FollowUp.net

FollowUp's E-Sales Solution is the first among a new breed of "Amazon Killer" applications that are becoming a match for the custom, in-house tools used by the biggest sites. Customer development is an essential, but often neglected, component of profitable online sales. Because a repeat buyer is the most profitable customer, the first place a site should look for more revenues is the list of past buyers. But too often, banner ads and problem resolution is the extent of the marketing department's efforts.
FollowUp's scalable E-Commerce Solution is an effective way to expand "wallet share" from an existing customer base. It is a complete, web-based package that gives a marketing manager the tools to perform market research, build customer profiles, and then easily send targeted marketing messages to drive store traffic;

"FollowUp is the most effective market research tool we have used. We got a ten times greater response rate using SurveyTrakker." -- EDGAR Online

Big Software takes a detour

"Somehow the computer industry has gotten away with making life miserable for its best customers, delivering products that are incredibly hard to install and cost more to use than they did to buy. Customers have obliged, enduring a relentless cycle of technology upgrades and planned obsolescence driven as much by an industry's genetic need to grow as by any need to run a business."

Garbage in, gold out

Wells Fargo tried data warehousing but pulled the plug on the project after $36 million and a year of struggle. "It was dangerous," says David Holvey, a senior vice president at the bank. "A lot of the data that we were getting out of it was garbage. We were lucky that the answers it came up with were so ridiculous that people with very sharp pencils were able to say, 'That's not right.'"

"Contrary to media hype, Web commerce is not a revolution, but an evolution in retailing," said Shelley Taylor, the study's author. "Online stores fail to translate the lessons learned from centuries of land-based retailing and merchandising into successful online shopping experiences for customers. Even though technology has changed, the way we humans process purchasing decisions has remained the same."

"While we can give them raw numbers, we can't tell them what those visitors look like..."

Bradley Rode, chief executive officer and president of the web server statistics company, I/PRO, Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition, 3/2/99 Web-traffic measurement is considered a vital tool for advertisers, the same way that television and radio ratings are central to advertisers in those mediums. In theory, its interactive nature makes the Web an even more powerful audience-tracking tool than traditional media, which relies on a mish-mash of market research and specialized monitoring devices. In practice, though, Web-site operators’ understanding of their visitors has remained fairly crude as they devoted attention to the more pressing details of running their online operations.

Only 1.6% of online store visits turn into a sale according to Shop.org, the online retail association.

There is still a lot to learn about your customers but guessing doesn't work.

"In a low-contact environment like the Internet, what makes one Web store better than another, other than price, is something that's very much being explored still."