Maybe it is time for a paradigm shift in our approach to targeting customers as the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy¹ suggest. They call it desegmentation. It is all about looking to your non customers for real business growth. Not only does it offer increased revenue but also the potential to reduce costs.

Two-thirds of Australia's Internet population of nearly 13 million are active users.

The data below provides a glimspe into how the internet is used by Australian's at home and work.

Email as a medium of communication has become an almost indispensable tool for business, educational, social and personal purposes. Its importance in the future will, in all likelihood, continue to grow at an almost exponential rate, despite the plague of spam that is choking the internet.

Email has the advantage of regular postal mail in that it is delivered into the recipient's mailbox for them to read and reply to at their convenience, but without the lengthy time delay involved with 'snail mail'. Email also has the advantage of being quick and easy. It doesn't oblige the sender to engage in small-talk with the recipient, as telephones do. Using the phone to convey a simple message to a friend might involve a 10-15 minute conversation because no-one wants to appear rude by hanging up too soon. In an increasingly busy world, email allows the same message to be conveyed in a minute or two without implied rudeness.

At the end of September 2004, total Internet subscribers in Australia numbered over 5.7 million (source ABS).

Subsequently a web site has the ability to communicate to a wider group of people than ever before. It's essential your web site provides more than the 'on-line' brochure.

What is a Spam Filter? A spam filter is a program that is used to detect unsolicited and unwanted e-mail and prevent those messages from getting to a user's inbox. A spam filter looks for certain criteria on which it bases judgments. These criteria can include specific words that may be inappropriate. The filter can also use an algorithm to determine the likelihood of a message being spam.

There are a variety of different spam filtering packages which vary in effectiveness. But they all have the potential to read a legitimate email and rate ii as a spam message. As part of the PLANNING RESULTS process, we look at ways to ensure that emails sent have the lowest possible spam rating.

Is there such a thing as a perfect website? All the research and commentary including our own experience at PLANNING RESULTS points to one answer - keep it clear & simple.

• Clear content
• Simple navigation
• Simple design

As information needs change website need to be reviewed to see if they are meeting the needs of the people you are targeting (see "Is Your Website Current?)