Let me tell you why this is good news and why both are tightly related. Only a few months ago, a vast majority of etailers only focused on generating brand awareness via significant offline and online media campaigns. The rationale was that high brand awareness would generate traffic on your site, which, in turn, would help you sell advertising space on your site. In most cases, the revenue stream generated by advertising was significantly greater than any revenue derived from ecommerce. The Nasdaq correction and the widely reported increasing reluctance of venture capitalists to continue to fund losses and enormous negative cash have changed this.
Investors now expect etailers to show a Path To Profitability.
The good news is that this shift in investors' attitude has resulted in a shift of focus amongst etailers from brand awareness onto 'customer experience'. And it is good news for three reasons. At first, this focus now includes the word customer. After all, one of the major drivers behind the Internet is the increasing power of customers. The Internet greatly improves the ability of consumers to make fully informed choices.