At some point during the fourth quarter, siteIQ Practice Leaders & Senior Analysts sit down to review the companies included on the eBusiness Index, and discuss whether the Websites we track  represent best-in-class behaviors within each industry segment. Usually, after some debate about each site’s merits & drawbacks, and the company’s industry standing, we come to a group decision regarding which sites to keep—and which ones to kill from the list.

I did something I never thought I’d do. I lobbied that we retire my pet personal systems sites from the eBusiness Index and replace them with three reseller Web properties including CDW.com, Insight.com, and Newegg.com

Not surprisingly, these discussions are usually quite lively, as Practice Leaders lobby for certain sites to be included for review, and often, for entire industry segments to be added to the Index roster. This was certainly the case when Kenna & I petitioned for the Business Software & Personal Systems segments to be added to the eBusiness Index back in 2005, so I was happy that these industries finally earned full-time Index status in the third quarter 2007.

Then, a funny thing happened in the fourth quarter. Gateway, which has operated the personal systems industry’s leading site since we started tracking PC vendors, sold its Small Business, Mid & Large Business, and Government & Education operations to MPC Corporation. Around the same time, news hit the airwaves that Acer’s acquisition of Gateway was complete, a sure signal that Gateway.com would be in for some changes—and might even go away.

Sure enough, in the midst of the fourth quarter, our evaluators noted that the Small Business, Mid & Large Business, and Government & Education zones disappeared from the Gateway site. Unfortunately, the elimination of these zones means that Gateway.com no longer corresponds to the traditional personal systems business model—and renders the site a mere shell of its former self.

Needless to say, the realization that Gateway.com is no longer a viable personal systems contender left me scrambling to find a site to replace it on the eBusiness Index. With our annual Index roster discussion looming, I set about the task of researching possible options. Given my knowledge of the industry, I knew this wouldn’t be easy. Enterprise giants like HP have been taking a pretty big bite out of conventional PC business for the past few years, so the number of dedicated personal computer manufacturers is waning.

Sure, there’s still Apple, and technically, Lenovo counts since its spin off from IBM; both are already evaluated on the Index. Then, there’s the aforementioned Acer, but its business model is more closely aligned to enterprise than personal systems, and a trip through its site reveals that it hardly represents best-in-class behaviors (and that pages load at a snail’s pace even using a FIOS connection) so it doesn’t qualify for inclusion in any eBusiness Index industry segment.

Other than that, the pickings are pretty slim. What’s more, every article printed, published, or posted to the Internet indicates that HP & Dell are earning the lion’s share of the PC business these days. As important, my ongoing study shows that resellers & channel partners are increasingly accountable for a growing number of PC sales. In fact, it seems that the evolving reseller market is only serving to fuel HP & Dell’s persistent munching of traditional PC vendor profits. According to all recent research, the combined one-two punch of direct—and channel—marketing is taking a serious toll; Apple currently ranks fourth in sales behind HP, Dell, and Acer.

Naturally, all of this got me to propose that  it’s time to look at the way consumers are purchasing hardware through a different lens. In particular, I decided we needed to get a closer view of just what vendors in the reseller/channel market are up to. So, when it came time to attend the annual Index roster discussion I did something I never thought I’d do. I lobbied that we retire my pet personal systems sites from the eBusiness Index and replace them with three reseller Web properties including CDW.com, Insight.com, and Newegg.com.

Surprisingly, once I’d stated my case and backed it up with plenty of facts, this suggestion met with less opposition than you might think. Even Marty agreed that the only interesting PC company left is Apple, but that its declining market share and Lenovo’s relatively small industry footprint make these companies—and their Websites—tenuous candidates for continued inclusion on the Index.

Thus, after some debate about each of the proposed reseller/channel site’s merits & drawbacks, and each vendor’s industry standing, we came to a group decision. This time we decided to add the Reseller/Channel industry to the eBusiness Index roster—and to kill the personal systems segment from the list.

As a result, beginning the first quarter 2008, we’ll be evaluating CDW.com, Insight.com, and Newegg.com on a quarterly basis, and factoring these site’s scoring & behaviors into the overall eBusiness Index mix. My gut feeling is that the inclusion of these sites is going to wreak havor on some category-specific rankings, and create some new standards for eBusiness Index sites as a group. Stay tuned…only time will tell if I’m right…

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