Gerald Storch, Vice Chairman of the Target Corporation, said in a recent New York Times interview¹: "In the early days of the Internet, people got confused and thought it was all about selling goods online, when it was deepening the relationship with the customer… But I like to say that the stupid era of the Internet is over now."

I agree with Mr. Storch. Whereas the web (for businesses) is still about commerce--bringing buyers and sellers together to interact like they have never been able to do before--it is not necessarily happening the way that many thought it would happen: directly, immediately, simplistically, and easily selling stuff via a cool web site. No, it’s hard work like everything else.

To reiterate what I wrote in a previous NoSpin Debunker #10 from July 9^th–a book review of the Cluetrain Manifesto):

Most companies don’t understand that the Web is the most powerful sales medium ever created. The Internet is a place that businesses can embrace to facilitate real, imperfect conversations. In particular, it’s a wonderful place to businesses to touch their customers, often, honestly, and openly and in so doing let those customers tell others.

Mr. Storch is right about the web enhancing and facilitating communications with current and potential customers. And to his credit, Target did not dive into the dot.com abyss like its other retail brethren (that is, attempt a dot.com spin-off or other foolhardy move), and Target learned valuable lessons via its internal web efforts the last couple years. The company did not spend enormous sums of money on the design and infrastructure of an e-commerce web site that was expected to mimic every aspect of Target’s business. Nor was the Target site expected to become the primary marketing tool for selling its goods.

Says Mr. Storch, "We’ll have 100 million viewers this year to the (Target) site. What would you pay for that in TV exposure?" Target does sell millions of dollars of goods now via its site – still an amount that is a rounding error compared to what is sold in its stores, but its web site has become a critical part of the marketing mix. The company has been leveraging its site interactivity with customers (e.g. via email campaigns) to help bring them into its stores to buy new products. In the end, who cares if people actually buy the camera, toy, or coat online or not–just as long as they buy it? Target actually has a web site strategy unlike most businesses.

Business web sites are relatively new marketing tools to help your business interact more effectively and efficiently with customers–and to directly or indirectly conduct commerce. There are a number of potential "raison d’etre’s" for your business web site (or lack thereof). These are NOT some of them:

• Something (as lousy as it may be) is better than nothing–we need some kind of web presence or people won’t take us seriously as a business.
• We can’t (directly) sell our kind of products/services on the web, and so we have a skeleton site, only.
• All of our competitors have a site (of a particular type and quality); so we’ve got to play along.
• We have a really "cool" site that we spent (and continue to spend) a lot of money on. We outsource our web site to a big time "web design" firm, and I expect them to figure it out and handle it.
• We’ve got techies that handle our web site in-house; we’re saving tons of money letting our IT department run our website--they know what should be on the site and what it needs to do.
• We just want a decent looking "professional" site but we don’t want it to say much at all so that our competitors don’t know much about us.
• We figured that we’d just put our whole catalog of products and services up in total and see what happens
• We don’t want our employees wasting time on the web, and so we minimize our website presence.

I don’t agree with Mr. Storch that the "stupid" era of the Internet is over just yet because a lot of companies still use one or more of the rationales above as their respective web site’s reason for being. But things, "they are a chang’in." Smart companies like Target are starting to get it. Next week we will start to examine some viable web business strategies–and please send me your web success stories to share with the debunker readers

Last week I suggested that marketers should be the captains of their respective web sites versus web designers, who are obviously a critical part of any web site team. We’ll return to web design in a few weeks, but here’s what a couple readers had to say about last week's debunker:

ﾒExcuse me, but I took marketing in college as a part of our graphic design major. Don't go making assumptions. Marketing is important, but it's not the end all be all. You need all parts of what goes into making a site to be equal. I would hate to see what a "marketing persons" website would look like without the backend technological setup and no or poorly designed graphics. You are coming off that Marketing is the most important and instead you should say that it's a poorly neglected part in the making of successful sites. It sometimes is the weakest link." From Carrie Apple, a Nashville web designer (www.carrieapple.com)

ﾒMost of the designers I know are pretty flexible. They want clear direction. The main thing they want to own is the look and feel, not the navigational strategy or messaging. I think most would welcome a storyboard session or clear direction on how to support existing corporate messaging. I agree that web sites are not implemented strategically, by the right players. I think your language could be a little more supportive of the value solid designers bring to the table. Like it or not, we need good balanced designers. The ones who think strategically and like business people are a rare find, depending on the city I suppose……...The only challenge is excellent creative, those that concept well, are not always the most linear thinkers. So, what we really need is, like you said, are solid teams with a facilitator that help them hear each other and follow the objectives of the project, despite their seen or unseen agendas. So there is my five dollars." From Jennifer Norene of NetContent Inc. (www.netcontentinc.com )

"New York Times, "Discount Giants Learn Online Lessons: Film, Yes; Shampoo, No" by Bob Tedischi, September 26, 2001.

NoSpin Debunkers are free weekly online newsletters written by Tom Ranseen. If at anytime you would like to be removed from the NoSpin Debunker reader list, please Unsubscribe. Otherwise, enjoy, join the conversation, and please forward this debunker to as many friends/acquaintances as you think may be interested–or send me their email addresses. Thanks.

Tom Ranseen NoSpinMarketing 615.383.7157