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BUILDING AN ONLINE COMMUNITY
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How can I…
Build a Thriving Online Community?
The Situation/Problem
The Internet has changed the definition of community. Today’s Internet-enabled society has spurned former limitations and adopted the genesis of communities based on common interests, enterprise and social preference; simply put, the widespread presence of the Internet has ushered in a new era where society come together to form communities online without regard to geographic borders or other limitations.
Whether you are looking to interact with customers, supporters or business colleagues, online communities have become an essential component for online success. Building an online community provides a forum that encourages communication among your site’s visitors, which will result in increased site stickiness, customer satisfaction, brand loyalty and long-term business relationships.
A study from McKinsey & Company and Jupiter Media found that one-third of visitors to e-commerce sites use community features such as chat rooms and bulletin boards. Even more interesting, these users account for two-thirds of all e-commerce purchases. Consumers spent $18.5 billion dollars this past holiday season, adding community features to a website is an important tool in an online business arsenal to garner a larger piece of that e-commerce pie.
The emergence of the Internet as a commerce platform saw many attempts by early online businesses simply putting up a static ‘brochureware’ site. Nowadays, as site visitors have become savvier and more comfortable surfing and conducting commerce on the Web, companies have to do a great deal more to successfully generate business and keep customers. Online businesses must give site visitors a vehicle to communicate, collaborate and interact with both the merchant and other visitors with common interests to be more successful.
To keep pace with today’s consumers, companies have taken steps to breathe life into their websites by adding community features like chat, which gives consumers the ability to engage in real-time text messaging. Chat has grown significantly since it’s inception, including the introduction of voice and video capabilities to further enhance the communications experience.
Steps to Building an Online Community
1.) Build a compelling Web site with good content or products. After all, people are going to have to want to come to your site.
2.) Have a clear idea of your goals and what type of community you’d like to build.
3.) Add water – community building tools to enable connections, communication and collaboration with your Web site as the nexus:
a. Live chat rooms for real-time interactionb. Conduct webcasts (live auditorium-style chat events with key industry figures and/or employees and your community base)
c. Setup discussion boards with integrated support for e-mail/listserv style mailing lists
d. Integrate Web-based and desktop-based IM to enable and leverage communications and extend community and your reach to each page of your Web site and the visitor’s desktop (persistence).
e. Unified login and membership database system to tie it all together.
The Digi-Net Solution
As with any online venture competing for attention, the question that must be addressed is, “What do I do better than my competition?” The answer is simple. Create a Web presence that is more than a static set of Web pages, make it a ‘destination’ by arming it with interactive tools to dramatically improve every visitor’s experience and make them want to come back.
Imagine walking into Best Buy on a Sunday afternoon and finding it completely empty. Products line the shelves, but you don’t see any customers in the aisles and there are no people in blue shirts ready to help. Now look at your Web site. By adding online community tools, sites can increase interaction among customers, browsers and the sales staff. Adding a live interaction component to your site like DigiChat can greatly increase traffic and consequently increase revenue and brand awareness.
The study by McKinsey & Co. and Jupiter Media also found that site visitors who contribute to community features are nine times as likely to come back to that site and twice as likely to make a purchase.
The bottom line is that online communities can directly and positively affect a company’s sales revenue. The Internet is a revenue stream that cannot be overlooked evidenced by the vast amount of profit generated from it in since the emergence of the Web store. The worldwide Internet population is projected to reach over 700 million in 2004 and that online community spent more than $1.2 trillion in 2002. How can you make sure to get your share of that pie? One simple and proven tactic is to create an online community for site visitors and merchants to interact.
Why DigiChat?
DigiChat AV ENTERPRISE is the clear market-leader in community building technology. DigiChat combines our leading, scalable real-time chat engine with support for an unlimited number of chat rooms, Web and application-based instant messaging, auditorium-style webcasts (moderated chat), and now full voice (VoIP) and video chat sessions! With support for all major platforms (Windows, MacOS, Linux/UNIX, Solaris) and all major browsers, all visitors to your Web site can immediately participate in your community.
With Digi-Net’s community building solutions, your site will benefit from:
1.) An increase in new customers and Repeat Visitors
2.) Site Stickiness (more people come back and stay for longer periods of time)
3.) Increases in Customer and Brand Loyalty
4.) Customer Satisfaction goes up
5.) Long-term Business Relationships are built
To add the latest in Java-based chat technology to your Web site or for a more detailed list of features, please contact our online community specialists at (877)-404-2428 or go to http://test.digi-net.com/technology/digichat/index.html.
