Tag Archives: Jim Sterne

About 4371 days ago E-Commerce

United We Stand

Web Wise Manufacturers that compete with resellers online are missing a huge opportunity Whenever I lecture about Internet marketing and customer service, there’s invariably someone in the audience — hand waving madly — desperate to ask the disintermediation question. “But, Jim, I’m a reseller,” the person moans. “How am I supposed to compete against my own business partners when they start selling direct online?” My answer: you’re not. That is, manufacturers shouldn’t be competing against you. On the contrary, manufacturers’ Web sites should support resellers. And offering a dealer-locator feature is just the minimum requirement in doing that. Manufacturers who have the will and imagination can use their sites to enrich relationships with dealers — to the financial advantage of all parties. Polaroid learned that lesson after an early false start. In 1999, assuming that clients would appreciate the convenience of having an online catalog, the camera-and-imaging-products giant created one for business accounts. That decision made the company’s dealers mad. Polaroid stopped dead in its direct-sales tracks. It reversed course. The company’s new strategy was to make it as easy as possible for customers to locate and buy its products online from existing resellers. Toward that end it created www.polaroidwork.com, one click off the company’s Web site. In addition to providing a traditional locator, Polaroidwork.com offers a souped-up version that plants a button on every product page. And that button allows the user to locate dealers that carry particular products, either online or in the neighborhood. Customers can see, click, and buy without wasting one byte of virtual shoe leather. Such locators, of course, automatically put the sales ball back in the dealer’s court. And yes, some Polaroid dealers missed that ball because they lacked E-commerce functions. Even with a supportive manufacturer, the landscape is pretty bleak on the wrong side of the digital divide. The Mechanics of Partnership You’ve probably seen those large white Snap-on trucks roaming your neck of the woods, but chances are overwhelming that you’ve never bought a wrench from one. That’s because Snap-on sells its premium tools and equipment primarily to professional automotive technicians. Snap-on franchise dealers, who drive their own trucks stocked mainly with Snap-on products, labor to establish rapport with each and every technician to whom they sell. Indeed, Snap-on dealers’ prowess in face-to-face customer-relationship management makes competitors’ efforts look like a Sun Myung Moon mass wedding. The dealers track their customers’ purchases and needs on PCs that Snap-on provides. They know how much technicians can afford to pay for their weekly orders because they act like rolling finance offices. Naturally, business is conducted on a first-name basis. Understandably, dealers feared for those relationships when, in mid-1998, Snap-on gave serious thought to Internet sales. Dealers, whose contracts restrict them to specific customers, worried about being bypassed. Installing their own E-commerce functions would be too expensive, too difficult. At dealer conferences, the Snap-on brass assured business partners that it would first do no harm. But dealers still had to trust in the company’s goodwill and good sense. Fortunately, Snap-on possessed both, personified in its chief information officer and vice-president, Al Biland. Biland knew that Snap-on had to sell online, but he refused to alienate the company’s most important sales channel. His solution: inclusiveness. Here’s how inclusivity works, Snap-on-style. The big-white-truck guys direct their accounts to Snap-on’s corporate site, where customers identify both themselves and their regular dealers. Dealers get the credit every time one of their accounts buys something. Customers, meanwhile, get a choice: Snap-on can ship their orders overnight, or dealers can drop the orders off on their weekly visits. Either way it’s faster than the old system. Before the Web, if technicians wanted something not in rolling stock, they had to order the item and then wait until the