June 29, 1998 To open the portal to big Web revenues, offer unique value There's been a lot of talk lately about "portal sites." The idea is to attract a mass audience by acting as the gateway through which your customers access the Web. If you can get visitors to stay on your site, or at least to return to it often, you can generate revenues through ad sales, or by selling products and services to your captive audience. The first portal sites were the search engines. Without a search engine, getting around the Web is next to impossible -- so a search site like Yahoo is a natural "portal" to the Web. Disney's recent purchase of 43 percent of search site InfoSeek underscores the value that big companies see in having a portal site. Successful portal-site strategies have been rewarded with hit counts through the roof -- enabling them to charge a premium for banner ads and giving them a valuable customer base. Netscape is also getting into the portal game with its home page, recently renamed Netcenter, which generates a quarter of Netscape's revenues. However, Netcenter -- in its current form -- isn't set up for long-term success as a portal site. Netscape's site, while one of the busiest sites on the Internet, is almost entirely dependent for its traffic on Netscape's shrinking share of the browser market. I would guess that the vast majority of the hits to Netscape's home page are the result of people starting up their browsers -- people who haven't yet figured out how to change the default home page. If Netscape's share of the browser market goes away, so will Netcenter's massive hit count. That's because Netcenter currently offers little of value that Web users can't get somewhere else. The beta version of Netscape's next-generation Netcenter (accessible through Netscape's home page) has the same problem. Much of it is simply repackaged information from search site Excite. This partnership is obviously a great value for Excite -- but it's not so clear what unique value the new Netcenter offers Netscape's customers. Without offering customers a unique value, Netcenter's traffic count will be forever linked to the vicissitudes of Netscape's browser market share. Don't make Netscape's mistake. If you want to be a portal site for a specific audience, make sure you're delivering something unique to that audience. Don't just repackage content that's available elsewhere. And don't try to coast on the hits you can get as a result of an existing brand name or advertising campaign. Happy endings As I reported in a recent column (see "How I tried to finance my car purchase online and nearly went crazy"), I ran into big difficulties when trying to arrange an auto loan through CarFinance.com. I'm happy to report that the story has a happy ending -- the loan went through, and I'm now looking forward to several years of car payments. A big part of the problem, as I reported then, was the dealer. CarFinance.com's president, Robert Ferber, wrote to tell me that most car dealers are more cooperative -- and his claims were borne out by several readers' letters. Ferber also told me about several timely improvements he's making to CarFinance.com's customer service operation. My experience underscored the importance for CarFinance.com of working with and educating car dealers. Until Internet loans are more widely understood and accepted, online finance companies need to meet their real-world business partners more than halfway. Dylan Tweney edits InfoWorld's intranet and I-commerce product reviews. He welcomes your comments at dylan@infoworld.com. Missed a column? Don't worry -- just click here to catch up.