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The Top 10 Reasons to Put Your Business on the Web
- Your Competion Is Already There
Approximately 50 million people worldwide have access to the World Wide Web (WWW). No matter what your business is, you can't ignore 50 million people. To be a part of that community and show that you are interested in serving them, you need to be on the WWW for them. You know your competitors will.
- To Network
The web makes it easy to connect with other people. Imagine if you could pass out your business card to thousands, maybe millions of potential clients and partners, saying this is what I do and if you are ever in need of my services, this is how you can reach me.
- To Make Business Information Available
Think of your Web page as a full color Yellow Page ad that you do not have to edit. You can put all of your information on it. Information such as your hours, your complete product line, your services, how to contact you, methods of payment do you take, where are you located, smiling pictures of your friendly staff, full color pictures of your facility.
Add all of this information plus the ability to have instant communication.
Imagine if your customer could see today's special, the latest interest rate, next week's clearance sale information, or your updated menu!
How many times have you spent answering the same questions over and over again? Post the information on your web page.
- To Serve Your Customers
Make online forms available to pre-qualify for loans, or do a search for that special product your customer is looking for, without spending valuable time on the phone to take down the information? Set up a database so that your customers can see if something is in stock before they come to your store.
In today's busy world everyone seems to operate on different time schedules.
Keep your business open 24 Hours a day! And as your Mom and Pop store starts to get orders from coast to coast you can accomodate your customers while enjoying time away. Imagine getting to your office to find that customers have left orders in the middle of the night.
- To Make Information Available Quickly And Timely
Critical information sometimes changes before it gets off the press. How about when your pager provider decides to change your number or your area code changes. Don't yoou just hate throwing away that pile of expensive, worthless paper. No paper, no ink, no printer's bill, and no turn around time.
What about that time-sensitive release material? The quarterly earnings statement, the grand prize winner, the press kit for the much anticipated film, the merger news? Now the information can be made available whenever you specify, with all related materials such as photographs, bios, etc. released at exactly the same time. Create the excitement! The news of upcoming information goes to those that wait for it.
- To reach a highly desirable demographic market
The demographic of the WWW user is probably the highest mass-market demographic available. Usually college-educated or being college educated, making a high salary or soon to make a high salary, it's no wonder that Wired magazine, the magazine of choice to the Internet community, has no problem getting Lexus and other high-end marketer's advertising. Even with the addition of the commercial on-line community, the demographic will remain high
for many years to come.
- To Expand Your Market and Serve Your Local Market
There is no limit to where you can reach your customers. You can sell your widgets or services around the world, but perhaps you are not ready to go global. But what about those customers from Loveland, Fort Collins, Greeley, Longmont and anywhere else in Northern Colorado or Southern Wyoming. They are the ones that will add you to their list of places to stop at.
- To Allow Feedback From Customers
You pass out the brochure, the catalog, the booklet. But it doesn't work. No sales, no calls, no leads. What went wrong? Wrong color,wrong price, wrong market? Keep testing, the marketing books say, and you'll eventually find out went wrong. That's great for the big boys with deep pockets, but who is paying the bills? You are and you don't have the time nor the money to wait for the answer. With a Web page, you can ask for feedback and get it instantaneously
with no extra cost. An instant e-mail response can be built into Web pages and can get the answer while its fresh in your customers mind, without the cost and lack of response of business reply mail.
- To Reach The Specialized Market
Sell fish tanks, art reproductions, flying lessons? You may think that the Internet is not a good place to be. Well, think again. The Internet isn't just computer science students anymore. With the soon-to-be 7 million and growing users of the WWW, even the most narrowly defined interest group will be represented in large numbers. Since the Web has several very good search programs, your interest group will be able to find you, or your competitors.
- To Sell Things
Many people think that this is the number 1 thing to do with the World Wide Web. You probably consider the telephone a tool that allows you to communicate with your customer, which in turn helps you sell things. Well, that's how we think you should consider the WWW. The technology is different, of course, but before people decide to become customers, they want to know about you, what you do and what you can do for them.
Here are some other reasons:
- To Test Market New Services and Products
We all know the cost of rolling out a new product. Advertising, advertising, advertising, PR and advertising. Expensive, expensive, expensive. Once you have been on the Web and know what to expect from those who are seeing your page, they are the least expensive market for you to reach. They will also let you know what they think of your product faster, easier and much less expensively than any other market you may reach. For the cost of a page or two of Web programming, you can have a crystal
ball into where to position your product or service in the marketplace.
- To Reach The Media
Every kind of business needs the exposure that the media can bring, as we touched on in reason #5 To Heighten Public Interest, but what if your business is reaching the media, as a newswire, a publicist or a public policy group. The media is the most wired profession today, since their main product is information and they can get it more quickly, cheaply and easily on-line. On-line press kits are becoming more and more common, since they work with the digital environment of more and more pressrooms. Digital images can be put in place without the stripping and shooting of the old pressrooms and digital text can be edited and outputed on tight deadlines. All the these can be made available on a Web page.
- To Stay In Contact With Salespeople
Your employees on the road may need up-to-the-minute information that will help them make the sale or pull together the deal. If you know what that information is, you can keep it posted in complete privacy on the WWW. A quick local phone call can keep your staff supplied with the most detailed information, without long distance phone bills and tying up the staff at the home office.
- To Heighten Public Interest
You won't get Newsweek magazine to write up your local store opening, but you might get them to write up your Web Page address if it is something new and interesting. Even if Newsweek would write about your local store opening, you wouldn't benefit from someone in a distant city reading about it, unless of course, they were coming to your town sometime soon. With Web page information, anybody anywhere who can access the Web and hears about you is
a potential visitor to your Web site and a potential customer for your information there.
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