next week’s delivery. Now they place their order on the Web, Snap-on rushes it to dealers, and dealers have it in time for their next regular visit. Drivers, notified of the Web sales electronically, add that information to their own databases so their personal customer profiles don’t suffer. In addition, they combine news of a sale with knowledge of their customers and bring along upsell/cross-sell offerings. Sales are up. Snap-on is delighted. So are its dealers. Take This Storefront, Please The folks at Hewlett-Packard liked the idea of inclusiveness so much, they took it even further. Last summer I was contacted by Rudy Herrera, who is responsible for marketing programs for the HP DesignJet Sales Center, in San Diego. Rudy asked me to help flesh out a new initiative for the division’s resellers that HP hoped would prevent a classic channel-conflict situation. Rudy explained that lots of HP resellers already had Web sites that delineated their product lines and service options. The challenge facing HP was to beg, coerce, or otherwise cajole those resellers into doing serious E-commerce. Getting resellers to build up the service, supplies, and accessories pieces was particularly important since those value-added components constitute the most profitable part of the business, and one that HP has no desire to conduct itself. (Even when a customer buys direct from HP, the local reseller still handles installation, training, maintenance, and sale of supplies.) And since HP’s dealers sell a variety of brands, the company wanted to ensure that customers of those Web sites would find its products the easiest to find and buy. So HP built a razzle-dazzle, superfunctional E-commerce site called AisleOnline that was crammed with every DesignJet offering imaginable. And it handed the site to its resellers on a silver platter. Dealers whose customers follow a link to AisleOnline and buy products there get credited for the sale. Then HP did 500 of its most important resellers one better. It gave them customized versions of the HP store so that their customers would never know that that virtual virtuosity was courtesy of someone else. All the reseller does is supply its own logo and plug in its pricing. For example, customers on the site of Laser-Life Technologies Inc. ( www.laser-life.com), a reseller of HP products and other brands, based in Livermore, Calif., select the HP section if they’re looking to buy the company’s products. That takes them to AisleOnline, which looks and acts just like the rest of Laser-Life’s site; products purchased there arrive with Laser-Life labels. But the transactions take place on HP servers, and orders are shipped by an HP fulfillment contractor. Still, it’s a reseller sale. Oh, and one more thing: it’s free. A gift from HP to its partners. So Here’s What You Do If you’re a manufacturer, treat your resellers like royalty. Create private (extranet) pages for your sales partners and stuff them with more information, specifications, hints, tricks, tips, and customer-service features than you offer on your public or customer pages. If your resellers can see what’s in stock, check when it ships, track the shipment, and easily correct shipping errors, they are far more likely to recommend your products over those of your competitors. But don’t stop there. Make it pie-simple for your sales channel to create advertising from your artwork or to prepare a proposal from your boilerplate, return-on-investment spreadsheets, and product images. And if you’re a reseller, look to the deep pockets for help. One reseller told me that all his Web-site design and development costs had been paid for by several manufacturers’ co-op marketing plans. That gentleman asked me not to reveal his name, his product line, or even his industry. But I’ll tell you one thing: he’s not that guy sitting in my lecture audience terrified about being disintermediated out of business. Jim Sterne, president of Target Marketing, in Santa Barbara, Calif., is a speaker, a consultant, and the author of Email Marketing, World Wide Web Marketing, and Customer Service on the Internet (John Wiley & Sons). Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4463 days ago E-Commerce

