Home Start here Purpose Here's why On-line Weekly, free, essential Outlook It costs, but you can't afford to be without it Framework What's dot-com quality? It's all here Top five This is our list - what's yours? Masterclass Best practice in ten minutes Buzz Captured from the e-stream USER_NOTES Content changes frequently! PRIVACY It's simple! Get in touch!Things you’d like to see included? Examples, references, opinions or criticisms?

Last update Saturday April 15, 2000 The top five elements of dot-com quality If we were white-boarding the 'quality' issues you need to pay attention to right now, what would the top five be? Here's our list: (1) Customer experience Great customer experiences develop your brand, increase loyalty and grow revenues. Many customers still find the internet an intimidating, foreign environment where "pages are a jungle of links, buttons, forms, blinking graphics, and baffling jargon. Accusatory error messages leap out at any time" (Ziff Davis Studios, White Paper One, 1999). What's your customer experience like? How do you know? Is it getting better or worse? What about your principal competitors? What's industry best practice? Benchmarks? (2) Leadership And strategy – "At the core of any business has to be a purpose. Otherwise you're building a house of cards" (Jim Clark, of Silicon Graphics, Netscape, Healtheon). Great leaders are rare. Great dot-com leaders even more so. Those we know about are endlessly dissected in the business and internet literature, and some general principles are beginning to emerge. The need for and nature of leadership changes as dot-coms scale up from good ideas to real businesses. In many cases, and yours will be no exception, leadership will be an essential component of success. It'll be as much about teams – leadership as a contact sport – as about profile and stature. So what are your 'leadership' processes? (3) Mobility The need for speed. 'Internet time' may be a cliché, but moving quickly is a core capability. Think in half-life terms. Here's US credit card company Capital One's co-founder Rich Fairbank on his firm's half life: "Fifty percent of what we're marketing now did not exist at this company six months ago [which means that] 50% of what we'll be selling six months from now doesn't exist yet." Will that sort of innovation happen by mistake? No. It'll need robust fast-track processes and bullet-proof new product introduction. How good are yours? How do you know? Could you do better? How much better? Is this a core 'quality' issue? You bet! (4) Ethics And privacy. Getting 'ethics' wrong can cripple your business, and may soon expose you to government regulation and severe legal sanctions. Are you ready? Are you safe? How do you know? (5) Results Sure, investors are suspending their disbelief for the time being. But as soon as the longest bull market of all time falters, as it surely will, 'market fundamentals' will come roaring back. The central question is the same – are you ready to report the results that an insecure and nervous market will demand? How does our list compare to yours? You don't have one!