A Second Look: Indiana companies rethink their Web operations.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: Information Technology

Now that the dot-corn balloon has burst, Web consultants are once again hearing clients utter such radical terms as "cost" and "return on investment." Internet consultants that have survived the fallout may lament the slowdown, but they acknowledge that business is now being done the way it should be: with careful planning, contemplation, even caution.

"We've seen a more refined approach from our clients as to how they approach the Web," says Dan Turkette, president of TEK Interactive Group in Fort Wayne. "They're giving much more thought to each and every project because dollars have been tight. In the past, they'd spend their whole budget just to spend it."

While clients once were tackling Web projects just to keep up with the Joneses, "it's not a 'me-too' concept on any Web-type initiative," Turkette says. "Part of our mission with any customer is to analyze their business and figure out ways to eliminate keystrokes, so there's some return on investment."

As it turns out, refinement rather than total reinvention is what many sites need, anyway. "They've seen value in the first phase of their Web site and now they're looking at enhancements and improved user interfaces," says Gary Shuman, general manager of the hometown office of Indianapolis-based Eviciti. "I would call it an evolution more than a revolution."

"They're refining functioning and navigation to improve their conversion rate, which is the number of visitors that convert into a sale," Turkette adds. He cites one Fort Wayne client as. an example. "The Great American Spice Co. recently went through a renovation. The mission was to increase conversion and reduce abandoned carts on both the business-to-business and business-to-consumer sides."

Among other changes, Turkette says, TEK Interactive improved the checkout process at americanspice.com to eliminate some of the steps. The end result of this site's refinements was a dramatic drop in "abandoned carts" which occur when someone begins to shop but leaves before checking out. The site had an abandoned-cart rate of around 90 percent, relatively typical in e-commerce, but refinements dropped the rate to just over 45 percent, Turkette says.

This kind of Web tweaking is not uncommon in this stage of the Internet's evolution, says Steve MacLaughlin, a visiting lecturer at Indiana University whose resume includes time as chief knowledge officer at Indianapolis-based Web consultant Expidant. Still, some companies are deciding that now...