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

Web Wise The right Web site can walk customers through even the most complex selling process If only we’d seen this whole E-commerce thing coming. We would have done things so differently. We would have sold something simple (teacups/pork). We would have offered minimal options (bone china/boneless loin). We would have targeted customers who had few requirements (no chips/no gristle). And, as a result, we would have sat back and watched traffic clock in and out of our site with express-lane speed. Alas, our business isn’t simple. Here at Jim’s Fantasy Factory Floor Automation Boutique we sell seriously complex products at nothing-to-sneeze-at prices to companies whose operations are riding on our performance. Those folks are not going to simply look us up on a search engine, click a few items into their shopping cart, and proceed to the checkout button. They need us to spend time with them. They need to know that we understand their exact circumstances before we start telling them what to buy. And they need to trust in our technical abilities and interpersonal skills, because our equipment is only half the battle and one-third of their cost. (We provide consulting, installation, and training as well.) Having recently graduated from the initial “pleased-to-meetcha-here’s-our-stuff” iteration of our site, we’ve been spending a lot of time brainstorming about how to do things better. And because we’re a beneficent bunch (not to mention reliable, competitively priced, and did I mention our new 10-year service contract?), we’ve decided to let other companies learn from our example. If you are a high-end, high-customization, high-service-level business, then something like what we’ve done could work for you. Tell Me More, Tell Me More At first glance our home page looks pretty much like everyone else’s. We have all the usual buttons: About Our Services, Contact Us, What’s New, Win an Armadillo. But we’ve added a special button: Walk Me Through It. Once prospects click on it, the sales process is off and running. Walk Me Through It leads to a questionnaire. People hate questionnaires, right? We worried about that, too. So we realized we would have to sell the thing — to convince people that filling it out was a good use of their time. Here’s what we came up with: “In order to provide you with the best information about our products and services, we need a little background data. If you answer the following questions, we’ll be able to give you a very clear idea of how our factory-automation systems can save you time and money while producing more grommets and dribs than your fondest dreams deemed possible.” You see the psychology there? Prospects now know they’re going to get something back for their time. They also know we’re not going to stick them with some off-the-rack solution. Next we set about designing the survey. We weren’t too worried about the length, figuring that as long as we continued to return value for answers, we could go on pretty much all day. It’s always best to start with a softball question. How many grommets and dribs do you make a day? fewer than 5,000 5,000 to 10,000 10,001 to 100,000 100,001 to 250,000 more than 250,000 Notice that we didn’t ask anyone to fill out a form or check a box; we just asked visitors to click on a link. That’s easy for them to do and technically trivial for us to implement. It also allows us to commence the customer-segmentation process. Here’s how it works. Businesses that manufacture fewer than 5,000 units a day have about as much reason to buy our products as Upper Volta has to launch a space station. So the fewer-than-5,000 link leads visitors to a page that congratulates them on their chutzpah and suggests they try the Web site for Bobby’s Grommet Toolhouse and Teacakes. Prospects who click on the 5,000-to-10,000 link arrive at a page that asks: How soon do you plan on making an investment in your physical plant that will help you compete with significant players in the grommet-and-drib arena? in 1 to 3 months in 4 to 12 months in more than 12 months The more-than-12-monthers are nudged toward Bobby’s. The 4-to-12-monthers are sent to a page that asks questions about their business plans and financing options — queries that are meant to elicit just how serious they really are. The 1-to-3-monthers are deposited on the Current Equipment Page, which grills them on what gear they already have. In your factory, you currently use: A grommet and a drib A grommet, a drib, and a blodget More than one drib More than one drib and a blodget More than one drib, a blodget, and a flanger More than one drib, a blodget, a flanger, and a clompfenster Multiple grommets, dribs, blodgets, flangers, and clompfensters Each link leads to a page of questions tailored to that response. If, for example, prospects have more than one drib but only one blodget, we have to know how much pin-closter training their workers have had. If they have a flanger but no clompfenster, we need to assess their consumption of plitmer gel. (Obviously, if you’re not in our industry, you’ll want to compose questions pertinent to your own business. Simply parroting ours may cause some confusion.) This process continues through several layers, with each response linking to a new page of questions. Ultimately, we are able to form an extremely good picture of our Web visitors’ companies. And this is where we ice the cake. At the terminus of each of these paths are pages bearing summaries of respondents’ circumstances. That lets visitors know that we’ve been listening to them and that we remember what they’ve told us. It also gives them an opportunity to correct any mistakes that may have cropped up along the journey. We’re Here. We’re Waiting At the bottom of each summary page is the kicker — and an invitation. Obviously, you are doing well in your field with the limited equipment you have. Based on everything you’ve told us, we are confident we can improve your output and lower your costs. As you probably know, your situation is unique. In order for us to design the best of all possible solutions for your company, our highly skilled technicians will need just a little more background information. Please select a date and time from the Conference Call Calendar below. We will make Clem Glustermann from engineering, Horace Ploint from our energy-conservation team, Winifred Dripple from logistics, and Waldo Wigman from materials planning available for a 25-minute review of your needs and our capabilities. It’s one thing for a vendor to threaten you with an imminent call from some faceless account manager. It’s quite another to offer you the opportunity to arrange, at your convenience, a conversation with a team of human beings with names, no less! What happens next? Clem, Horace, Winifred, and Waldo pore over the Web site output, familiarizing themselves with your circumstances. Having dazzled on the conference call, they then offer to make a personal visit and dazzle further with customized PowerPoint presentations showing the exact amount of consulting and training you will need. And what about those people who said they produced more than 250,000 grommets and dribs a day? We send them straight to the End of the Internet (www.mythologic.net/end) because they’re lying. It’s impossible to produce that many grommets without using more clompfensters than you can buy at Amazon. At Jim’s Fantasy Factory Floor Automation Boutique, the whole thing is cheap. It’s easy. And we’re hiring blodget installers as fast as we can. Jim Sterne, president of Target Marketing, in Santa Barbara, Calif., is a speaker, consultant, and author of the books World Wide Web Marketing, Customer Service on the Internet, and Email Marketing ( John Wiley & Sons). Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4583 days ago E-Commerce

