Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A look at 12 Web technologies that companies need to make their site stand out from the competition. This book explains that useful and tangible benefits, such as instant e-mail to confirm an order, will help turn the cybervisitor into a loyal and regular customer.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface (p. XIII)
• Acknowledgments (p. XV)
• Part I The E-Commerce Climate
• 1 The Struggle for Survival Online (p. 3)
• The Causes of Competitiveness (p. 4)
• Increased Customer Expectations: The Consequence of Competitiveness (p. 6)
• Don't Hurdle; Pole-Vault (p. 6)
• Baby, You Can Drive My Car (p. 12)
• Opportunities for Those Who Come at the Eleventh Hour (p. 13)
• What Are Investors to Do? (p. 13)
• Narrowing the Field (p. 14)
• 2 The Recipe for Success (p. 15)
• Driving Traffic (p. 15)
• The Site (p. 22)
• Customer Service (p. 25)
• Turnkey Growth (p. 26)
• Part II Technologies for Driving Traffic
• 3 Search Engines for Customer Acquisition (p. 31)
• Search Engines versus Directories (p. 32)
• Submitting Your URL (p. 37)
• How It Works Today (p. 40)
• Winning Strategies (p. 41)
• Outsourcing Your Web Positioning (p. 53)
• Resources (p. 54)
• 4 Viral Affiliates Programs (p. 57)
• Cost of Acquisition (p. 57)
• Affiliate Programs (p. 58)
• Viral Marketing (p. 61)
• Case Study: OurHouse.com (p. 63)
• Loyalty Programs (p. 65)
• How Viral Affiliate Networks Should Work (p. 68)
• Resources (p. 68)
• 5 Listfeed Programs and XML (p. 71)
• Knowing When to Bring Them to You and When to Go to Them (p. 71)
• Aggregators (p. 72)
• Listfeeds (p. 77)
• The What and Why of XML (p. 79)
• Categorizing Products (p. 80)
• Universal Shopping Carts (p. 81)
• Case Study: NIC Commerce (p. 82)
• Resources (p. 83)
• 6 Targeted Electronic Direct Mail (p. 85)
• Customer Loyalty (p. 85)
• Getting the List (p. 86)
• Compiling Customer Profiles (p. 88)
• Honing the Message (p. 90)
• Case Study: Garden.com (p. 92)
• Cost Effectiveness (p. 96)
• Testing the Messages (p. 96)
• Event-Driven E-Mail (p. 97)
• Case Study: Musicland (p. 98)
• Why Not Send the E-Mail Yourself? (p. 100)
• Resources (p. 101)
• 7 WAP-Enabling for M-Commerce (p. 103)
• Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) (p. 104)
• After the WAP: IMT-2000 (aka 3G) (p. 105)
• Wireless for Messaging (p. 106)
• How Web Surfing Differs from Wireless Web Surfing (p. 107)
• Profile: Internet2Anywhere (In2a) (p. 108)
• Going Mobile the Easy Way (p. 110)
• Do-It-Yourself Mobile (p. 112)
• Click-to-Voice (p. 113)
• Case Study: GiantBear.com (p. 114)
• Resources (p. 115)
• Part III Technologies for Making Buying Easier
• 8 Personalization for Customer Loyalty (p. 119)
• Overt versus Covert Personalization (p. 120)
• Overt Personalization (p. 121)
• Motivating Shoppers to Give You Their Preferences (p. 127)
• Covert Personalization (p. 128)
• Case Study: G.U.S. Home Shopping Limited (p. 129)
• Profile: Net Perceptions (p. 130)
• Profile: Shop Tok's TokAdvisor (p. 132)
• Profile: Angara Converter (p. 134)
• Profile: Blue Martini Software (p. 135)
• Resources (p. 136)
• 9 Shopping Wizards and In-Context Search (p. 139)
• Who's Shopping Online (p. 140)
• Shopping Wizards (p. 142)
• In-Context Shopping Capabilities (p. 145)
• Profile: Soliloquy (p. 147)
• Natural Language Search Tools (p. 148)
• Profile: Ask Jeeves E-Commerce (p. 149)
• Knowledgebase (p. 151)
• Resources (p. 151)
• 10 Globalization and Multicurrency Capability (p. 155)
• Minimum Requirements to Compete Globally (p. 156)
• Profile: From2.com (p. 159)
• Profile: E-Commerce Logistics (p. 161)
• How to Be a Major Player in a Market (p. 162)
• Profile: Uniscape (p. 163)
• Profile: Welocalize.com (p. 167)
• Resources (p. 169)
• 11 Real-Time Access to Inventory and Order Status (p. 171)
• Product Information (p. 172)
• Order Information (p. 175)
• Customer Information (p. 179)
• Resources (p. 183)
• 12 Robust Content-Management Systems (p. 185)
• Customization (p. 186)
• Baseline Features (p. 187)
• Profile: NCompass Labs (p. 188)
• Profile: FatWire (p. 195)
• Differentiating Features (p. 196)
