Web-based communities are enabling firms to get closer to their
customers than ever before. Where better for you to learn what
customers think of your products and what they'd like to see on the
market than your own bulletin board or mailing list?
People have always belonged to communities of like-minded
individuals where they can share experiences with the group and
other members. The Internet, with its ability to effect one-to-many
and one-to-one relationships, maps perfectly onto the community
model and has been responsible for the flowering of global, online
communities catering for all tastes and predilections.
As more bricks-and-mortar companies venture onto the World Wide
Web, the giddy days of get-rich-quick are drawing to a close and
existing brands are mainly looking for a new channel to market. But
they can still learn a valuable lesson from the Internet pioneers:
the addition of a community component, whether multi-threaded
discussion forums, chat, or tailored content can all make a site
"stickier".
Dotcom companies have made a lot of money from aggregating
people into giant communities or portals. When eTrade announced it
had one million customers, for example, its share price rose 30%
overnight. However, Nick Maxwell, partner at e-business consultancy
Quidnunc says the endgame for corporate brands is to use them to
improve product and sales. "When you create a community, you create
the possibility to learn about your consumers, be more targeted
about your marketing messages and produce more relevant ads."
One of the key values of a community is a sense of belonging.
This is something traditional bricks-and-mortar companies have not
done well, says Robin Tye, head of e-business consulting at
PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers has just completed a study into the most
important components of online communities, and Tye believes the
answer is not necessarily to mimic the portals in their quest for
numbers of eyeballs. "A small band of dedicated followers is worth
more than an array of window shoppers."
For that reason also, the consultants agree, it's best to tailor
content and provide the option for members to personalise
information. The biggest overheads will be for an editorial team to
create the content, so it's worth checking it's going to hit the
mark before going to that expense. It's always possible to source
content from elsewhere, Maxwell points out, but suggests if it's a
case of another news feed, it might be better not to bother. "If
every site has news, there's something wrong."
Richard Duvall, founder and customer director of Egg, the
Prudential-owned dotcom financial services company, says the "Egg
free zone", or discussion group has been a vital way of exploring
the new relationship between vendor and customer. "The World Wide
Web is a network and when we operate on it, we are no longer a
company with one-to-one relationships. As a business we had to work
out how to operate as part of the network, instead of being a
company which has power over the customer."
For this reason, Egg decided not to moderate the Egg-free zone.
Other than fulfilling its obligation as a regulated financial
company not to publish insider dealing information, Egg does not
moderate, even though this exposes the company to the occasional
"bad egg smell" comment from piqued customers. Instead Duvall uses
the analogy of pub landlord to explain Egg's relationship to the
community it hosts. "A landlord owns the pub and sells beer and
food - yet everyone has their own conversation."
While censorship of product feedback forums would be a self
defeating exercise, other advocates of discussion groups favour
moderation, especially for hobbyist groups. Tim Beadle, chairman of
marketing agency the Opus Group, says, "You need someone to lead
discussions. If there's no one leading or guiding discussions, they
can become a whingeing shop for idiots. It was Aristotle who said
that the most valid form of government is a benevolent
dictatorship."
Roland Hanbury, head of business consulting at Nvision Internet
consultancy warns against gimmicky communities that are tacked onto
Web sites as an afterthought. Like everyone else he has been
dispirited by empty chat rooms and his benchmark for introducing a
discussion board is one contribution per day per 1,000 users.
"That's if you want something that has the appearance of life. I've
seen lot of sites where it's blatantly not happening. It's a major
credibility loser. People are time-stretched and don't want to have
discussions in empty rooms."
It can even be beneficial to set up a non-branded Web site to
host discussion groups as they may seem more appealing than a site
associated with a commodity brand, says Tye. He points to
Oxalis.co.uk as a great venue where gardeners get together online
to pass on wisdom and to chat. "The dilemma here is whether to
bring in partners and post up competitive products and
information."
Whether or not you decide to link them to your main brand,
communities are an effective tool for monitoring customer trends.
And as a more dynamic version of the traditional user group or
focus group, online discussion can be particularly useful in
specialised markets where it's hard to anticipate customer
requirements. Dialogue on the Web is not perfect, says Beadle, "but
it does let you fly a lot of kites."