At Your Service

Web Wise Service companies need a touch of ingenuity to make the Web work for them. Explicators of the digital economy generally break down E-commerce into four handy categories. First there are the purveyors of stuff — those who sell puppy chow and mascara to consumers, or generators and ball bearings to industry. Next come the purveyors of content, such as the Wall Street Journal, Dun & Bradstreet, and Stephen King. Then there are the “purveyors of eyeballs,” whose ranks include companies like Yahoo that make money selling banner ads on their Web sites — chiefly to the purveyors of stuff and content. Finally, there are the purveyors of Web-based services, the so-called ASPs, that reduce the Internet to just one more company department. But that view of the E-commerce landscape leaves people like me up a creek without an online revenue model. I’m a Web marketing consultant — a service provider whose expertise (aside from the occasional Web-site review) can’t be confined to a digital stream. In that sense I’m like countless other companies that dry-clean clothes, repair cars, massage aching muscles, read palms, and provide other services for which the Web holds little apparent advantage beyond that offered by flyers plastered on windshields. But perhaps service businesses — particularly small, local companies — have lagged in the new economy not for lack of opportunity but for lack of imagination. Think your day spa or television-repair shop or exterminator service gains nothing by going online? Think again. Take, for example, Nick’s Auto Repair Inc. ( www.nicksautorepair.com), which has been at the same location in Boulder, Colo., for more than 20 years. Nick’s proprietors understand that mere longevity doesn’t necessarily translate into familiarity or trust, so they’ve built a Web site designed to inspire those sentiments in customers old and new. First the familiar: visitors to Nick’s Web site are warmly introduced to the company’s past and present. They learn the names and backgrounds of all five of Nick’s employees and are treated to reassuring photos of technicians up to their elbows in car engines. The site also traces the company history, going back before 1978. Although such background may or may not testify to a company’s performance, history adds ballast, and local history anchors a company in its community, which may matter a great deal to some customers. But in choosing an auto mechanic, trust is even more important than familiarity. Nick’s site engenders trust through both its helpful presentations and its straightforward approach to the company’s limitations. “The work we are not able to do is because of a lack of space,” Nick’s site informs its visitors. It goes on to explain: “We have three technicians with three bays. As a result, we are not able to do any major overhauls. However, if you need this type of work done, we will be more than happy to point you to a reliable specialist.” Then Nick’s site does something really smart: it provides three pages of detailed information about an engine’s ignition, fuel, and cooling systems, handsomely illustrated with pictures of an ignition coil and a distributor cap. While this material demonstrates the company’s expertise, it also suggests to the site visitor that Nick’s doesn’t use intentional obfuscation as a sales tactic, which is enormously reassuring to those of us who don’t know the difference between a fan belt and a Sansabelt, and who feel vulnerable in the presence of those who do. Nick’s site is also interactive: the company can send E-mail estimates to its customers, who in turn can look up information written in plain English concerning, say, pickup coils. Dry cleaners have traditionally made hay from their bricks-and-mortar status: a “plant on premises” claim is considered a major selling point in their line of business. So what can an online presence do for a dry cleaner? The people at Dry Cleaning Depot ( www.drycleaningdepot.com) in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., know their customers will never be able to get rid of gravy stains by hitting the Delete key, but they’ve figured out another way to make the Internet work for them. “Got a minute?” the company site asks customers. “Probably not. Let Dry Cleaning Depot be your corporate partner. We will pick up and drop off your dry cleaning right where you work.” A nice service, but not exactly Web-centric, right? Then how about this: the site offers its customers a 10% discount on their first bill if they sign up for the service