Esther: Welcome back to the BusinessMakers Overtime Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. I'm Esther Steinfeld and I'm back with Segment 2, to lay bear some of the most important trends in eCommerce. So as you know, everyone has a Web page. The second thing is that more and more major online retailers will be leveraging their platforms to create online marketplaces. People used to wonder all the time if Amazon would be the Wal-Mart of the Internet. Now it looks like Wal-Mart actually wants to be the Wal-Mart of the Internet, opening its platform up to new online partners like eBags and CSN stores for its new Wal-Mart Marketplace.

Open source has been one of the major keys to Amazon's success, and they realized earlier on that their site was more than just a place to buy books; it was an eCommerce platform. They let tons of other vendors sell their products on Amazon, acting as the third party. More and more sites are trying to copy this model to take on Amazon, and Wal-Mart is not the only one. Sears, eBay, and Macy's are all in the process of attempting to leverage their sites as platforms, not just places to sell their own products. Look for more alliances with major sellers in the rest of 2009 and well in 2010.

The third thing you absolutely have to know is that customer service is king. If you haven't sensed this shift already amidst the renaissance of blogging and Tweeting, well, read a few product reviews on some of the more popular blogs. When people shop online there is an expectation that there is an actual office where people work taking calls, handling calls, and customer service problems. If you have no phone number on your site, no call center, no way to get in touch with a real-live human being, prepare for eCommerce failure. It isn't even enough to have living, breathing humans answering phones. They need to be fully trained on the products you sell, and be proactive at solving problems.

And, finally, Web 3.0 has been here for a while, and not optimizing your site makes you look bad. Simply HTML pages that take 20 minutes to load and have no sensible tested navigation tools, terrible, frustrating search, and useless content, all go against what Web 3.0. Simply put, Web 3.0 is – and this is to quote Tim Burners Lee. This is the man who invented the first World Wide Web and coined the term semantics Web – "Web 3.0 gives machines the ability to scan, read, and organize content. Behavioral advertising, personal targeting, and intelligent search are all categorized as Web 3.0 concepts." Sound familiar? Mostly likely. Are you doing these things? Probably not. So seriously focus on these four things as you move into 2010, and you'll be primed to take the top spot in Google's natural search rankings.

Now a few days ago, I did a very special interview with a special eCommerce CEO, and he taught me a lot about how not just to run an online business, but how to make it successful. So listen to what he had to say. My guest is actually an extra special guest because not only is he the CEO of the No. 1 eCommerce site in Houston and one of the Top 200 in the country, he's actually also my dad. So welcome Jay Steinfeld, CEO of blinds.com.

Jay: Hi, Esther. How are you?

Esther: I'm doing good. Thanks, dad.

Jay: It's good to see you.

Esther: Yeah. It's nice to see you as well. Well, our show this week, we're actually talking about eCommerce and all the ins and outs of creating a business online and what you really need to do to make an eCommerce successful. So tell me something that nobody knows about running an online business.

Jay: I think what – the most common conception that people have is that you set up a great looking Web site and then you sit back with no people and let it do all the work. But it's really just a tool, and what people generally don't know is that it requires a lot of people because customers or people who you're doing business with want to call you and they want to call you and they want to talk to people. So it really is more about setting up a business that really makes sense to customers, and not about the Web site itself.

Esther: That's actually pretty interesting because I've seen a lot of sites that don't have call centers, or don't even have phone numbers on the site, and you don't trust that site.

Jay: That's true. We put out telephone number prominently, so people can call us.

Esther: Another thing I want to know and what a lot of people want to know does what is it really take to make a site successful and to make some real money. I wanna quit my day job. How can I make money online?

Jay: Well, I wouldn't quit, (Laugh) because it takes patience. Like with all great things, it takes building on success. So you try little things here and there, and eventually you find something that works and then you build on your success and discard those things that are not working. To me, our main core value is continual improvement and experimentation without fear of failure. So with us, it's going to be try a new marketing approach. Try a different product. Merchandise a product a little bit differently. Test it. Be very careful with measuring all of your tests. And eventually, with all these different little things that you do, you make these nuanced improvements that the customers will feel and the customers will notice, and then your business just continues to improve all the time. And then if you're looking for improvement all the time, eventually you'll have something that's making money.

Esther: What are the main challenges of running an online business?