At Evans, the high street fashion chain, they have been utilised
to design product. Eva Pascoe, marketing director of Arcadia Group
which owns the fashion chain, describes how it works. "Evans
specialises in fashion for size 16-plus women and this category
cuts across all affluence groups and age ranges. A designer needs
to be good but can't know everything. So we put [design] drawings
online and invited comment - and we got a lot of good stuff
back."
Maxwell says that in the business-to-business sector, chat
forums or discussion threads need even more careful thought - any
appearance of frivolity would be a turn-off for potential business
users. "We were talking to a power utility - and if you're selling
power it's a pretty dull thing. However we decided that the site
would be targeted at office managers, and then focussed our
attention on creating content that would be useful for them."
Commerce need not necessarily be a dirty word in communities -
indeed some, such as auction houses, are defined by sharing
purchasing values. Community and commerce can be a powerful
combination, but to work, the proposition has to be genuine. One of
Maxwell's favourite sites is baby.com, an online equivalent to
Mothercare. "The business is to sell to parents everything that
goes with the having a baby. The site is personalised so that
mothers and fathers are offered products that relate only to their
offspring's age." And of course visitors are offered chat
facilities to discuss parenting issues.
The crucial thing to avoid when mixing community and commerce,
is blatant selling that does not match the profile of the
constituency. "What communities react against instinctively is
being exploited because they are together," confirms Tye.
And when the ideas dry up, it's always worth returning to the
not-for-profit communities as a reminder of what brings people
together and makes them keep coming back for more. One of Beadle's
favourite examples of not-for-gain sites is www.verona.it, a site
set up by the Italian authority responsible for staging operas in
Verona. Opera buffs can choose their performance then order and pay
for their ticket online. "It is a fantastic e-commerce site,
efficient, reliable - it is a miracle for Italy," enthuses
Beadle.
One of the greatest examples of community success is the
operating system Linux. Without the Internet Linux would probably
have remained an interesting curio. Instead, the shareware - or
free - computer operating system has made such inroads onto the
corporate desktop that it "has scared the wits out of Microsoft",
says Beadle. And all because a globally-dispersed interest group
was able to connect so that, "at any time of the day, thousands of
people were beavering away on the code to make the thing work," he
continues.
As they are, "closer to brand strategy than sales strategy,"
Egg's Duvall reckons that communities are the responsibility of
marketeers. But they are everyone's business, and he confirms that
the CEO of Egg, Mike Harris, looks at the Egg-free zone every day.
"People, should take them pretty seriously," advises Duvall, who
recommends that companies avoid the temptation to introduce
horizontal banner advertising onto their vertical community. "Do
not mix insurance and books," he warns
Community Building Blocks
Mailing Lists
- Mailing lists allow users to subscribe to a list and send and
e-mail to everyone subscribed to a particular list.
- They allow free-form discussion convenient to people who use
e-mail.
- Do not offer much integration with your Web site.
- Webreview.com provides a thorough bu
accessibel primer on mailing lists
Low Volume Lists
- Your ISP may be able to host a few lists for you
High Volume Lists
Lists are better hosted on your Web site. You or your hosting
company/ISP need a dedicated server and a stable, permanent
Internet connection. Two free mail list management applications
(Unix only) are:
- The Webreview link mentioned above compares others
Discussion Forums
Forums are good for topic groups and use a Web-interface so that
users can read discussions in their chosen forum and contribute
their opinions. Again, you could outsource your forums
remarq.com or onelist.com. This is zero-maintenance solution,
but offers no real integration with your site. Off-the-shelf
packages are available to manage your own forums. Again you'll need
a server and Internet connection:
Off-the-shelf packages are a quick way to get up and running but
offer a default 'look-and-feel' for your discussion forums which
you may wish to modify to fit in with a brand look. You'll also
need to consider the following:
- Do you need access to the conversations from outside the
discussion application, for instance, to include discussions in a
searchable index of your whole site? Some products use a
proprietary database format so this would be hard.
- You don't want users to log in twice (once for your site, once
for the discussion package). You'll need to create a user in the
discussion package, and then pass on login information, perhaps
using cookies.
- Pricing is not neccessarily based on features. Many packages
are priced according to how many forums you need to host or how
high traffic on you site is.