect back-end systems.

These are things like accounting and recordkeeping. It will
probably cost a bit more, but the author suggests you
integrate this right in with your order-taking rather than
attempting to do it all by hand. Good idea.

3. Charge higher prices than other outlets.

A few years ago you could ask a little higher price for the
convenience of buying over the Web. No longer. Know your
competition. Know what they are charging and stay
competitive.

2. Fail to provide a feedback mechanism.

Why wouldn’t you do this? I guess it needed to be said,
though. The customers need to be able to talk to you and
provide feedback. And you need to provide a reply or a place
where they can go to get feedback. Very important.

1. Build something your customers will refuse to use.

This is self-evident, but if your site scares people away or
gives the impression that something might be shady, then
people will go somewhere else or simply refuse to buy from
you.

Those are some good tips that I intend to follow. Luckily,
my wife will be taking care of all the money and research
portions of the site. I’ll just do the grunt work. In fact,
once the site is up and running she wants me to teach her to
code the pages so that I am totally out of the picture.

This thing’s going to work. I can feel it in my bones. What
I’m really looking forward to is a weekend of sales research
where we go to a ton of e-commerce sites and buy stuff just
to see how others are doing it.

I love buying stuff….

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

And that’s that…

Thanks for reading. It’s good to be home but hard to get used
to the time change. I keep waking up at 3AM thinking it’s 8AM
London time. Give me a week. I’ll be good as new.

Joe Burns, Ph.D.

And Remember: Do you play pool? Snooker? Billiards? Ever
heard of an Englishman named Jack Carr? He became a sensation
around 1825 when he made seemingly impossible shots and then
placed the cue ball perfectly for the next shot. We know
today that Carr put a spin on the ball we call “English.”
Why? Because Jack Carr, the first person to do it, was
English.