Hey, not everyone need be a dot.com
JAKE PEARCE has some handy maxims for all you budding internet retailers
Wednesday, 1 March, 2000
Before you get all choked about somebody snaffling your favourite businessname.com — thinkagain. Your dream of Internet-driven e-tail riches isn’t over. In fact, you could be better offbecause it’ll force you to ask yourself a few questions about where your company should sit on thelocal-regional-global continuum (see diagram). The key to success may lie in a locally orregionally focused site.
I’ve some handy rules for budding e-tailers.
1. Know where you want to be on the local-global continuum; that is, consider whether your NewZealand roots are a help or hindrance;
2. Make sure you’re working with local media; and
3. Make sure you can deliver on-the-ground service.
The mindset that global is good is reflected in a huge focus on the American-biased dot.comphenomenon. But for every trend there is a counter-trend — there’s a swing toward Web sites witha local or regional perspective.
Nike and Coca-cola may brazenly tout Americanism in their sites but Sony, never a slouch when itcomes to marketing technology, has developed a series of regional sites catering for differentcultures and languages. Such an approach would suit Montana or Corbans, which could highlighttheir New Zealand origins locally and in the UK, where Kiwi is good, but not in Australia wherebeing a Kiwi sucks.
FlyingPig is not co.nz for nothing. Nor is Uni-chem, the pharmacy chain, which went online (or atleast the Remuera shop did) in December with mypharmacy.co.nz. Wine Direct Imports, aboutique wine importer also launched its site, winedirect
.co.nz, in the same month. Over the past five years owner Paul Mitchell has built a loyal clienteleof about 1800 customers, all locals, who know and trust his service. Paul doesn’t want to build aglobal empire — he just wants his local customers to be able to order online as well as by phoneor fax.
The need for a local focus is supported by research company International Data Corporation(IDC). “Once you’re on the Web, you’re immediately a global company — but you’re notnecessarily a success in every country,” is how IDC summarised responses from about 29,000Internet users in more than 100 countries.
“The Web may be a global medium, but we found a lot of things about the way Web users behavein different countries that were counter-intuitive,” according to IDC chief research officer JohnGantz.
It’s also clear that local offline media advertising is vital in driving traffic to a site. A survey by UK-based Continental Research revealed that 76% of visitors looked at Web sites after seeingnewspaper or magazine ads and 55% as a result of television ads. Ironically, offline media have
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