Making the Web Your Business Platform

Sun Vice President of Web Properties Curtis Sasaki shares with Sun Executive Boardroom readers his views on the evolution of the Web as a business platform and key things to keep in mind when developing your model for e-business. First in a two-part series.

Q: How has the Web evolved to become the next business platform?

Sasaki: The Web has evolved from a place of looking up information to one where you conduct transactions and share information. In some households, it is used more than television. With all of the personalization today, the Web is evolving into what users want to see versus what companies want them to experience. You're seeing things like product ratings, blogs, forums, wikis, podcasts, and RSS data feeds driving more content about products and services than even the companies who develop those products. You're seeing e-commerce evolving to be more than just a storefront — to being seamlessly integrated into the overall customer lifecycle experience.

In commerce and business sites alike, we are seeing mashups of technology. There are APIs from Google, eBay, and Amazon that people are integrating into their sites. People are creating a seamless experience from multiple vendors all mashed up as one thing. While you could have done those things on separate sites, the power of putting them together and offering them in this personalized context is much greater. The customer is effectively driving their experience.

Q: How does Web 2.0 influence this evolution and what does it have to do with business?

Sasaki: Web 2.0 has come to mean three things. First, it means richer interactivity on Web sites so that you can click and see information instantly without page refreshes or delays. Second, it means clever use of distributed services and capabilities by way of the mashup concept I just mentioned. And third — most important — Web 2.0 is about having customers and communities interact with you on the Web. It's a big difference from the static, output-only corporate sites of just a few years ago.

Web 2.0 puts the user in control of their experience and illustrates the power of communities. Who could have predicted the power of the MySpace community, or YouTube, or that people would buy a digital camera based on what others wrote in reviews?

Your voice is more important than in the past when you bought products based on information that companies provided you. Today, if you want to book a hotel, you can read blogs and reviews from others who have stayed in the hotel. Web 2.0 is the community aspect of having very open information that is shared and commented on by many people.

Five or six years ago, vendors controlled all the information. For companies to stay relevant, they must participate in these community conversations. They must represent their products as best they can and dive into conversations with their audiences. On sites like Netflix, everything is driven by ratings and preferences. They keep you engaged by presenting movie choices based on what you've checked out previously and what others with similar tastes have rented.

The e-business sites that succeed — particularly in the U.S. — are finding a way to provide value-added context that can be heard above all the noisy conversations going on. Companies who only provide their own locked-down view of things are going to be left out. And it's self-correcting. If someone lambastes you with a bad review, chances are in today's environment, if you've done a good job, people will jump to your aid to refute anything that was spuriously written.

Q: What do executives need to know to take advantage of this trend?

Sasaki: This level of openness may be frightening to some. Companies fear that negatives will be exposed. But sometimes that is necessary to fix problems. You also get positive feedback when you do things right. More importantly, this level of transparency makes a company look more honest and trustworthy in the long run, but it does require a breakthrough in terms of overall thinking and philosophy to accept the risk.

Q: What about that risk and how do you get buy-in at the top level?

Sasaki: In the case of Sun, we are fortunate because the original founders and executives that have followed in their paths believe in transparency and openness. That has been our corporate heritage, so it has been easier to embrace. But even if you get top management buy-in, there may be disparate groups that are afraid of the approach. The way to manage that is to open up pieces at a time. We tried it on several products to see what would happen.

Even in the software area, where some were very nervous, they said it was very helpful to get realtime feedback and actually altered a release based on that feedback. They now view the approach as very positive. Having champions on the development side has made it easier to convince other groups that what we're doing makes marketing and business sense.

Q: What if there is negative backlash? How do you manage that?

Sasaki: Nothing is ever perfect. Some of the first reviews of one of our products had some areas that were not good. The bad reviews gave the product group valuable information about what to work on. And when they fixed the problems, the next set of reviews communicated that Sun is a company that listens to its customers and makes changes to products to improve them. If you have no negative feedback coming in, it doesn't seem genuine.

Q: What is the secret to engaging customers from a UI perspective?

Sasaki: You want a site that is interesting, compelling, and relevant. One of your objectives is to get visitors engaged within a few seconds because they can scan a page in a second or two. If they don't see anything relevant, they're gone. One area many people don't consider is wording, content and how you label things. Visitors usually come to do something very specific, and if you use confusing labels or company jargon and the customer gets confused, they'll leave.

Once they get engaged, you want to develop a rhythm in the experience of the site. Even a business-oriented site should be enjoyable. That's why you see people putting a lot of real-time interaction with Java, JavaScript, AJAX and other interactive tools. It's not glitz that makes the site more responsive; an enjoyable, efficient outcome is what counts.

Q: How compelling is a positive Web experience for increased business?

Sasaki: If a person has a positive experience, they will spend more time on your site and are more likely to come back. The reverse is also true. We try to give our visitors engaging content based on their role — whether it be CIO, CTO, developer, etc. Probably the biggest mistake companies make in terms of user experience is focusing on themselves rather than the experience they want the customer to have. If customers have a bad experience, it will tarnish the brand image of your company. Forward-thinking companies spend a lot of time trying to present things as their customers understand them. Your Web site is your brand and how people identify with your company.

Q: Where does a company go to get started?

Sasaki: Turn to the expertise within your own company if you have it. Second, have a Web 2.0/Internet strategy in mind. This will come from a combination of your company's strategy and where your customer base is going. Once you have those nailed, you can take those concepts to your internal team or hire an outside agency to help design the vision and storyboard it out to see if it maps to the most common things people will do on your site. A grand vision is great, but it must be possible to implement. Also, include your technology groups in the design and vision conversation. They often know of the newest things and have clever, innovative ideas.

Q: How does e-business fit into a broader multi-channel strategy?

Sasaki: Traditionally, e-business has been conducted through Web-based consumer storefronts. But a large volume of transactions are doing direct B2B transactions through partners. One of Sun's visions is to enable our partners to enable their customers to interact with them based on Sun's back-end, e-commerce environment. This saves time and should improve the overall customer experience of buying Sun products through partners.

In the '90s, there was a buzzword called "frictionless e-commerce," which no one really understood. It means taking the information cost and time lags out of the overall supply system — basically democratizing the information so that it's available for partners to use as an extension of your company.

From a channel perspective, this has accelerated services. As service-oriented architectures (SOAs) get built and identity technologies are employed, consumers start demanding more instant data, and channel partners and others in the supply chain demand more efficiency. It all blends together to be a good thing for the customer because they are getting accurate information more quickly.

Q: Any predictions as to what this might look like 10 years from now?

Sasaki: It's always hard to predict what will come next, but there seems to be a clear trend on more community, more openness and transparency, more use of multimedia. More important, will be business models that change the value proposition.

Companies that not only provide a great user experience, but also take into account the full end-to-end experience that exceeds expectations, are likely to succeed. Communities, mashups, seamless e-commerce experiences, and products and services that offer true value are happening today and are likely to continue for the next 2-3 years. And with wireless broadband, the next evolution may be a desktop Web experience on a mobile phone enabling "wherever, whenever" transactions.

About Curtis Sasaki
Curtis Sasaki is vice president of Sun's Web Properties. His team is responsible for the strategy, business development, content, and execution for Sun's global Web presence. Prior to this role, Sasaki was vice president of engineering for Desktop Software Solutions at Sun Microsystems. Before joining Sun in 1996, Sasaki served in various senior management positions at General Magic, NeXT Computer, and Apple Computer.