online. Customers can also indicate their starch preferences and, better still, use their credit cards online. That means they don’t have to write checks every week or shamefacedly reimburse the receptionist who shelled out $25 to reclaim their silk blouse and crushed-velvet trousers. And there’s a monthly billing option for those who’d rather not release their credit-card information over the Internet. In addition, Dry Cleaning Depot aggressively pursues new customers using that proven online tactic: word of E-mail. Customers are invited to E-mail the Depot with the name and address of prospective corporate accounts, along with some contact information. If three or more people from the suggested company sign up for the Depot’s services, the referring customer receives $25 worth of free dry cleaning. By advertising that offer on its site and making the referral process super easy, Dry Cleaning Depot is using the Internet to accrue new business. What can consultants, doctors, lawyers, and accountants do online besides boast about their skills? But what about those of us in the professional services? I’m no snob, but offering 25% off my consultation fee to customers tendering an online coupon is a bit dÉclassÉ for a Web-marketing consultancy. And if you need to consult a glossary to understand my advice, then I’m not doing my job. So what can consultants — not to mention doctors, lawyers, and accountants — do online besides boast about their skills, post a list of clients, and archive articles? We, too, can get interactive. That’s what Don Peppers and Martha Rogers have done, which should come as no surprise given the Web’s pride of place in their celebrated one-to-one marketing philosophy. On its site ( www.1to1.com), the pioneering customer-relationship-management consulting firm has posted interactive tools that inform, entertain, and — best of all — explain why you need its help. For example, a program called Checkpoint poses a series of questions about your company: What percentage of your customers account for the bulk of your company’s profits? How different are your customers from one another? And so on. The site then produces a chart, based on your responses, that shows how valuable a one-to-one program would be for your organization. And, no, the results aren’t always that such a program would be ” really, really valuable.” If the Peppers-Rogers Web application is smart, Eric Ward’s is inspired. Ward’s company, Netpost ( www.netpost.com), has been helping clients raise their hands on the Internet since 1994. Ward’s understanding of Web-site publicity is unsurpassed, and — not surprisingly — his public Web site is grand. But it’s the secret-password-protected portion of the site that exemplifies service-company marketing at its finest. Want the password to it? First you have to attend one of his seminars. In vivid detail, Ward lays before his audiences the glorious gestalt of marketing Web sites. He explains how a company can make its presence felt on search engines. And in directories. And on What’s New sites. And in E-zines, newsletters, newsgroups, discussion lists, and on, and on, and on. At the end of his presentations, Ward gives his audiences a gift: the password to the section of his site where all his resources, tools, and ideas are laid bare, ripe for the plucking. Anyone with the time and inclination can follow the bouncing browser and obtain without charge the services for which other people pay Ward serious money. Why would he allow such a thing? Usually, those who are willing to invest the time it takes to follow his exhaustive program on their own are people who couldn’t afford him in the first place. Whereas those who value time over money and who want the job done right by the best in the business flock to Ward and count themselves lucky that the maestro isn’t booked into the next millennium. Service companies are purveyors of expertise, skills, and knowledge, which in the end will always be tougher to sell online than content, banner ads, and stuff. The trick, perhaps, is to learn a lesson from the Wizard of Oz. Use your public face in whatever way possible to impress the hell out of people, but always be sure that the man behind the curtain is fulfilling his promises. Jim Sterne, president of Target Marketing, in Santa Barbara, Calif., is a speaker, a consultant, and the author of the books Email Marketing, World Wide Web Marketing, and Customer Service on the Internet (John Wiley & Sons). Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4828 days ago E-Commerce

