Four hundred people gathered at Internet World in the RDS yesterday to hear the gospel according to Ms Esther Dyson, one of the Internet's best known pioneers. Her keynote address promised to throw some light on the emerging business models based around electronic commerce and her opinion was valued at around £200 per attendee. As the practical application of electronic commerce still remains unclear for many Irish businesses, there was a palpable demand for hard and fast answers from Ms Dyson.
She replied with a general overview of trends common to successful commercial websites, the key trend being customer satisfaction.
New technologies would allow every business become cost competitive, she said, but the value added services it offered would provide most competitive advantage. This would be achieved by using the time freed up by automated processes to give customers a personalised service.
One query from the audience about the wisdom of selling banner advertising to the US market from an Irish site was dismissed with advice to pursue another career path. "Advertising is not the best use of the Internet; delivery of value added services is the thing."
The provision of fee-based content was also rejected as futile as it had to compete for consumers' time with unlimited amounts of free content. Small companies would only compete successfully against multinationals with established online brands if they forged partnerships and endorsements with these brands.
The two-day business show was opened by the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke.
She welcomed the move by Esat Telecom to introduce a single low-price per minute charge for Internet access to residential users on December 1st, and added she would now be looking forward to specific proposals for Internet pricing from Telecom Eireann.
Ms Dyson commended the Government for its "enlightened" approach to e-commerce.
"It understands the Internet is an important tool for business and schools, and it is working to educate its people properly.
"You have the advantage of the English language and you have a good global image of being trustworthy, so people wouldn't mind giving credit card details to an Irish person."
Though security is holding back electronic commerce to some degree, Ms Dyson predicted it was an issue that had been overblown, and would be widely adopted once enough people changed their habits and spread the word.
She warned that a successful e-commerce future depended entirely on relevant legislation being enforced.
With a European data protection directive coming into effect on October 25th, US vendors to Europe could, in principal, be cut off from trade with Europe. Though this is unlikely to happen, Ms Dyson outlined the merits of individuals regulating what happens their own data online.
She cited the US example of trustee, where a website signs a contract with a central organisation outlining what it will do with any individual's data it collects online.
This way consumers can decide whether they want to do business with that site or not.
