Internet technology allows for greater, more diverse and more comphrehensive customer outreach. One of the most fascinating things about the long term shift from traditional media to the internet is the exponential increase in the range of experience available to the potential consumer. No longer a passive recepticle of corporate messages and source of cash, people are transforming from viewers to participants thus turning the playing field into something much more complex than a one-way advertise and purchase avenue. In fact, this complexity and rate of change is levelling the commercial environment by enabling and empowering small and medium size enterprises with more ideas and creativity than money. If efforts are applied correctly, new organizations can actually find themselves at a distinct advantage by virtue of having adopted cheaper, more agile systems and the fact that they do not have to maintain outdated infrastructures. In addition, because of their limited capital, they are forced to acquire leads via the internet rather than expensive traditional media. What they are finding is a new kind of consumer that has unique propterties that can actually be leveraged to convert visitors to customers and eventually evangelists.

Here are the ten most significant changes in customer/visitor behavior.

1. Passive vs active

   Customers are no longer just customers. They not longer sit in front of the tube and absorb messages from self declared authorities or people who play doctors on TV. At the very least, even with the traditionally no-brains medium of television, viewers are encouraged to call in, ask questions or vote on the most talented singer. At a more advanced level, people are providing the content, commentary via comments, technological infrastructure, design, acting, video production and everything else involved in producing, consuming and interpreting content. By the time that someone has participated, even in the most rudimentary level in this process, they are more media and business savvy. This creates a more critical consumer who can see past hype, misdirection and has the resources to independently vet claims.

2. Greater Involvement = Longer In Memory

   On a purely mechanical level, this seems to equate to a larger expenditure per customer in order to aquire a sale. What you are getting for this effort, however, is not just a one off or even what many gurus call a ‘long term relationship’ it is an intellectual investment on the part of the site visitor. If you provide the resources and reasoning behind considering your product or service, the potential customer will continue reading and educating him or her self as to your offerings. With a limited amount of time to do such research, customers are more likely to commit to companies that can serve information and help up front. Cheap and rapid distribution of sales and support makes it much easier to become a part of the customers reasoning process and intellectual solution to a problem.

3. Greater granularity

   It is increasingly difficult for companies to sell based on image or flashy campaigns. The internet leaves no company with an excuse for not supplying the potential customer with answers to questions. Beyond this, because websites allow companies to supply information once for many customers, rather than hiring sales staff to repeat themselves, this information can grow overtime into increasing detail. This allows prople to make more informed purchase decisions. A perfect example of this is the ability to download a user manual before purchase. This allows the possible customer to see the actual difference between advertised features and actual usage. Yes, some companies may decide to not make this information available, but the trend is for smaller and newer competitors to provide this information with pride.

4. - Personalization = Increased Usage/Consumption

   Content management systems linked with e-commerce allow people to not only select and share favorites, but also to create, rate and sell them as well. This increased interaction radically boosts time on site and creates a loyalty due to a learning curve in using a given user interface. As long as a site can leverage habitual tendencies and still deliver competitively against others in the market, they can retain visitors and increase conversion rates.

5. Unconscious Evangelizing

   A properly implemented interface should make it a easy as possible to spread the message about a site or company. A Digg badge requires minimal effort, but at this point in time may also provide minimum returns. If the interaction and use of the system itself helps to spread the message, then the user evangelizes without even knowing it. There is no trickery or dishonesty involved. In fact, the whole application may present itself as a messaging system (Twitter)

6. Conscious Evangelizing

   Afilliate programs, discounts, coupon codes and traffic are all reasons for people to promote others. By providing such incentives, companies can get the message out about themselves for much less than an ambigiously targeted ad campaign. There is plenty of room for creativity here for those who study internet consumer behavior.

7. Awareness of their own power and influence

   Perhaps the most difficult thing for companies to wrap their heads around (or accept) is that consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that they have individual and collective power. They can rate, comment, make videos on, sell and instruct either in favor of or against a company. An increasing number of people are aware of this and are using the ability to influence others to create both short term and long term changes. Internet consumers don’t simply accept claims, they vet, test and compare. If they feel that they have been mislead, they do damage via forums, messaging, podcasts or in extreme cases entire blogs.

8. A decrease in attention deficit? Or an increase?

   Finally, there is an unknown. With the ability to open up multiple tabs containing an assortment of videos, text, images and podcasts, is an attention deficit created? Studies indicate that teens are multitasking on the internet in just this way but are effectively far less efficient than people focused on a single task. On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether people can develop filtering habits that allow for a multi-tab info onslaught. If such a mental mechanism evolves, the amount of opportunity time available to a given vendor will increase by a huge amount because this means that in a given instant a single person can be approached by many vendors.

Summary

What is safe to say is that consumers are much less willing to be decieved, and cajoled into ill-advised action and that they have the means to fact check any claims made. If mislead, they are aware of the power they have and are quite capable of using it. Internet consumers want and expect immersion, participation and involvement and are willing to pay back in loyalty and evangelizing activities. The net result is a higher quality customer purchasing higher quality goods and services over a longer period of time. This in turn equates to real value in a more stable environment with a more productive and enjoyable use of those offerings. What is likely to result from this is a more mature, stable and robust internet economy with a secure enough foundation to allow for managable risk taking under conditions of reduced exposure. This exposure is reduced because more market feedback will become available in real time, thanks to greater consumer involvement in the design, promotion and even manufacturing processes. With all of these things in mind, this shift to the internet from traditional media represents a lot of potential, recession notwithstanding. In fact, recessions and even depressions have given birth to many new ideas. Forced to save money and get lean, many people will discover opportunity along with their losses.

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