Internet Design (B2C)

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, as of March of this year an estimated 304 million individuals have access to the Internet. In the U.S. and Canada alone, nearly 140 million people possess the capability to logon to the net (giving new meaning to the phrase "If you built it, they will come"). With all those eyeballs up for grabs, many existing organizations, as well as entrepreneurs have developed web sites that are specifically designed to attract individual consumers. However, unless a consumer knows exactly what he or she wants to purchase and from whom, a significant amount of surfing may be required. Not surprisingly, many consumers have become adept at whipping through web pages at a phenomenal rate. Even on those occasions when a person slows down to explore a site in more detail, many factors influence how long the person will stay and if he or she will make a return visit. For example, results from one Internet-related survey (Forrester Research) suggest that sites that maintain high quality content, are relatively easy to use, are fast, and are kept up to date tend to enjoy high repeat visitor rates. Given that there now exist an estimated 1 billion unique pages available on the net, individual surfers have come to realize that there are too many good sites available to be wasting time on inferior sites that fail to meet expectations.

The purpose of this topic section is to explore issues relating to how Internet companies attract and service customers. As opposed to the previous section (B2B), here we will be focusing on the B2C market (and to some extent the C2C market). We will be supplementing the related articles and papers with a class discussion concerning the web sites that we have identified as being well done and effective at enticing surfers to slow down for a closer look.