When I’m talking to people about Internet and Web-based solutions, sometimes I’m met with blank stares.  A little more encouraging that the blank stare is the response "Oh, you’re a web designer".  Design is a very tiny part of Internet and Web development, but at least I know I’m talking to people who have used a Web site or have heard of the World Wide Web.

This article was first published in 2007 through one of Sonoma Tek’s newsletters.  I thought I’d post it here with a couple of minor changes.

What are Internet and Web-based Solutions?

I believe the real question is, "What exactly does an Internet or Web solution mean for me and my business?"

The disconnect experienced by many people when discussing their Web presence is that they are unclear as to exactly how their Web site relates to the day-to-day operation of their business.  As Web developers and Internet professionals, we need to accept responsibility for this disconnect.

So, without too much fuss, I will attempt to reveal this the best way I know how: through examples and illustrations.

There may be many different components in answering this question, but I have narrowed it down to five:

• Scope
• Presentation
• Enhanced Customer Experience Through Enhanced Customer Service
• Measurable Return On Investment Through New Customers and Savings
• Social Structure

Each of these parts have equal importance and relevance to each other, so, let's look at each a little closer.

Scope

In this context, scope is just another word for "purpose."  Careful consideration of what it is you would like to accomplish with your Web site is vital to determining your scope.  A Web or Internet professional will have an in depth process, known as a needs analysis, to help in determining the scope of your Web site.

A well formed, carefully planned Website will deliver product and/or services to prospective and existing clients and customers 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year no matter where in the world they may be.  Your business will touch far more people than you ever could with a piece of paper, pencil, and a telephone.

In order to do this, we need to understand the scope of our Web site.

Presentation

When considering Internet and Web solutions for your business, we need to consider how you want to present your business to your prospective and existing clients.

Would you like to demonstrate that you are up-to-date with technology and prepared to use it as a means for delivering enhanced service to your customers no matter where they are?  A carefully planned, well formed Website using high visual impact to deliver meaningful messages will convey those feelings and more to your prospective and existing customers.

This way, your Web site will set the tone for how people see your business and services.

Enhanced Customer Experience Through Enhanced Customer Service

When a customer chooses to do business with us, or is considering our goods or services over our competitors, we would like them to have a great time in dealing with us.  We would also like to deliver a level of customer service that our competitors are unable to deliver, or at least deliver them better.

The major enhancements in customer experiences when dealing with a company which embraces technology in its business through a well formed, carefully planned Web presence include:

1. Ease of interaction.  Customers appreciate being able to communicate with us and obtain the information they need easily and quickly.  By using a computer, or some other electronic device capable of accessing the Internet (e.g. a cell phone or PDA) in their home or office, customers can access information about our goods and services any time they want.
2. Detailed information.  We live in the "Information Age."  People demand that their information be detailed enough to make informed decisions.
3. Empowerment.  As business owners, I believe it is our responsibility to empower customers through our goods and services.  Furthermore, our customers want to be empowered by our businesses and the services we offer.  A well formed, carefully planned Web resource can empower our existing and prospective customers by allowing them to have access to our businesses and goods and/or services on their terms.

With a few minor adjustments to the ways in which we approach customer service, our customers will view our businesses as a resource as much as a place which requires them to spend money.  Which, of course, they can do just about anywhere!

Measurable Return on Investment Through New Customers and Savings

When we make an investment in our businesses, we want to be sure there will be a measurable return on investment.

It would be very easy for me to tell you that with a carefully planned, well-formed Web site you will be assured of a return on investment; and I wouldn’t be lying if that’s what I told you!  There are always people browsing the Web for the goods and services you provide. The point that we as business owners are focused on, however, is a measurable return on investment.

So, exactly how can we do that through our Web site?

When planning our Web site, we need to determine exactly what outcomes we want to achieve.  Here is an example of a few outcomes which might be of interest to a business owner today:

• More sales
• Faster distribution of product
• Faster customer service
• High volumes of directed traffic

None of these objectives should be considered on their own.  When developing your site, your Internet professional should be discussing all of these outcomes in order to provide you with a single objective: Measurable Return on Investment Through New Customers and Savings.

We'll look at each of these individually with a view of them helping us to achieve that one objective.

More Sales

We would all like more sales, but exactly how do we achieve that with a Web site?  There is so much business being done "on the 'net" these days.  How do we compete?

When someone visits our Web site, we need to be projecting a professional image and looking our best all the time.  This means that we must offer the following to our prospective and existing customers:

• A high visual impact which can be viewed across all types of Web browsers and equipment
• Concise information about our company, products and services
• An easy-to-use catalog
• Secure services

Believe it or not, but there are many Web sites out there which do not offer these fundamental functions to their prospective and existing customers.

