The Wild, Wild, Web Edward Kundahl was there from the Start

ALLENTOWN, Pa. - May 23, 2013 - PRLog -- Twenty years ago, e-commerce on the Internet could best be described as the wild, wild web. Anyone could hang a cyber-shingle and sell anything.

That’s what Edward Kundahl, president of IdeaOverTen in Allentown, found when he first dipped his toe into cyber selling in the early half of the 1990s.

“Mostly it was a lot of junk,” said Edward Kundahl, whose company today provides web, marketing and e-commerce solutions. “And there were a lot of sites selling the same things.”

There were some advantages to being an e-seller at the time. All you needed was a good grasp of the alphabet to maximize your search engine optimization. (Not that there was such a thing at the time.)

To get noticed, a site would choose a name beginning with an “A,” “1-A” or even an “AAA” to be listed at the top of a web directory’s listing all of which were alpha numeric.

He said those who figured that simple trick out in the dawn of online sales often found the most success.

But, Kundahl said, he was looking to bring another level to e-commerce compared to the hodgepodge that was out there at the time by offering vertical niche sites selling items from watches and shoes to lingerie. Each site would focus on a particular product as a specialty.

There were still challenges, though.

“You couldn’t just call up your (service provider) and ask for a shopping cart. There weren’t any. You had to build your own,” Kundahl said.

He apparently built a good one as well as other features that helped separate his sites from the rest and he saw decent success as an e-commerce pioneer.

BUILDING INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE

But the evolution of what IdeaOverTen would become started when Edward Kundahl was approached by a bank that wanted to put its services online and wanted his help. His focus switched to helping other businesses establish, improve and grow their online presence.

This was around 1995-1996, he said. “Amazon was just starting and people were just getting some confidence and putting money into technology,” he said. “That, of course, eventually led into the tech bubble.”

But he said the bubble was more of a Wall Street issue than a technology issue. “Everything was about the branding. They spent money and spent money on branding with the idea that eventually you’d cash in. But then that didn’t work and a lot of sites failed,” Kundahl said.

But in retrospect, he sees a lot of good coming out of that tech bubble time.

E-commerce eventually was reborn and the money that went into the late ’90s tech craze eventually built the infrastructure of the Internet that is used today.

“So it’s not like it went to waste,” he said.

Today, just about every bricks and mortar retailer has an online presence and sites such as Amazon lead as online only ventures.

Even banks, such as that first bank that approached Kundahl so long ago, offer online services with many offering virtually the same spend money on marketing. It’s not the good old days of ‘if you build it, they will come.’ They have to find you first,” he said.

That’s where his firm is spending the majority of its time now, helping people get their business discovered online through the latest search engine optimization techniques the parameters of which he said are always changing.

He also helps with online customer service options, which he said is almost as important as getting that customer to a site.

“If you don’t have good customer support, they’ll go to the next online shop because it’s so easy to do so. It’s not like they have to get in a car and drive to another store if they’re not happy. It’s just a click of a mouse.”

And now it may be as simple as the flick of a thumb.

Kundahl said the big new frontier in e-commerce is mobile technology.

“It’s the biggest growth area,” he said. “If your site is not mobile ready and people can’t buy from you using mobile technology, you’re missing out on a big piece of the market.”

THE FUTURE OF E-COMMERCE

Besides the increasing use of mobile devices for shopping, what does Edward Kundahl predict for the future of e-commerce?

Innovations in payment methods the “bit coin,” a digital based currency, will make a comeback. Improvements in product search Improvements will be made in search engine optimization for video and photos.

Bigger role of social media – Already popular with direct-to-consumer retailers, many businesses will use sites such as Facebook to grab point-of-sale purchases in the business-to- business world.

More taxes – States, facing budget problems, will no longer stand by as e-commerce takes a big bite out of sales tax revenue. Those states will grab a cut of what gets bought online.