Building Web Sites With Depth

…”Whether at a Web store or a real store, when users don’t get what they want, they leave. But they leave more readily on the Web. In our recent e-commerce study (see “E-Commerce User Experience”), the most common factor that stopped users from buying on a site was that they couldn’t find the item they were looking for. This accounted for 27 percent of all … [ Read more ]

Business Models on the Web

This site by Professor Michael Rappa is the home for a graduate course (Managing the Digital Enterprise) taught at North Carolina State University. The course is unusual in that it depends solely on the Web for class content, and does not use a standard textbook. The course is divided into fifteen topics that serve as the basis for discussion amd cover a wide range … [ Read more ]

Talking Heads – Are Chatterbots Useful?

This article examines a new artificial intelligence based virtual customer service solution known as a chatterbot.

The Laws of Nature

Information systems – even the ones with all the right technologies – often fail for reasons related to human behavior and culture. Information itself – or more specifically, how it is given meaning – is a highly social construction. Tom Davenport offers these Ten Commandments of Organizational Computing to deal with the organizational and human side of computing.

Marc Andreessen: Act II

Marc Andreessen is interviewed by Fast Company and discusses what he believes is still true – and what never was – about the Internet.