You can make more sales and get ahead of your competitors by investing a little more time with attention to detail and services.

Faster Distribution of Product

Another way in which we can ensure a measurable return on investment is by making sure that our product arrives in the hands of our customer as fast as possible.

There are still companies which provide an online form for a customer's credit card details, and then ask the customer to wait until someone gets back to them to confirm their order.

Not only is this method going to ensure failure in achieving our objective of faster distribution of product, but it will ensure failure in achieving more sales, because we will not see that customer again.

There are as many ways to ensure fast distribution of product as there are products.  The key factor here is that your Internet professional spends time planning a way in which to achieve this objective.

Faster Customer Service

Dealing with customers is always a pleasure, but it also requires resources.  Not simply financial resources, but other resources such as time, phone lines, paper, postage and more.  And then we continue to re-commit those resources for every inquiry a customer needs to make in order to do business with us.

What if we could save those resources?  Better yet, what if we could use these savings by re-committing our resources in areas that will help us to make more sales?

Remember, one of the critical factors in determining why we need Internet and Web-based solutions was so that we could allow our clients and customers to be empowered by our products and services.  We do this by handling the demands of customer service.

By making sure that our Web site is a resource for our clients and customers we will be ensuring that we deliver fast and accurate solutions to their needs while allowing us to do the things which drive our businesses and keep us in the game, as it were.

High Volumes of Directed Traffic

Again, it may seem like an obvious objective, but many overlook or underestimate the importance of marketing their Web presence with a view of directing traffic to it.

Most people have heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or Search Engine Marketing (SEM), but these valuable commodities are often overlooked because they are perceived to be complex, expensive, and time-consuming components of doing business on the Internet.  Therefore, many designers overlook the process of SEM all together.

The ways in which some Search Engines (e.g. Yahoo or Google) collect information and relevant data regarding all the Web pages in the world are always changing.  Therefore, this marketing specialty requires some specialist attention.  Nonetheless, SEM is a vital component to ensuring a measurable return on investment.

We will cover many of the aspects related to SEO and SEM in a future editorial, but for now, consider that without some form of marketing behind your Web business, you are committing resources that have no chance of a significant return on investment.

Social Structure

I realize that you're probably reading this article and saying to yourself, "Did he just say social structure is a reason for investing in Internet and Web solutions for my business?"

You bet I did.

Consider for a moment that your Web site is a communication backbone for your business.  It conveys all kinds of information about your goods and services, the particular industry in which you are a professional, and it may even provide a channel for your customers to discuss and share experiences among themselves.

Does that not sound like a component of a social network to you?

Now consider the economics behind such a social network.  According to Emarketer, US ad sales on Web sites offering some form social structure (or network) will generate $900 million in 2007.

Offering some form of social interaction for your customers and your community is not child’s play.

Conclusion

As you'′ve been reading through this editorial I hope that you’ve been inspired to think of the specific reasons which apply to your business for establishing a Web presence.

Perhaps you have partially embraced the Internet and established a Web presence for your, but now you are able to see a clearer purpose for having one.  You might even have been able to think of some new ideas that will help to bring another stream of income to your business through your current Web site.

I was going to title this post “Marketing Tips for Your Web-based Business,” but I got to thinking.  Dangerous, I know.

Why do we draw a distinction between the 3-dimensional aspects of our businesses and the Internet presence that we’ve established?  Isn’t the purpose for both to be successful?  Don’t we give just as much time and effort to establishing and evolving our Internet presence as we do to our traditional business activities?

Maybe I’ll leave that side of the discussion to another post for another day.  Right now I would just like to offer 3 really effective ways to maximize the Internet and our web presence in such a way that they each keep our businesses in front of prospective customers and clients.  

Nothing bad can come from touching prospects, right?

I am often in conversations with business owners who are under the impression that all they needed to do was build a website and the phone would ring off the hook.  Sometimes they arrive at this conclusion because of their own pre-conceived ideas, and sometimes it’s because they met a designer who doesn’t fully understand how all pieces of Internet marketing fit together.

Allow me to say for the record that Internet marketing is a symphony and your website, Search Engine Optimization, and Internet advertising (e.g. Link Building, Syndicated Articles, Pay-per-Click, etc.) are members of the orchestra. 

As the conductors of the orchestra, we need to compose and arrange.

It is absolutely true that we require our web assets to be optimized and tested.  What we tend to forget, though, is that we are required to spend time developing marketing and promotional strategies.  To this end, here are 3 ideas to help grow our web-based assets and improve the bottom line for our businesses.

