Fourteen Reasons to Adopt a Web Position...

So you subscribe to the same business periodicals as many of our clients. "Seven Rules for a Successful Business", "Seven Deadly Sins of Business", yada, yada, yada!. The following may fall in line with some of their thinking but these are really the basics of why companies adopt internet strategies. Chances are if your already developing or maintaining an internet or e-commerce strategy, you started the process for many of these reason.

1. To Establish a Presence.
   Globally, over 200 million people have access to the World Wide Web. Quite simply, there are few businesses that can ignore a market of this size. In the near future, having an e-mail address and Web site will be like having a phone number and business card—crucial to even small companies.
   
2. To Network.
   By linking your pages with those of your networked contacts, you are referring clients back and forth. If, for instance, your product complements, is used within, or uses a product from another manufacturer, a potential client can get a complete package of information with just a few clicks of a mouse.
   
3. To Provide Availability Advertising.
   There's little doubt that the most used resource directory is the Yellow Pages. Imagine a book of Yellow Pages that covers the globe—all a client would need to do is tell it what he or she was looking for, and it would automatically open to your listing. That's exactly how the WWW works.

   Not only can you list basic information (your business expertise, location, hours, how to contact you, methods of payment, and so on), but you can update this information instantly (time-sensitive specials, current interest rates, announcements, and press releases). You can even have an entire catalog, including full-color photographs and graphics, available for instant viewing and ordering.
   
4. To Augment Traditional Advertising.
   Imagine including a brochure with every business card, piece of letterhead, print or broadcast ad, and even in your telephone's on-hold messages. By including your WWW address, that's exactly what you can do. A WWW address, such as www.hampton.org, is small enough to fit anywhere, yet it provides instant access to your entire sales argument. Furthermore, an instant e-mail response can be built into Web pages to get and give feedback while the questions are still fresh in your customer's mind, without the cost and lack of response of business reply mail.

   If you read any of the nation's largest magazines and newspapers, you'll notice more and more WWW addresses printed within advertisements. The reason for this is simple: The WWW allows a much higher degree of communication for the advertising investment—"more bang for the buck."
   
5. Customer Service.
   People wiser than we have often said that it's easier to keep an old customer than to get a new one. Keeping an open line of communication is one of the most important ways to serve your customers. Via the WWW, you can post information, troubleshooting tips, request forms and the like that will enable you to "keep your finger on the pulse" of your customers.
   
6. Publicity.
   The media is perhaps the most advanced profession today in regard to electronic communication, since their main product is information, and they can get it more quickly, cheaply, and easily online. Because of this, online press kits are becoming more and more common. Most pressrooms have gone digital in the past decade, so it is much easier for them to simply take a press release and photos from a Web site than it would be for them to strip-in hardcopy. The easier you make it for the press, the more likely you are to have your press releases turn to articles in a timely fashion.
   
7. To Open International Markets.
   We were recently confronted by an issue where a foreign customs official held a package of print proofs for ransom. If these proofs had been made available on the WWW, this could not have happened. As the United States is discovering, digital information has little respect for international boundary lines. Because of this, markets that may have once been too difficult to approach can now be very profitable.

   With a Web site, you can open up a dialogue with international markets as easily as with the company across the street. We'll go so far as to say that you should decide how you want to handle the international business that will come your way before you start a Web site, because it is a good possibility that your online marketing will bring international opportunities—whether it is part of your plan or not. We once posted an ad for an old Jeep on a local Usenet group (not even the Web) and were contacted by people as far away as the Netherlands.

   Another added benefit: If your company has offices overseas, it can access (and even add to) the home office's information for the price of a local phone call. So the Internet and Web make possible easier international communications within a company as well.
   
8. To Test Market New Services and Products.
   The advertising costs of rolling out a new service or product can be enormous. Many times, because of the cost of printing and mailing, companies hold off releasing new products until the next generation of their catalog. On the Web, new products and services can be released globally and instantly; updating a Web page to include a new item costs a fraction of what it would to print a new catalog. The Internet's two-way communication also enables you to receive immediate feedback from your markets.
   
9. To Reach a Highly Desirable Demographic Market.

   The demographic of the WWW user is probably the highest mass-market demographic available. College educated, high income, credit card holders (most ISPs require credit card deposits)—it's no wonder that magazines that deal with the Internet and WWW are easily able to get high-revenue ads on a regular basis.
   
10. To Reach the Specialized Market.

    Thinking of selling snails online? With millions of Internet users, even the most narrowly defined interest group will be represented. And, because of the search capabilities of the WWW, your potential customers will be able to find you.
    
11. To Provide 24-hour, 7-day Accessibility.

    A FAX may come in from Tokyo at 2:00 in the morning. By the time someone comes in to open the office, the sale is lost. By accessing your WWW system, however, the same potential client could have surveyed your brochure and placed an order—for less than it cost to send the FAX.
    
12. To Save Money.

    Say your company prints 10,000 copies of a brochure. You send 2,000 out via the mail, give 2,000 to the sales staff, and put 6,000 in a warehouse for later use. Over the next few months, you add new products/services, or you move offices, or you add partners. You now have thousands of outdated brochures.

    One of the main reasons that so many of the largest corporations in the world have rushed to the WWW is to try to contain print and print-storage costs.
    
13. To sell.

    Obviously, sales is the most important part of any business—so why didn't we make this the first item on the list? Because a good businessperson will have seen that all of the other points listed add up to increased sales. The WWW is perhaps the most powerful marketing tool ever devised, but it is only a tool. Even the most perfect promotional system can't make up for a poor product or service, inept staff, or any of the hundreds of intangible stumbling blocks that lie in the way of successful sales. However, with the powerful communication tools and enormous market available in Internet marketing, there's far less of a gamble.

    The fact is that clients can find you; review your information in text, pictures, and even sound and video; contact your sales staff; and place an order from their own desks within a matter of minutes, 24-hours a day. No other form of business communication provides this degree of sales support.
    
14. If You Don't, Where are the Shoppers Going?
    Ok, here's the reality. If you have competition in your market, your competitors are looking to take your market share in order to grow their business. If they have adopted an internet strategy, internet surfers will find them when looking to purchase a product. Their increased visibility may negatively impact your company's revenue.
    
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