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The Top 20 Reasons Why Your Company Needs A Web
Site:
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To
Establish A Presence
Over 100 million people have access
to the World Wide Web (WWW). No matter what your business is, you
can't ignore that many 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 be.
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To Network
Passing out your business card is part of every good meeting and
every business
person can tell more than one story how a chance meeting turned into
the big deal. What 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? You can, 24 hours a day, inexpensively and
simply, on the WWW.
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To
Make Business Information Available
What is basic business information?
Think of a Yellow Pages ad. What are your hours? What do you do? How
can someone contact you? What methods of payment do you take? Where
are you located? Now think of a Yellow Pages ad where you have
instant communication. What is today's special? Today's interest
rate? Next week's parking lot sale information? If you could keep
your customer informed of every reason why they should do business
with you, don't you think you could do more business? You can on the
WWW.
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To
Serve Your Customers
Making business information
available is one of the most important ways to serve your customers.
But if you look at serving the customer, you'll find even more ways
to use WWW technology. How about making forms available to
pre-qualify for loans, or have your staff do a search for that
classic jazz record your customer is looking for, without tying up
your staff on the phone to take down the information? Allow your
customer to punch in sizes and check it against a database that
tells him what color of jacket is available in your store? All this
can be done, simply and quickly, on the WWW.
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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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To
Release Time Sensitive Materials
What if your materials need to be
released no earlier than midnight? The quarterly earnings statement,
the grand prize winner, the press kit for the much anticipated film,
the merger news? Well, you sent out the materials to the press with
"The-do-not-release-before-such-and-such-time" statement
and hope for the best. Now the information can be made available at
midnight or any time you specify, with all related materials such as
photographs, bios, etc. released at exactly the same time. Imagine
the anticipation of "All materials will be made available on
our Web site at 12:01 AM". The scoop goes to those that wait
for the information to be posted, not the one who releases your
information early.
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To
Sell Things
Many people think that this is the
number 1 thing to do with the World Wide Web, but we made it number
seven to make it clear that we think you should consider selling
things on the Internet and the World Wide Web after you have done
all the things above and maybe even after doing quite a few more
things from this list. Why? Well, the answer is complex but the best
way to put it is, do you consider the telephone the best place to
sell things? Probably not. 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. Which you can do easily and
inexpensively on the WWW. Then you might be able to turn them into
customers.
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To
Make Pictures, Sound and Film Files Available
What if your widget is great, but
people would really love it if they could see it in action? The
album is great but with no airplay, nobody knows that it sounds
great? A picture is worth a thousand words, but you don't have the
space for a thousand words? The WWW allows you to add sound,
pictures and short movie files to your company's info if that will
serve your potential customers. No brochure will do that.
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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.
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To
Answer Frequently Asked Questions
Whoever answers the phones in your
organization can tell you, their time is usually spent answering the
same questions over and over again. These are the questions
customers and potential customers want to know the answer to before
they deal with you. Post them on a WWW page and you will have
removed another barrier to doing business with you and freed up some
time for that harried phone operator.
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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.
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To
Open International Markets
You may not be able to make sense
of the mail, phone and regulation systems in all your potential
international markets, but with a Web page, you can open up a
dialogue with international markets as easily as with the company
across the street. As a matter-of-fact, before you go onto the Web,
you should decide how you want to handle the international business
that will come your way, because your postings are certain to bring
international opportunities your way, whether it is part of your
plan or not. Another added benefit; if your company has offices
overseas, they can access the home offices information for the price
of a local phone call.
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To
Create a 24 Hour Service
If you've ever remembered too late
or too early to call the opposite coast, you know the hassle. We're
not all on the same schedule. Business is worldwide but your office
hours aren't. Trying to reach Asia or Europe is even more
frustrating. But Web pages serve the client, customer and partner 24
hours a day, seven days a week. No overtime either. It can customize
information to match needs and collect important information that
will put you ahead of the competition, even before they get into the
office.
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To
Make Changing Information Available Quickly
Sometimes, information changes
before it gets off the press. Now you have a pile of expensive,
worthless paper. Electronic publishing changes with your needs. No
paper, no ink, no printer's bill. You can even attach your web page
to a database which customizes the page's output to a database you
can change as many times in a day as you need. No printed piece can
match that flexibility.
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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.
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To
Test Market New Services and Products
Tied into the reason above, 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. Amazing.
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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.
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To
Reach The Education and Youth Market
If your market is education,
consider that most universities already offer Internet access to
their students and most K-12's will be on the Internet within the
next few years. Books, athletic shoes, study courses, youth fashion
and anything else that would want to reach these overlapping markets
needs to be on the Web. Even with the coming of the commercial
on-line services and their somewhat older populations there will be
nothing but growth in the percentage of the under 25 market that
will be on-line.
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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.
And Finally,
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To
Serve Your Local Market
We've talked about the power to
serve the world with a Web page. How about your neighborhood? If you
are located in San Francisco Bay Area, the Raleigh NC area, Boston
or New York, there is probably enough local customers with Web
access to make it worth your while to consider Web marketing. A
local Pleasanton, CA restaurant even takes lunch orders through the
Internet! But no matter where you are, if the big client has Web
access, you should be there too.
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