I'm a director of new products at a large ecommerce company. My job is to launch and manage, past the incubation stage, new products that have an online component.
I’ve noticed, while doing my job, that there seem to be many sites that concentrate on increasing site traffic, but few that provide information about managing online products and earning customer loyalty once users find them. I was thinking of creating such a site – an online exchange of ideas for eproduct management, promotion and customer loyalty.
I’m trying to get feedback – Would such a site be useful? What form would it take? Specifically, what topics, as entrepreneurs, would interest you?
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I agree that customer loyalty is a major issue. It is fairly easy to get people to show up once, but getting them to sign up and come back is another issue, and one that we have had with this site. I think topics such as running a membership-based site, and where to advertise so as to reach the maximum amount of the type of users you want (ie those that will stick around), would be useful. If you could create a resource site with this type of information, I would be interested.
I think you are right about the fact that people who have sites are not aware of how to truely create a community. It's not easy. I have one of the largest recreational fishing sites on the internet iwth about 31,000 memebers. I founded and ran a company called WorldwideAngler.com, Inc back from 1995-2001, raisied a few million dollars etc. I then bought back some of the assets and launched a site called TidalFish.com. We sign up about 25 members a day and convert about 5% into paying members all on less then $100 marketing spend a month. About 70% return to the site and post at least once every three months. The key to community is providing information that is really not availiable other places, or at least places that people do not know about, and keeping that information coming as well as keeping your customer aquistion costs low, ie viral marketing.
I think the topic of your site is a good one, however to really make it work you will need to create a community of users at a low aquistion cost. That will be the challange, not programming the site etc. So I would ask you, how do you plan to market the site to your target audience to drive traffic to it? For instance I just found out about this site via the UNC Kenan-Flagler Biz School Alum magazine because Susan who started this site is an Alum. Her aquaisiton cost of me 0, well maybe a bit of work to get her story in the alum mag.
With out rambling, your idea is good, my question just revolves around how you will drive traffic to the site.
Brandon