 

1. Great calls to action result in sales.
   Sales drive business, and prospective customers respond to attractive calls to action.  Exploring different calls to action and executing the ones that work is an on-going process for those wishing to make sales.
   A call to action is quite literally anything which appears on a web page, in an email, or any other form of communication which inspires action from our prospects.  When producing a communication piece intended to boost sales, we often forget about the construction and placement of calls to action.
2. Maximizing Your Marketing Dollars
   After your initial research (i.e. identifying your target audience and determining a promotional strategy) decide on the best path for maximizing your marketing budget.  I strongly recommend working closely with your web developer or Internet marketing consultant to find ways that will get the biggest bang for your buck.  After examining your business needs, you might find that link building is an attractive marketing solution, or you might choose to publish syndicated articles.  You might even choose a combination of both, but one thing is certain, different businesses will each require a different approach.
   Remember, whatever strategy you decide upon, the goal is for more prospective customers to be touched as often as possible.  It is widely understood that the average prospect will see a product or service up to seven times before taking the desired action.  That is, taking action and making the purchase.
   Instead of spending your budget on a single promotion or marketing opportunity, it’s much better to appeal to our customers with multiple promotions.  Use a combination of link building, syndicated articles, and perhaps a small pay-per-click campaign to get the best mileage from your budget.
3. Use email to convert “suspects” » prospects » customers.
   When done right, email is an economical and reliable way of building and maintaining relationships with the people who come into contact with our business.  Over a relatively short period of time, these people become customers, and your ever-growing and evolving email list continues to work for you.
   Your regular or semi-regular communications should be about education for your prospective customers, as well as being a call to action for your particular goods or services.
   I would be remiss at this point if I didn’t caution you to understand, or find a scrupulous Internet professional who understands the laws pertaining to spam, so-called “opt-in” programs and other means for the collection of email addresses.  Nonetheless, a well thought out, easily read note that provides value will also position you as an expert in your field for those may not already be exposed to you or your business.

It is true that a good website is going to set the tone for your business.  Whether you are a child care professional, florist, medical practitioner, or an importer of teaspoons, our websites will either say that we’re serious about our chosen field and that we are here to offer effective, valuable service, or it will say something else about us that we’d rather not acknowledge.

This truth never changes, though.  Marketing our website is a vital piece to establishing our Internet presence and making it a success.

The basic rule for systemizing is ‘Systemize the routine, humanize the exception’. Effective systems can save you and your team both time and money. A system means that things are done consistently, regardless of the team member. Anything that cannot be systemized needs to be run by people. Always look at putting a system in place rather than employing more people.
The first step in systemizing your business is to record the steps required to accomplish all the important tasks of the business. The next step is automation.

Here’s what happens when an order comes in:

1. Customer calls and places an order
2. The Owner jots the order on a piece of paper.
3. The Owner writes down what materials would be required to do the job (he may forget that he needs a certain material).
4. He then proceeds to check the shelves to see if he needs to reorder any of the material.

With an automated system this is what takes place – and it happens ALL from a few keystrokes:

1. The Owner would have called up the Customer’s Name on the computer (the computer would have all the important information on the customer such as whether they have any outstanding invoices and what they ordered last time).
2. He would enter the order and the computer would tell him whether the materials needed to make the product are in stock
3. The computer would print out a list of materials to order, schedule the time on the machine required to make the product, state when the product will be ready to ship to the customer, and produce an invoice and shipping label.

Now you might be thinking that automating functions of your business would be very complicated and expensive. Not true. The price of computer equipment keeps falling and is now affordable to all businesses. We have coached many businesses to organize their steps and procedures and then automate their business functions. Business owners are amazed at how the increase in efficiency and sales, due to the consistent quality of the products or service they produce, can pay for the software in a very short period of time.

Whether you are a manager or the owner of a business, you can really affect the bottom line through systemizing processes. Then by automating the processes, you know that your business will be efficient in offering its products or services. Not only will you sleep better knowing that you do not have to be there to keep the company moving smoothly, but also that the company will be more profitable. You know a computer should not be used as a glorified typewriter when it can do so much more to help your business.

Systemizing your business can also be your competitive advantage. Customers will benefit from your business running more efficiently and producing consistent high quality products or services regardless if the owner is around. Customers that shop at your competition and who are tired of inconsistent quality will soon buy from you. All you need to do then is to COMMUNICATE to your customers and prospects about your NEW Business IMPROVEMENT that will help to serve them better.

Remember…

• Systems run your business …
• People run your systems …
• You lead your people …