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Winning on the web can be a tricky business. All of the players are trying to figure out how to create a profitable business strategy for the Internet and beyond.

Here’s a simple exercise: Have you ever ordered theater or movie tickets using an automated phone system? Have you ever received stock quotes or news updates on your pager? Do you receive e-mails or faxes from your suppliers with quotes, product information, and delivery-status updates? Have you ever gone on the web to obtain more information about a type of product you’re interested in stocking? Does your company’s web site enable customers to order products, check delivery status, get a list of all the products they’ve ordered from you in the past, or correct their mailing addresses? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you have engaged in electronic commerce.

Now is the time for you to consider new ideas on how your organization can benefit the most from electronic commerce. In this article, I’m going to give you a few examples plus list some companies who have committed themselves to doing what it takes to make it easier for their customers to do business with them. Today, these companies are reaping the rewards of their efforts and will continue to do so in the future.

Imagine what will happen to your company if you can create a successful e-business strategy.
You’ll be able to:
1. Increase customer loyalty
2. Increase profitability
3. Decrease time-to-market spans for new products
4. Reach your customers in the most cost-effective way with targeted offers
5. Reduce your costs per transaction substantially
6. Reduce your customer service time appreciably

WHY HAVE MANY INTERNET-BASED BUSINESSES
CRASHED AND BURNED AND WHAT’S THE WINNING FORMULA?
It starts by focusing on your existing customers to figure out what they want and need and how you can make life easier for them. Then, expand your efforts to reel in prospective customers. Once you lure prospects to you, closing the sale and cementing a profitable long-term relationship becomes simple because you’ve already made it easy for customers to conduct business with you.

Following are four case studies to illustrate some of the eight critical success factors.
1. How does American Airlines target the right customers? American’s web site is designed specifically for the company’s 32 million most profitable customers — its AAdvantage frequent flyers. American learned that customers value proactive e-mail notifications. It discovered that customer profiles are important in order to be able to tailor offers for each customer. Log onto www.aa.com to see specifically how they do it.

2. How does Amazon own the customer’s total experience? Amazon is one of the most comprehensive retail experiences on the web. Amazon’s most important ingredient for success is to make the customer’s experience so satisfying that customers don’t bother to switch. Amazon’s designers understand that bookstore customers are usually in one of two moods — browsing or hunting (for a particular book). Amazon satisfies both with “tables” at the front of the store that feature new releases, specials, and gift ideas. Then, after checking them out, you can go to a particular section — cooking, architecture, computers, etc. — where you will find recommendations by experts and customers. Besides carrying much more inventory, what can a virtual bookstore do that a physical bookstore can’t? They can order books slated for publication that haven’t yet hit the bookstores.

3. How does Dell let customers help themselves? Check out www.dell.com and you’ll see why Dell’s business model is so successful. Dell sells directly to the end customer and only builds systems once an order is placed, thus keeping inventory to a minimum. Dell has computer systems that can interact not just with a single corporate purchasing department or IT executive, but with each one of the thousands of employees who actually use Dell’s computers. Dell’s critical success factors are as follows: They let customers help themselves, they help customers do their jobs, they deliver personalized service, and they foster community. Self-service with a focus on direct marketing, direct sales, and direct support to the end customer is Dell’s successful model for maintaining relationships through self-service.

4. How does Cisco Systems foster community? Check out Cisco at www.cisco.com and you’ll instantly become part of the Cisco community. They also have saved more than $550 million per year in customer support costs by letting customers help themselves to technical support information and order-status information via the web. Their success in e-commerce has been built on a strong foundation of community among their customers. Cisco’s customers answer one another’s technical questions and help each other out on the company’s web site. Cisco has been able to branch out to streamline most of the business processes that impact their customers and channel partners.

What is the most sensible path for the gourmet retailer to follow? None of you are Amazon, Dell, or Cisco, so how do you do it? I suggest forming “cosmic coalitions” around common user interface and billing procedures. All this software development can be costly and if you can partner with another organization, you can spread the costs and reap 100 percent of the benefits.

Even the biggest and most successful firms form partnerships. Google and Sun Microsystems formed a partnership in October, 2005 to develop and distribute each other’s technology in a bid to expand their markets and challenge Microsoft’s dominance of computer desktops.

This was a very strategic deal for Google who is trying to expand beyond being the dominant supplier of web search services. Yes, Google, which has quickly become the internet industry’s biggest success story, has partnered with Sun because they expect it to generate substantial revenue. Given that Google generates its revenue from the advertising on its toolbar, the deal could mean a substantial expansion of Google’s market. Sun estimates that nearly 20 million users download their Java program every month. Today, hundreds of thousands of personal computers have Java installed. It was the vastness of Java’s reach that made this deal so attractive.

When will this deal bear fruit? Some analysts have said that while it will probably bear fruit over the next few years, it amounts to little more than a limited distribution agreement in the short term. Is this partnership all future stuff? Will the present business alliance generate additional revenue, growth, profits, and new customers? Do partnerships generally pay off? My crystal ball says yes there is great value in creating strategic alliances. Add-on selling in the past has tended to be product driven, but this model is changing rapidly. Firms are learning either to create strategic alliances or to serve as marketing conduits for other firms’ products and services. Internet portals such as Yahoo! serve as matchmakers but manufacture nothing. They are prime examples of this new trend. There’s money to be made by using your customer base to market products for a fee plus a percentage of revenues.

Decision-making must focus on the customer, not on a firm’s line of products. This is a very hard lesson for traditional firms. The concept of serving as a matchmaker rather than as a producer is an important lesson to learn and has become a prominent part of the so-called new economy.

Are you ready to make the changes necessary to play ball in the new economy? Think PARTNERSHIP when you’re going after REVENUE, GROWTH, PROFITS & CUSTOMERS. Woody Allen said: "Eighty percent of success is showing up." Will you show up?

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Marshall Marcovitz is the founder and former CEO of the CHEF’S Catalog, a leading Internet shopping site. Currently, he is a lecturer, a university professor, and a marketing consultant. He can be contacted at mmmellow9@yahoo.com.