How Commercial Web Sites Can Benefit From Virtual Community Building
So how can I use the elements of a virtual community to benefit by commercial
web site? You need to focus on the common interests and needs of your customers.
Successful virtual communities on commercial web sites most certainly are customer
centric. Probably the clearest way to demonstrate successful virtual communities
on commercial web sites is by example. Lets look at two companies that have very
successfully developed virtual communities for there customers: Amazon.com and
Macromedia.
Case Study: Amazon.com
Amazon.com has made very good use of elements of virtual communities. Amazon
was one of the first web sites to allow users to review and rate products. Here
are some of the things that Amazon does to help foster a virtual community.
- Customers can rate and review books and other products.
- Customers can rate the product reviews as being helpful or not helpful.
- Reviewers with high approval ratings get recognition by having a little award
placed by their names such as “Amazon Top 500 Reviewer”.
- Customers can create a personal profile that can be viewed by other customers.
They can restrict certain parts of their profile only to their friends or family.
- Customers can create wish lists of items that can be viewed and purchased
for them by friends, family and others.
- Amazon has created an on-line auction site where customers can buy and sell
items. These items are often featured on Amazon’s main site as an alternative
to their regular products.
- Customers can create lists of books that they feel are significant in various
subject areas. Other customers can view these lists and view the customer’s
public profile.
Amazon’s brilliant strategy is to engage customers into discussing their
opinions on books and other products while at the same time adding a tremendous
amount of free and useful content to their web site. Amazon has made their site
more intimate and engaging by allowing customers to find more about each other
and learn from each other’s recommendations. People are generally willing
to listen and be open to opinions of like-minded peers. This, no doubt, helps
to breakdown barriers and creates sales for Amazon.
Case Study 2: Macromedia.com
Macromedia.com is one of the premier producers of commercial web development
software. Macromedia is the creator of Flash. Flash enabled animation is now standard
in all new Windows computers and is built into both Netscape and Internet Explorer
browsers. Macromedia is also the creator of Dreamweaver software for web page
development. Macromedia claims that Dreamweaver is now used by over 70% of professional
web site developers.
Macromedia has helped to foster virtual communities for their products by providing
on-line discussion groups for each of their products. Many Macromedia products
are extendable by third party add-on software. Macromedia has setup an area on
there web site where users of their products can exchange these add-ons for free.
Users can rate each add-on and write comments about them. In addition, each add-on
can have its own discussion group.
Macromedia has used this strategy to allow customers to add value to their
site with little or no maintenance. Here are some of wins realized by Macromedia’s
virtual community strategy.
- Users do their own technical support. On-Line forums allow expert users
to help less experienced users. The on-line discussion groups handle many questions
that would normally require a technical support specialist.
- Discussion groups provide valuable customer feedback. Macromedia technical
and marketing specialist monitors the Discussion groups and forums. They gain
valuable insight into what customers like and dislike about their software. Since
the information is extremely valuable for future product development and focusing
in on the customer’s needs.
- Free Exchange Area Adds Value to Macromedia Products for Little or No Cost.
Free third party add-ons are created by and for customers. Customers are adding
value to Macromedia products without it costing Macromedia any engineering effort.
In addition, Macromedia can also study what add-ons are most popular and use this
to help guide their future product development strategy.
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