Digital Planet launched its site in August 1999, when its focus was on providing industry news and information, online shopping and on developing various functionalities for the growing user community.
We`ve all got to get much better at understanding what the Web can allow you to do; it`s taken us two years to understand the power of this medium.
Mark Levy, MD, Digital Planet
But like most Internet start-ups, Digital Planet`s core business focus gradually changed. As Mark Levy, Digital Planet MD explains, previous to the redesign, the site was changed only once in the last two years.
"We had so much more content and information, and also, I guess so much more experience in what good Web sites have to offer, and don`t, that we decided to just do a major overhaul. So, the whole business has changed dramatically over the last two years. The idea started out to be a portal to the IT community to find news, information and content and auctions and shopping, and our slogan was, and still is, SA`s IT home online."
The idea was to attract anyone with an interest in the IT industry, with information relating to jobs, training, shopping, and other services. The strategy involved partnerships with various content providers, and the provision of discussion boards, a classifieds section and other community platforms to encourage active participation on the site on the side of the users.
Major changes, consolidated refocusing
"We`ve dropped a lot of it - our discussion boards, our classifieds section, and our partnership with EarthWeb in the States. All of that was good content, but we weren`t good enough to make it that good, so we were second best in that.
"What we`d rather do is focus on what we`re really good at. We`ve kept some of the content - we`ve kept our events calendar, and two of the eight content partners. But the idea was to consolidate, and build a shopping experience that we hope is better for our users.
"What we`ve found over time is that we`re pretty good at some parts, and not so great at others; news is a great example. We can`t compete with ITWeb for news, and we don`t want to - it`s not our business. We`ve learnt where we can do well, and in SA today our niche and our competitive advantage is in our shop."
We`ve learnt where we can do well, and in SA today our niche and our competitive advantage is in our shop,
Mark Levy, MD, Digital Planet
Fair commentary for an e-tailer that broke even within 18 months of launching, and that currently generates more than a million rand in turnover each month, from between 1 000 and 2 000 transactions.
We`ve got it all
Digital Planet`s key differentiator and key to success in a closely competitive market is its breadth of product offering, says Levy.
"There isn`t anyone else in our space. There are lots of places where you can buy online - a printer here and a scanner there - but if you want to buy a range, there isn`t anything even close. We have 51 000 products online. With the redesign, we really wanted to focus on the shopping aspect and on allowing users to find what they were looking for a lot quicker than they could before."
Another critical aspect is the value that Digital Planet provides to its advertisers and sponsors. "Previously, the site had a list of about 21 shops, and the guys at the bottom were not getting fair value for what they were paying."
Now, the site features a bank of vendor logos, the positioning of which rotates every 12 hours. Levy says vendor response has been phenomenal.
"They love it - which is just as important as your members loving it."
There are about 15 000 registered members, a significant portion of which take an active interest in the site, it would seem.
"We`ve been running polls on the site, and we get tons of feedback. As soon as the new site went live, we had hundreds of e-mails. But we haven`t had any negative response to the changes."
Digital Planet`s relationship with US company EarthWeb (now known as Dice) was one of those dropped in the restructuring - a matter that did not have a major impact on the company, says Levy.
"We never got to the stage where it became strategic to either of us - we were getting some nice content, they were getting some good PR, and that`s really all it was at the time.
"We have some opportunities [for international partnership], and where it will add value to our membership base, we will definitely consider it. But we`re getting good at our shopping, and we`d rather put our resources into focusing on better deliveries, and logistics, operations, and workflow processes."
SA`s e-tail challenges
"The problem with the Web at the moment in SA is that there`s no real compelling reason to buy online. It`s not necessarily cheaper, deliveries are disastrous - there`s no real compelling advantage for customers to go online. And the better you become at fulfilment, logistics and price, the better chance you have of converting customers, so we`ve put a lot of effort into that.
"We`ve all got to get much better at understanding what the Web can allow you to do [in interacting with the customer] - it`s taken us two years to understand the power of this medium."
One of the new strategic initiatives is the call centre that Digital Planet will set up in the near future. Levy notes: "We should have done it ages ago. The click or call model is working all over the world."
Other new technology platforms the site is keeping its eye on are m-commerce and t-commerce, though Levy doesn`t foresee any major progress in those fields for at least another year.
E-tailers really have to give people a reason to buy online, says Levy, and there`s only a handful of South African Web sites that do that. And despite all the bad press, he says, local e-tailers still look to Amazon.com for cues on best business practices.
"They`ve built a business in a few years that has generated billions of dollars of revenue. Their distribution is phenomenal, and I think a lot of us spend a lot of time on their site, and reading about what they do, to get better at what we do."
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