You will use the Internet to:
Grow Your Business
Businesses must use the internet as a tool to grow, not just to advertise. The website is your companies' salesperson.
It perfectly represents you on sales calls and is never sick.
Websites are storefronts that are open 24hrs a day.
Customers are allowed to shop at their own leisure.
Customers will appreciate the fact that your products have been made easier for them to buy.
Reach New Customers
Not on the internet?
Think about the business and industry you are in. Ask yourself when one of the 70 million people looks for your type of service, what the chances are that they will find you.
If you have no website then the chances are zero.
Service existing customers
Websites can actually increase efficiencies in customer service.
Your website can answer commonly asked questions that customers ask. Simply point customers to your website, your then free to do important things, like run the business.
Increase Profits
With your storefront on line you increase your profits.
Cost to sales ratio becomes lower.
It costs you less money to make a sale.
Lowering overhead per sale means you make more of a profit.
If you do not have e-commerce, you still increase profits because your website address is advertising for you and will generate more sales.
Lower Overhead.
It’s true. Using the Internet effectively will lead to lower overhead.
Example: you spend $2000/month on yellow page ads
$1500 on ½ page newspaper ads
That is a total of $3500 per month
The website can cut back the size of yellow page ads and newspaper ads, while still reaching people.
Your ad budget will be cut and will reach more potential customers.
Open Longer Hours
What would it mean to your business if you can keep your doors open 66% longer hours.
Naturally you would conclude your business would increase.
The only problem is the overhead of electricity, employees, etc.
With a website you can open longer hours without any overhead.
You can service thousands of customers at the same time, without the need for employees.
Expand Globally
Geographical barriers are taken away with the Internet.
Businesses are exposed to every person in the world that have a computer and find your products or services interesting.
Small companies can compete against larger companies.
The playing field is leveled out on the Internet.
No company has advantage over another.
Reach Your Local Market
It is not enough to say that you are on the internet.
Directories like the National Direct Internet Yellow Pages, make it possible for businesses to reach the local market on-line.
Plumbers can use internet yellow pages to find prospects in their own town.
A customer looks for you by category, city, state, zip, or even area code. The National Direct Internet Yellow Pages gets six million hits per month. It’s a great way to reach your local market.
Test New Products
Do you have new products or ideas?
Why spend large sums of money, just to find out that people do not want it.
The internet is the most cost affective way to test new concepts.
Because of relatively low costs, the Internet allows the testing of new ideas and products without large sums of money.
Testing on the internet then makes it feasible to roll out new products.
Network
Networking is important in business.
Networking is how we come up with new concepts and ideas.
We found companies that we do business with through networking. Amazingly they came looking for us.
Without internet access these relationships would not exist.
Building such relationships on the internet is great.
Enhance Marketing
Run newspaper ads and/or TV commercials including the website address.
You are giving customers additional ways to get information from you. People who see the ad at night or after closing can still talk to you.
On the internet your store is open 24hrs a day.
Recently one client ran an ad in a large newspaper. In one day over 800 people went to his website from that ad.
Without the website address in the ad he would not have reached those people.
Seventy million Internet surfers are on the web each and every day.
It’s inevitable for businesses to not have an Internet presence.
Seventy million potential customers is too much to ignore. 70,000,000
Each account is submitted to top search engines to achieve optimum positioning.
Pricing
The price for projects is different.
Custom tailoring projects to specific needs cause prices to vary according to the website.
More attention, education, and care will find that prices are cost affective. Design fees run $65/hr. Average 1 page sites are about $300. Six to ten page sites are approximately $1500 to $2000 depending on features. Twenty-five pages and up depend on specifications.
If you are looking to:
•Grow your business
•Reach new prospects
•Network
•Increase your profits
•Open 24hrs a day
•Enhance your marketing
•Test new products
Promoting Items On-line Location - Location - Location
The key to success at any site is traffic. Companies can not make sales, advertise, offer customer service, or charge advertisers unless there are visits to the Web site.
They do not come you build it.
The site needs promotion so Web users find it in the increasing number of sites.
Do not launch a high-powered, expensive ad campaign.
The advantages of the Web for small businesses are its inexpensive or free, letting people know a site is open and where it is.
Part 2