• Profile: BroadVision (p. 196)
• The Importance of Your Vendor Relationship (p. 199)
• Why Not Custom-Build? (p. 200)
• Internationalized Solutions (p. 200)
• Resources (p. 201)
• Part IV Technologies for Customer Service
• 13 Real-Time Presales Chat (p. 205)
• Online Support Options (p. 206)
• Presales Support versus Customer Service (p. 210)
• Real-Time Chat: Help When It's Needed (p. 213)
• Service with a Smiley Face (p. 215)
• Knowledge(base) Is Power (p. 218)
• How Real-Time Chat Works (p. 219)
• Resources (p. 224)
• 14 Multichannel Customer Service Systems (p. 229)
• Customer Service as Differentiator (p. 230)
• Building a Customer-Centric Organization (p. 231)
• What "Multichannel" Really Means (p. 232)
• The Isolated Data Phenomenon (p. 233)
• What Is CRM? (p. 235)
• CRM versus ERP (p. 236)
• Selecting a CRM Vendor (p. 237)
• CRM at Work (p. 239)
• Building the Relationship (p. 241)
• Resources (p. 242)
• Part V Turnkey Growth
• 15 Outsource Everything (p. 245)
• Why Outsource? (p. 245)
• Case Study: Paytime (p. 250)
• Case Study: Ask Jeeves (p. 251)
• Case Study: eWonder.com (p. 252)
• The Ins and Outs of Outsourcing (p. 253)
• In Celebration of ASPs (p. 256)
• No Longer Vogue with the Venture Capitalists--So What? (p. 258)
• 16 Feed the Lions (p. 259)
• Guard Your Crack in the Sidewalk (p. 261)
• The Service Economy (p. 262)
• Everyone's Doin' It (p. 264)
• Case Study: Web Trends Live/Click-Stream Analysis (p. 264)
• Case Study: E-Commerce Support Centers/Customer Service (p. 265)
• Case Study: Digital Impact/E-Mail (p. 266)
• Case Study: The Kringle Company/Private-Labeled Personalized Letters (p. 268)
• Epilogue: A Baker's Dozen: Alternative Payment Systems (p. 271)
• Consumers Are Rarely the Victims of Fraud (p. 272)
• Protecting the Merchant (p. 273)
• Alternative Payment Systems (p. 280)
• Major Payment System Vendors (p. 281)
• Resources (p. 285)
• Notes (p. 287)
• Index (p. 291)
• About the Author (p. 303)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Booklist Review

The international outplacement firm of Challenger, Gray, and Christmas reports Internet companies have laid off more than 41,500 persons in the last 13 months. In December alone, 10,459 more Internet employees faced unemployment, and nearly 20 percent of so-called dot-com businesses folded this past year. One explanation for this decline is simple--these companies did not have enough customers! Here, now, two authors show how to attract and keep customers; Gutzman identifies tactics and Seybold lays out strategy. Gutzman is an Internet consultant and the author of books on HTML, ColdFusion, and Frontpage. She highlights 12 new or emerging technologies that "enable a Web site to do something that's tangibly valuable to customers." These technologies are grouped among three applications: driving traffic (getting users to visit the site), site functionality (enabling shoppers easily to find and buy the products they need easily), and customer service. Included are the latest developments in search engines, viral affiliates, shopping wizards, real-time presales chats, etc. Gutzman offers plenty of examples of how these technologies work, and she makes a strong argument for outsourcing site development to ASPs (application service providers). Seybold heads her own "worldwide business and technology strategic consulting and research firm," and she looks to her successes with a wide range of clients for examples to illustrate her points in this follow-up to her best-selling Customers.com (1998). Her key argument is that companies should no longer be valued by traditional accounting measures. She makes the case for tracking "customer capital," which includes customer retention rates, profits per customer, growth in customers, etc. Seybold focuses on the music industry and the "free" distribution of digital music to demonstrate another of her principles--that the customer is now in control. Her third proposition is that "customer experience matters," and she details eight steps toward delivering a "great branded experience." --David Rouse