Online 101: Marketing Your Web Site

In the few short years the World Wide Web has been open for business, banner advertisements have grown from a mere blip on the screen to a $2 billion industry. The ubiquitous flashing squares–now used to sell everything from computers to Beanie Babies–are arguably the most interactive form of advertising ever. Clicking on them allows netizens to link to more product information, submit orders, and even talk to online customer service reps. For Web-savvy entrepreneurs, banners provide an important new way to target potential patrons and get a leg up on larger competitors. To learn more about this evolving industry, Inc. Online talked to Jim Sterne, president of Target Marketing and a consultant to companies trying to create Internet strategies. Sterne is the author of three books about online marketing, including World Wide Web Marketing (J. Wiley & Sons, October 1998, $29.99), 2nd Edition. With Sterne’s help, we took an in-depth look at the business models that have powered the growth of banner ads. Banner Exchanges Banner-swapping services are the cheapest way for a small business to get more eyeballs (read Bronwyn Fryer’s ” Your Message Here” in Inc. Technology #1 1999). Here’s how they work: companies like Link Exchange and SmartAge invite small businesses to send them banners, which are circulated for free to member sites built around similar content. If, for example, an exchange member sells golf attire, its ad may appear at a site that sells golf clubs. The attire business, meanwhile, might receive an ad plugging a golf-club swap for kids. Banner exchanges usually only require that their members run the host’s banner on their own site. Some exchanges, for a small monthly fee, will even register your site with search engines and track how many people click through to your site. How effective is this method at building sales? On the upside, a banner exchange can bring your ad to the furthest corners of the Web and drive traffic to your site for free. The best will work hard to target your ad by learning about you and your customers. The downside? Banner networks often consist of smaller sites that get limited traffic; some exchange members may circulate poorly designed banners that clash with your site, according to Sterne.

About 4828 days ago E-Commerce

A Word to the (Web) Wise

Just when we thought the saga of Krystal Kleen Karpet Kare’s Web site and subsequent design contest was over, a reader pointed out some glaring errors in the text of the winning entry. Not only did Krystal Kleen CEO Mark McNutt miss them, but so did the second judge, Jim Sterne, who’d written the original story on the carpet-cleaning service’s site (” Even a Child Can Do It,” Inc. Technology, 1999, No. 2). Cindy Wagner, founder and president of Editing Ink, a copyediting and proofreading service, caught several grammatical errors and stylistic inconsistencies in the site’s copy. For instance, on the “About Us” page, the word Care was spelled with the traditional C rather than Krystal Kleen’s more stylized K. And though the site sports a handsome photo of former California congresswoman Andrea Seastrand presenting McNutt with a “Best of Business” award from Strictly Business magazine, there was no caption identifying the two. When Wagner sent a copy of her suggestions to McNutt, she got a speedy reply. “Before I knew it, Mark had called me and asked if I would edit his entire site,” she says. Instead of charging her usual fee of $35 an hour, Wagner accepted a mention of her services on Krystal Kleen’s home page and a link from that site to her own (www.editingink.com). This latest installment in the Krystal Kleen story got us thinking: Just how important is text editing for a Web site? Very, according to Nan Fritz, president of nSight, a media company in Cambridge, Mass., that provides editing as well as design and Internet services. The company, which Fritz founded in 1982 as Editorial Services of New England, moved into electronic media a few years ago to meet the need for Web-site editing. “Many companies are realizing that if they don’t take time to evaluate how something is written, it’s going to come back to haunt them because it’s there on the screen,” she says.

