Mind the gap! The Ecommerce Expo 2009.

A few years ago I set my parents up with a broadband connection via Demon Internet (now Thus plc). As they live in London, they were able to get a fast service - at least for the time - and they never had a problem with it: they went to the PC, the broadband was available and worked without a hitch. About eighteen months ago, however, my father saw an advert for TalkTalk, offering broadband as well as 'phone services for only £6.99 a month, which was a third of what he was paying Demon.

Perhaps I was lazy or perhaps I didn't feel up to trying to argue against TalkTalk's excellent advertising campaign but I rolled over and said it sounded like a good deal, so why not go ahead? As you might have already guessed, there followed weeks of 'phone calls to support numbers, promises to call back that were never fulfilled and a very unhappy father. Even now, over a year later, the service is patchy and more akin to what one might expect in a cottage in Cumbria, five miles from the nearest exchange.

So, having set the example of how the marketing of a product can be very different from the actual delivered goods or services, let me turn my attention to this year's Ecommerce Expo. Yesterday I went down to Earls Court* for the day to catch up with where the sector is regarding Ecommerce and its related industries.

There were certainly some interesting ideas around payment methods, although nothing that struck me as an alternative worth considering to SagePay, which is our preferred solution for ecommerce payments. One apparently global company I spoke to even seemed surprised at the notion of validating cards but not taking payment until shipping. Have they never used Amazon?

My journey down was certainly made worthwhile by the invaluable twenty minutes I had with a technical advisor from Rackspace, who verified some of my concerns about cloud computing and made me think that we'll revisit that next year. The alternative solutions that he offered,though, were sound and intelligent. As a company, they continue to impress me.

Of course, I spent a lot of time visiting the stands of our competitors, most of whom were selling package solutions. (Dydacomp were there touting their MOM product, although they seemed to have less angry customers around their stall than last year, possibly because they have belatedly managed to release a PCI Compliant version.) What was notable about all the stalls - bar one, which I'll come to in a moment - was the fact that they all seemed to be offering the same things - a better customer experience, better sales, email marketing, SEO (of course), more effective order processing and so on - but there was very little in the way of customer testimonial. I must say I was very envious of the brand management company who had a glowing reference from Sainsburys and the PayPal stand predictably had some impressive names and logos on it but they were the exception.

However,I know two or three of these testimonial-free companies by reputation (from their ex-clients), and I know that the service they offer is not always as slick as they would like. And, to be clear, I think that's true for any small business. The problem is, then, this gap between the marketing and the deliverable. Spend enough money with a marketing firm, rent sufficient floor space at the Expo and your company can look like a million dollars. But, if everyone is saying the same thing, what's the point?

What was the one stall that was different? UKFast had by far the largest stand and they had set up a Formula One car with a plasma screen in front of it, so vistors could play a racing game. They backed this up with a bar and half a dozen attractive young women dressed in shorts and high heels. My knee jerk reaction was "how passé" but ultimately if there was a game to be played at the Expo of having the most attractive stand, then rather than big posters with a load of claims they might or might not be able to deliver on, UKFast went straight for the jugular and they "won".

I wouldn't claim to be the first to highlight the gap between the well-functioning marketing department and the product or service being delivered but it did strike me yesterday that this year's Expo was all about saying what your company could do without really backing it up. In a way, this reflects the issue we had with our own website: when there are so many sites out there telling you that their company can build you the best website, ecommerce solution, SEO etc etc, then how do you compete and stand out? Surely the only differentiator is the testimonials page that tells you not what a company says it can do but what it has actually done. Here's ours: www.meantime.co.uk/testimonials.php.

*I really will send a box of chocolates to anyone who can explain the apostrophe anomaly between Earls Court and Earl's Court Road.