In
the last lesson you were supposed to see what makes a good vortal by looking
at other good sites. So let's examine a site to see what makes a good
vortal. As you go to this site look at three things Community Collaboration
and Interactivity.
We will examine www.stylusinc.com.
That's a coincidence. It's our company! A website like this is able to
accomplish things that were very difficult in the past. New doors are
opening for building relationships, learning, meeting the needs of customers
and gathering information like never before.
Stylusinc.com wants to build a community to connect people
who have a common interest in India, Internet and business. This virtual
community will allow people with a common interest to come together and
share ideas, information and get to know each other. We know that, if
our visitors benefit from coming to our site, we will also benefit.
Shared interests centered around a common hobby, passion
or dream link people together. This is evidenced by the many clubs, users
groups and associations in every city. Let's examine how www.stylusinc.com
is serves as a virtual community.
The main means is a discussion forum. Stylus would like
to encourage people who are interested in doing hi-tech business in India
get in touch with each other. We are particularly focused on meeting the
needs of American companies who want to do business in India or outsource
business to India. So far people have posted questions about wages or
legal matters in India. Unfortunately right now there are few people who
respond to questions. Our staff generally answers the questions. You can
go to the discussion forum and check this out.
This is really not achieving the goal of building a focused
community. If it were, people would already be meeting each other, building
friendships and developing business contacts. The site should meet the
needs of visitors. These needs do not necessarily have to be met by the
site owner. It is often the other visitors that have the answers.
This site is designed to be more than just a brochure. It
is a gathering place. And why would stylusinc.com want to create a community
like this? Well, this is the tricky part. We feel that, if our visitors
benefit, in the long run we will benefit. So we are attempting to develop
a service attitude and never to loose sight of our goal and which is to
add value to our site and keep it interesting for the visitor. Of course
we as a business and we need to make money but if our visitors are content,
then in the long run we will all benefit.
Building an online community is not as easy as installing
a discussion forum on your site. It takes a combination of things but
mostly it requires gathering people with a passion who are willing to
contribute to the community so that everyone benefits. It takes achieving
a critical mass so that people sense there is activity; that they are
receiving their answers which meet their needs.
Collaboration is the second concept we will examine. The
web provides the opportunity for joint learning and partnering. This collaboration
occurs when people benefit from each other's contribution. For example,
a software project can be done in collaboration, where one person works
on it and then another person builds upon it. Collaboration is reached
when people work together and the result is much better than an individual
effort would be.
One of the best sites where you can find people are collaborating
is The Motley Fool www.fool.com
. Here people who are able to work together and learn from each other
to invest in the stock market. They are not dependent on a stockbroker
for information. They get information from other visitors and investors.
Let's now us look at the concept of interactivity. Reading
the newspaper and watching TV is one way communication. The newspaper
publisher often doesn't know what the reader is thinking and the newspaper
reader is not normally able to interact easily with the paper. Yet a website
provides immense opportunities for two-way communication. Let's list some
ways of communicating using:
Many Different Web Communication Options
Visitor to Site
Form -The site visitor completes a form and sends/submits
it. This is useful for applications, questionnaires etc.
E-mail - The site visitor responds to something on the site
and sends an e-mail.
Survey - This component ask questions and compiles the results.
The business get direct and fast feedback and the customer can see the
opinions of other customers.
Business to Business
Discussion Forum- A business can post and read messages
from other businesses. This has many uses including making new vendor
or customer contacts.
Web Database- Inventory and other data can be made available
on the Internet. For example a supplier can decide when he needs to ship
more products.
Auctions-A company can sell a bulldozer to another company
on an auction site.
Visitor to Visitor
Auction- Visitors can sell things to other visitors
Discussion Forum- Visitors can talk to each other by posting
a question or message and receiving a reply later.
Online survey in which the visitors complete a survey. They
can then see how others responded.
Site to Visitor
Classified Ads- A site owner can post items for sale and
even allow visitors to post ads.
The site operator can send an e-mail to anyone who responds.
The website itself provides the visitor with information
on demand.
Critical Mass
A good vortal can create a snowballing effect where people
visit because there are good ads, discussions, products, content, friends
etc. The more people visit the the site the more it adds to what people
are looking for. The opposite is true of a dying online community. It
can spiral downward because others are not fueling the site with useful
information.
The Early Bird Gets the Internet Real Estate
One of the most important things to consider in building
a vortal is to be early in the game. Once visitors become loyal to a good
vortal site they keep coming back. That is why Yahoo and other sites are
so valuable.
Some people use the word sticky to describe a site that
causes people to keep coming back. If a person has left something of his
or her self on the site then it makes them more likely to return. For
example if you order something and you leave a credit card number with
an address you are less likely to buy the product someplace else. It's
easier and less risky to go back to the same site. This sticky principle
applies to many other areas of a website.
Now that you have learned a little about what is behind
a good vortal let's move beyond concepts to the practical aspects of developing
content and design.
Recommended Reading - Net Gain Expanding Markets Through
Virtual Communities by John Hagel and Arthur Armstrong www.hbsp.harvard.edu
Lesson
1: Why Vertical Communities?