Jay: The main challenge is getting the right people to work for you, knowing what you want to do, and then getting the right people. Hiring right is essential for any business, whether it's an eCommerce business or not. Knowing clearly the direction that you wanna head and then having other people buy in to what that vision is and have them in the right position. If you feel like some of your shortcomings are operational, then you wanna make sure you've got somebody strong operational to make up and mitigate your own shortcomings. If you're looking for a great salesperson and you're sure on that, then you must get somebody good in those skills. And whatever you're good at, that's pretty much what you should stick to and not try to be everything for the company. Find the right people, shore up your own shortcomings, and let it fly.

Esther: And what about being the CEO? What is so crucial to being the CEO of a company like blinds.com, which does many millions of dollars in business and has become very successful? How should other people replicate your success as a CEO?

Jay: There's several aspects to being a CEO. One we've talked about, hiring the right people, but being a coach. You've got to be a really good coach. You're not the one that really is doing the work. In fact, I remember talking to your brother –

Esther: (Laugh)

Jay: (Laugh) – about a year or two ago, and I was explaining the types of things that I do about setting the vision, supervising people so that they know what part they are of that vision, talking to the investors to make sure that they're knowledgeable about what's going on, setting and making sure that the IT department has the right platform. And after telling him all these different things that I do, he goes, "But it doesn't seem like you do any work."

Esther: (Laugh)

Jay: And that's really true.

Esther: (Laugh)

Jay: (Laugh) The CEO really is like the conductor of an symphony. You decide what pieces are going to be played. You decide the interpretation of that piece. But you're not playing any of the instruments. You're – really everybody is else is really doing all the work.

Esther: But that could really be the hardest job of all, because you've got so many moveable parts, and to make sure that every piece is getting done trickling down all the way to the bottom. How do you make sure that happens?

Jay: The main thing is to hire people that have those same types of core values about continual improvement, the experimentation without fear of failure, and our third main core value, and that is being a pioneer, being No. 1, wanting to lead the way. And if you've got people that feel like that, that want to be nothing but No. 1 and are willing to look within themselves to change and figure out how they can be better, always focusing on the customer, though. All these things – all these changes that you're doing are always focused on what will customer notice. And if the customer notices it, then your company is gonna do well.

Esther: What do you is the difference between running a brick-and-mortar store, a traditional retail store, and an online store?

Jay: I try to think of running an eCommerce business as not being different than when I had stores, because I was in the blinds business selling blinds through stores. When I'm creating Web sites – when our marketing department and IT departments are creating these, I try to think about what I did when I was in a store, and replicate that sales process. The kinds of questions and the sales process that I had to go through from when I first met them and asked the series of questions to uncover what their goals, objectives, and what their needs were, I still try to do that, but providing that information on the Web site. So the key is what do your customers need, and make sure you provide that right outta the shoot.

Esther: Give the listeners some important tips for starting an eCommerce site. Where should they begin?

Jay: You should begin by making sure whatever product or service you're selling is actually needed. Just because you have an Internet site doesn't mean that what you're selling is valuable. So the first thing is what is the product? What is the service? Are you satisfying some need, some pain that is not being satisfied well? And then the Web site is merely a tool for helping you provide that product or service. It's not really the product. It's just a mechanism.

Esther: Ah, that's interesting. So you should make your Web site nice. You should make it user-friendly, but don't forget that there's a lot more to it than just slapping something up on the Internet and buying a domain name.

Jay: There's more to it than technology and great graphics. That's just the outside. The inside is how good is your product? How is it priced? Are the people that you have qualified an ad trained to treat your potential customers and existing customers with respect and with integrity and with the knowledge that will engender trust so that people will buy, and most important, will come back and buy more and refer you to other people. Because almost half of our business is repeat customers or those who have heard about us through other satisfied customers. And if all you're gonna do is base your business on some trick with the search engines or buying some kind of ads through Google, then that's gonna be very expensive and you cannot long-term make money by advertising. It has to be the experience, the product, the service that you're providing that people are so wowed by it that they're gonna wanna come back and tell others.

Esther: Well it sounds like blinds.com really does provide a great experience, and I work on that experience, so I hope it does, but what I also wanna know is are there any tools that people starting a business can use to get some ideas, to get some feedback? What are the tools that you use on a regular basis to learn and continue to improve the site?

