Friday, December 5, 2008

Corporate Website 1.0 is dead. Long Live Corporate Website 2.0: Consumer Co Creation

http://windchimesindia.wordpress.com/2008/11/22/corporatewebsite/#comment-322
Social media is an interesting and yet very lucid context that exalts the power of networking forums to promote ideas , communicate and debate. Happened to browse through Nimesh Shah's blog on Corporate Website 2.0 as a interactive social medium to promote the brand, company and products. Original link as given in the beginniing. This is my extension of the Corporate website 2.0 concept into something that i call consumer co creation.


Hi
As promised Nimesh, i would like to add onto Corporate Website 2.0 idea. I would call this “Co Creating with the Consumer”.
Technology is evolving fast and (if not for the Recessionary mood), PE and other moneys are available for ideas that deliver better solutions at a lower cost to consumers. This has a far reaching effect in terms of Technology ROI. For any organization to milk revenues out of a technology investment, it takes time. However with the redundancy rates of technology it becomes difficult to forecast when a disrutive technology would make an existing one a thing of the past. Thus Organizations need to build stickiness around their products/services. This would also help them beat the fragmentation economics in the market and get a premium over others.This is where a Corporate website 2.0 idea can be extended to something that is called the “consumer co creation”. Every product / service has a base element and a Value added part to it. Normally product/business managers work out the best fit product/solution which they think works best in the market. However the corporate website can be engineered that they provide the “base” and allow the consumer to choose his “value added” services. For the value adds their would be a premium charge. At the end of the day the consumer is satisfied because the product is order made according to his needs. The example in question is Dell which makes computers that have been oredered by the consumers. I am privy to many companies that make a product with a long luandry lists of “firsts” and “bests” and yet the consumer buying them only uses 10% of the “full monty”. The conusmer thus pays money for stuff he doesnot want and may or may not get the stuff he wants in the product hes paid a fortune for.Increasingly companies identify this but there is not enough that has been done to make this idea see the light of the day…