What's Going On Online?

Failure to plan for success

What's going on? It would seem that drugemporium.com has a problem with its secure server and petopia.com has a problem with its shipping procedures. Actually, it's a good bet is that they both had the same problem - they skimped on the back ends of their sites in a rush to get online. My company and many others do a good trade in re-doing web sites that were skimped on the first time around.

Companies that sell online need to seek out the expertise of ecommerce integrators to design and implement an intelligent infrastructure for their sites. The days of having a brother-in- law who "knows a lot about the net" design a site have gone the way of the dinosaur. The ecommerce stakes get higher every day and budgets must follow.

Instead of planning for success, a lot of companies throw up a site and figure they will beef up the back end once the money starts rolling in. And sometimes that happens a lot faster than anyone planned.

We are likely to continue to live with a variety of snafus caused by poor planning. The way your site can avoid these problems? Plan for success. Build a system set to grow with your business. Or pay the price later. Like poor Ester in Kentucky, and Duncan in New York City.

About the Author:

B.L. Ochman is president of What's Next Online, a company that uses guerilla marketing tactics to build traffic and sales for Web businesses.

You can reach her directly at: BLOchman@whatsnextonline.com, or subscribe to their marketing tactics newsletter at www.whatsnextonline.com.

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This article originally appeared in the February 10, 2000 edition of the WebReference Update Newsletter.