Looking backwards to look forward (Small Business E-Commerce Link Digest – July 10, 2009)

“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” – Winston Churchill

Ah… good old Winnie. You’ve gotta love him. That’s one of my all-time favorite quotes and largely because it demonstrates how you need to consider both the past and the present when planning for the future. What does that have to do with this week’s links? Well, Big thinker, read on…

Linda Bustos kicks things off by taking us back to the Summer… er, I mean, the Internet of ’69. It seems we have come so far. But Mike Moran argues we’re still in the early days of internet marketing. And I agree. We’ll look back at this period some day as the “cave painting” period of online marketing. Sure, there are some great converting sites, but the overall experience online has a long way to go before it consistently meets customer expectations. Sure, as we saw earlier this week, offline customer service can suck, too. But, customers don’t stick around for the companies that don’t take care of them offline or online.

The best companies understand this and are changing to address customers’ expectations. Heck, the whole Bing marketing campaign assumes customers hate search engine results and positions itself as a better alternative. For that matter, all the search engines are changing, so maybe there’s something to Bing’s push.

What’s ironic is that these efforts show the road to improvement relies on setting the right goals, putting in the time, fixing what needs to be fixed. Yes, it’s definitely more important in the long run to work smarter. But, sometimes it’s equally important to be willing to work harder.

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