About 4888 days ago E-Commerce

Showdown at Inc.com

FYI Mark McNutt, the owner of Krystal Kleen Karpet Kare, was not amused to pick up the June 15, 1999, issue of Inc. Technology and find an article by Web-marketing maven Jim Sterne roundly criticizing the home page of Krystal Kleen’s Web site. Sterne — a consultant, the president of Target Marketing of Santa Barbara, in California, and the author of World Wide Web Marketing — was writing about the basics of good Web design, a subject on which he is a leading expert. He used McNutt’s home page as a prime example of what not to do. Sterne’s piece was a good one, and his criticisms were appropriate, but McNutt must have sat there thinking, “What the hell did I do to deserve a public lambasting in a national magazine? Hey, I never asked for this attention.” McNutt went on-line to object, responding to Sterne by E-mail and creating a Web page of protest that he linked to his home page. Sterne defended himself, saying he was sorry to have hurt McNutt’s feelings, but Web pages are public — and thus fair game for criticism. Readers got involved, about half of them siding with Sterne, half with McNutt. Everyone was angry about the headline we wrote for the article: ” Even a Child Can Do It.” Then Sterne and senior editor Leigh Buchanan came up with a crazy idea: Why not sponsor a contest and see who could produce the best new home-page design for McNutt’s company? In an amazingly short time, we received 57 fully rendered designs of home pages for Krystal Kleen Karpet Kare, submitted by both professional and amateur designers. What’s so great about them? For one thing, it’s fascinating to see how many ways there are to spin a single set of facts. As Sterne observed in an E-mail message to us, “You start with the same company, the same story, the picture of the Krystal Kleen Karpet Kare van, and you get 57 different versions from 57 different artists.” You also get Sterne’s evaluations of the designs. “Nobody got everything right,” he wrote us, “thus proving three things: First of all, building Web sites is not child’s play. It takes business acumen, marketing savvy, graphic-arts talent, and a clear understanding of what the customer sees from the other side of the screen. Second, criticizing Web sites is so easy, even a child can do it. That’s why we need to be especially diligent when creating them. Finally, we now have proof that we don’t have to learn everything by making our own mistakes — we can learn from the mistakes of others.” By the way, McNutt and Sterne each gave us a list of their top 10 picks, which you can find at the aforementioned Web address. McNutt’s favorite design will become his new home page — gratis. New Blood We have two new Inc. regulars to introduce this month, both of whom will be helping us explore the burgeoning Internet economy. Andy Raskin is a former vice-president of Netyear Group, where he brokered Web deals for companies like the New York Times Co. and Sony and launched Japanese editions of Jupiter Communications’ research publications. He’s also a first-rate writer, having penned articles for publications as diverse as Inc. Technology, Coffee Journal, and Playboy. So when he decided to abandon his life as a New York salaryman for the wild world of Silicon Valley start-ups, we asked him to chronicle his odyssey. In the first installment, Raskin tells of the inspiration, and subsequent perspiration, behind Gazooba, a “recommendation network” that allows visitors to earn points for passing on the good word about Web sites to their friends and relatives. D.M. Osborne is our newest senior writer. There’s a story behind her journey to Inc. as well. Not to make her life sound like a Jim Harrison novella, but she struck out for New York City when she was 16, desperate to get out of the one-stoplight southern town where she grew up. She danced a bit (at the Joffrey Ballet School) and put herself through college (at Hunter College). After a stint as a paralegal at the law firm of Fried, Frank during the deal boom of the 1980s, she attended Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and eventually joined Steven Brill’s The American Lawyer. Later she followed Brill to his new magazine, Brill’s Content, from which we snagged her. She begins her new role with her first feature, about the hot Internet launch Guru.com, a company seeking to make itself the premier destination for soloists.