Webcology: Seasons of Life

There are three standard stages websites go through when uploaded onto the Internet. These are Presence, Interaction, and Transaction. These are like a seasonal cycle a website goes through.

Presence
This is the stage at which a website is first introduced onto the Internet. At most, the idea is to make it known only. More effort is invested in retaining web consumers. The enterprise goes all the way to give freebies, infotainment and attractive webverts. Retention and Hit rate are very important at this stage. Many websites take up an informative behaviour, news being the most popular.

It is not advisable to jump this stage, as this may cause premature growth, or future abortion. On the other hand, it is important to plan and have the second stage on standby. A good example of these scenarios is Amazon.com. When it was launched, Amazon.com could interact and transact and the same time. Their Retention and Hit rates were abnormally high that they had to shutdown for a while.

Overwhelming success is usually a result of poor planning, or premature exposure. When launching a website, it is advisable to keep track of Retention and Hit rates. These are good indicators, which determine when you should go on to the next stage.

Interaction
This is the stage at which a website begins to talk to its consumers, responding to their requests. This is done using tools like Feedback forms, and many others. In this stage, web consumers are very demanding in that they know that when you have given them a platform for interaction, they will do so – INTERACT. Feedback forms are a simple way to interact with web consumers yet underutilised. Often time’s enterprises do not reply or attend to web consumer requests. It is important that once in this stage, an enterprise can use eGroups; an interactive way to consolidating their presence.


Transaction
This is the stage at which a website has the ability to facilitate a transaction, between the consumer, and its owner (the enterprise). Once a website is past Interaction, the noble thing to do is transaction processing. It is advisable to start offering eCommerce facilities.

eCommerce in regards to Transaction Processing can be simplified into three levels.
 Enquiry Processing – At this level, the website only gives web consumers the ability to find out if the product or service they require is available.
 Order Processing – At this level, the website gives web consumers the ability send requests of enquiries, receiving confirmation and invoicing documents.
 Payment Processing – At this level, the website gives web consumers the ability to use their banking details to pay for invoices generated – a complete transaction.

Each of these levels of Transaction Processing has different system requirements, meaning that the website behaves differently and is structured differently.

All-In-One
There are yet many websites that ignore the stages and offer all at once. In a normal circumstance, this is not advisable, especially in our part of global commerce. The major cost on a website is the Transaction Processing aspects. Investing in such a tool may be irrelevant to an enterprise, which has barely retained a good number of web consumers. This is over capitalisation. The money spent in a Transaction Processing system could have been used to consolidate the enterprise’s Presence or Interaction.