Think big

Entrepreneur, May, 2000 by J. W. Dysart, Amanda C. Kooser

Industry distributors have invested a great deal in training their technical sales forces to sort through the myriad options available in promotional products on behalf of prospective buyers. Consequently, the last thing that distributors want to see is a supplier making an end-run around that highly educated sales force and attempting to sell directly to prospective customers. "A supplier can enter our password-protected domain and verify that a prospective customer is actually a distributor for the industry--and not a customer attempting to deal direct with a supplier," West says.

The result: Industry suppliers ensure they stay on friendly terms with distributors--who will often refuse to represent suppliers that repeatedly and deliberately sell directly to the public. And the PPAI has strengthened its position in the industry as the central clearinghouse of industry data and coordination--both on the Net and in the brick-and-mortar world.

Perhaps no evidence of the marketing power that entrepreneurs have at their disposal with members-only tools and domains is more impressive than the story of AOL, the now-monolithic ISP. Deciding to first offer Internet access in the mid'90s, AOL shrewdly realized it could distinguish itself from the literally thousands of other ISPs by offering its subscribers members-only tools and domains. In practice, that approach translated into serving up an extremely user-friendly interface to the Net, hundreds of easy-to-use chat rooms, news-gathering services, hundreds of magazines that users of the service could read online and more. Originally, then market-leader CompuServe scoffed at AOL's attempt to grab a share of Net users. But AOL has enjoyed the last laugh. It now owns CompuServe, and has risen to become one of the most influential companies in the world, especially with its recent merger with Time Warner.

Moreover, new innovations in members-only tools and domains keep coming. With its latest version, AOL now offers even more extras, such as a digital photo service run in partnership with Eastman Kodak, even greater flexibility in its Internet access, and one of the largest online shopping malls on the Web. "We're always looking for new and different ways to make the things people do in their everyday lives easier and more convenient online," says Barry Schuler, president of AOL's Interactive Services Group.

[less than]interactive tools[greater than]

Although more than a few e-commerce sites have invested heavily in graphic design, fewer have used the truly killer application of the medium: interactivity. Having a pretty Web site is one thing. Designing an interactive Web environment that will make it simple for customers to do business with you over the Internet is quite another.

According to Stella Gassaway, co-author of Designing Multimedia Web Sites (Hayden Books),"Multimedia applications have transformed the Web from a publishing medium to an interactive medium. The word 'interactive' has come to represent the most dramatic demonstrations of user control."