Jay: There's a free tool from Google, called Google Analytics. That's something which you really must have. We use another program which is a little bit more high-powered and we can tailor it more to our needs. But Google Analytics has almost everything you'd wanna know. And it's not just how many hits, how many visitors, how many unique visits, but it tells you all sorts of things. I would make sure you've got Google Analytics. I would read constantly. There are so many blogs and articles and Web sites that have information about search engine optimization, about pay-per-click advertising, about analytics, about landing pages, all these things. The key is just constantly learn. Go to seminars. Read, and continue to read. Ask people questions if you don't know. And eventually, you're gonna figure it out.

Esther: What do you see happening in eCommerce in the next five years?

Jay: Well, our business is growing even in a recession, so I think more and more l are buying on the Internet. If the Internet only constitutes 5 percent of retail sales, I think a lotta people are predicting it could get as high as 20 percent in the five to ten years, that would be huge number. So we're expecting more and more people to be comfortable with online buying and online information gathering. And what's really important is that if you don't have a good product or service, people are gonna find out about it awfully fast, because with either Facebook or Twitter, reviews, or e-mails, everybody gets information instantaneously. So actually that's good because if you have a good business, people are gonna find out about that, too.

Esther: What about one little nugget of advice? If you could give young you a little advice, what would it be?

Jay: Wow, one nugget of advice.

Esther: A single nugget.

Jay: A single nugget.

Esther: A golden nugget.

Jay: Golden nugget?

Esther: Doesn't have to be your only golden nugget, but if you could provide on right now would it be?

Jay: Well, that's a tough one. I think being true to what to what is important to you. If your mission is to provide beauty or high technology to humanity, then you should be thinking about how to do that. If, on the other hand, your goal is to sell blinds, then don't obfuscate the whole issue by thinking that you're beatifying America. Think about how to make buying blinds the easiest possible way it can be. Focus on your product to make the best so that if you were a person thinking about where to buy that product or service that there would be no question that they would go to you, that you've provided everything they could possibly want.

Esther: That's great advice. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate you taking time to sit down with us at the Businessmakers Overtime Show. You've been and listening to Jay Steinfeld, CEO of blinds.com and also my dad. So thanks a lot, Jay, and that's about all we have for right.

Jay: Thanks, Esther. See you later.

Esther: Yes, he's my dad, but believe it or not, I learn something new form him every day, and working together is a lotta fun.

John: Well now it is time for another Business Survival Tip, so lets welcome Carl Kleimann.

Carl: Hello business owners this is Carl Kleimann from Odyssey One Source with a Business Survival Tip. The first piece of legislation passed by President Obama was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. For those of you not familiar with this, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act essentially reverses the Supreme Court decision by resetting the statute of limitations with each discriminatory paycheck. Obviously, this greatly expands the timeframe for making gender based claims of discriminatory pay. In many cases, discriminatory pay occurs without any malicious intent but rather happens unknowingly over time. Many small businesses lack a formal compensation policy, and those that have one, don't always ensure adherence by managers. Don't let this happen to you.

Consider this, your company hired a female employee 10 years ago and since that time, has hired and promoted numerous employees of varying skill, experience and education levels. After 10 years, she files a claim alleging pay discrimination dating back to the date of hire. This claim is now allowed as long as one or more paychecks within the last 180 days reflects the alleged discriminatory pay practice. In order to assert a viable defense, you will likely be required to produce documents dating all the way back to the date of hire.

So what should you do in response to the new Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. I recommend the following: First, take time to develop a pay policy or review your current policy relating to starting pay, promotional pay increases, and merit pay increases to ensure equality. Second, maintain all records that support your compensation and promotion decisions. Ledbetter suggests the need for very long record retention policies. And finally, conduct a statistical self audit by analyzing the starting pay, promotional pay increases, and merit pay increases that your firm has made over the past two years. Identify possible patterns of discrimination. Never before have we seen such dramatic change to labor policy in such a short period of time.

I am Carl Kleimann and this has been another Business Survival Tip by Odyssey One Source, ranked as the number one Professional Employer Organization two years running by the Black Book of Outsourcing. For more information on this and other issues affecting employers, please visit www.odysseyonesource.com.

Esther: So stayed tuned for Segment 3 as Katie and Kelsey give you some insights in their picks for top brands of '09. You've been listening to the BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.