What really impresses me about SAP.com is that SAP is willing to try new things and use the home page to sandbox interesting ideas—like incorporating a partnership message into the solution pathway. SAP has also incorporated social media into the site to help sell solutions, which is a smart idea for products complicated enough to provoke questions that static text might not be able to address. But given that SAP’s services and solutions focus on social behaviors (e.g., CRM, ERP), it is notable that the site does not have a consumer-facing presentation of social initiatives to demonstrate the claim that SAP brings people and resources together. Will we begin to see linkage from these pages to the company’s Twitter or Facebook offerings? Given SAP’s interest in trying things out, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Archive for February, 2010
Five Sites to Watch in 2010 – Pt. 2 – CDW
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010CDW - Online Commerce Machine!
What caught my eye about CDW is that it is stretching the Amazon/B2C model to suit higher-end products not normally associated with retail sale—including a surprisingly large stock of Juniper Network products. CDW is a revenue-generating machine, and it has been extremely smart about integrating social media into the browsing experiences, including a prominent Twitter feed on the home page and a great “Click-to-chat” feature in the banner.
One of the primary motivators for subscribing to corporate social feeds is “to find deals,” so this hits the sweet spot. In the coming year, it will be interesting to see whether CDW really takes advantage of its Twitter feed and updates it more frequently to promote loyalty. I personally would like to see the company offer methods to share on individual product pages.
Have you seen other successful B2B online commerce models? What are your favorite/least favorite features on CDW?
