Old-fashioned media such as newspapers are reporting widely that South African
companies are embracing the web. I would suggest that some of these companies
should hold back on that embrace until they have thought about why they are
climbing on the bandwagon.

If you spend some time browsing South African corporate web sites - and I'm
talking about large companies with big names and brands - then you will see a
remarkable phenomenon. Companies with huge advertising and PR budgets have
sites that look like they were built by the CEO's pimply teenager.

To set the scene and with apologies to Yahoo, I would like to introduce my
very simple system for categorising web sites in South Africa. There are only
4 categories:

Unfortunately a lot of very prominent companies have sites that drop them into
the "Somewhere / Nowhere" class. I think that because the web is not seen
every day by the decision-makers it is not taken seriously.

Can you imagine a major travel group publishing a paper brochure that has an
inaccurate reproduction of their logo, offers poor, ineffectual information
and doesn't match the corporate identity. In cyberspace it is happening all
the time.

The web has achieved popularity because the barriers to entry are very low.
Most service providers throw in a few megabytes of hard disk space for web
publishing when you sign up for a dial-in account. Just like the pc and laser
printer enabled the desk top publishing industry in the eighties to take off,
so the web publishing industry has been spawned by inexpensive access to the
internet in the late nineties.

The trouble is that like poker, authoring of web documents is really easy, but
it can take a lifetime to do it properly. Many companies pop up a web site
which has the same information as contained in their paper brochures. In fact
in some cases the information isn't even accurate and is quickly out of date.
What a waste of a fantastic medium.

You may be thinking that money is the differentiating factor. I would
disagree. Many companies, such as SAA, who have spent serious amounts of money
(rumoured in excess of
R500 000) end up with a web site that is good-looking, fun and has loads of
graphics, but let's face it, it's pretty slow and once you've seen it you
don't really need to go back.

If I had to design the ideal web site for SAA it would contain a home page
that has their logo and an updated screen showing departure times (including
delays) at all the airports around the country.

Maybe I'm unusual but somehow a real time flight schedule ranks above
adventure games on an airlines web site. At this stage I would place the SAA
site in my "Somewhere" class and they can feel free to use my advice when
looking for new functionality for the SAA Virtual Traveller site.

So what type of sites are going to be successful? The people who are going to
win in this internet race are those who understand the concept of communities.
We can take a lesson from companies that are successful in the real world.

These companies build up loyal supporters (read community), and evangelise
about their products. Some of the most successful companies in the world spend
little on advertising but spend a lot on customers.

The internet gives an opportunity to be in touch with your customer like never
before. CDNow , an internet success story, prides is
able to implement suggestions coming from its users (again read community)
within days and sometimes hours of receiving them.

This is another reason why small companies can compete well with large
companies on the internet. The South African corporations who pop up a few
pages from their marketing department without allowing interaction from their
community stand to lose ground as more people look to the web for up-to-date
information.

The web site consultants who make their money talking about the internet will
put the problem down to the wrong people creating the web site. "Don't let the
IS department do it," is the rhetoric heard. I would say the problem goes
deeper than that.

I think the IS department might be well qualified to do it, if only management
had a strategy for the web site. Even the big spenders don't always have a
strategy and the web site becomes a showpiece rather than an opportunity to
interact.

All is not lost, however, and some good examples of innovation are starting to
creep out of the woodwork. Take a look at ABSA or Sanlam who are both on the
right track by extending their real world services to the net. They might not
be perfect yet but improvements are incremental.

Perhaps the SA web is immature and once some more water has washed under the
bridge corporations will realise the potential, like some of our international
counterparts have. If you're developing a site or wondering what you're going
to do with your current site then aim for the "There" class. If it's not worth
doing properly, then why bother?