Customer focus in ebusiness

Inside, looking out..

Many businesses frame their offers around what they know, details about their products and services, without ever thinking what their customers actually want. This inside-out approach often leads to a mis-match between what is offered and what the customers, or potential customers, are actually looking for.

Outside, looking in..

Smarter businesses know that the reverse approach is required and look at their products and services from the outside, looking in. They ask, and answer, the customer's question - What's in it for me..?

What the customer wants

Understanding the market and defining true customer value, which customers are willing to pay a premium for, is at the heart of every business. It is no different in the ebusiness world, there has to be a value proposition for the customer.

Whether in existing markets or in defining and creating new markets, ebusiness solutions have to augment your company's value proposition to customers. Will your ebusiness solution make life easier, or richer, save time or money. These are the questions you have to understand and answer to be truly successful.

Internet Market research

To help answer these important questions, we need to ask customers directly, or find out what they are actually searching for. Along with traditional methods, we can now use the internet to do our market research. Thankfully, there are tools which allow us to see what people are currently searching for, giving us a starting point in refining or matching our offers to them.

Magic bullets

People use keywords to search the internet for information, and to find products and services. These market keywords can be analysed to quantify volume of traffic and to also identify market niches where there are few competing web sites.

Knowledge of the keywords people use to search the internet gives important market information which can be used understand what potential customers are really looking for and to optimise your web site and product/service offerings to match the demand.