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To Establish a Presence - Approximately 40-million people worldwide have access to the Web. The top three online services add another ten million people which is 50 million people that you can’t ignore.
To Network - Business is simply making connections with other people. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Passing out your business card and telling stories of how a chance meeting turned into a big deal happens daily in business. What if you can pass out your business card to thousands, maybe millions of potential clients and partners saying this is what I do and if you ever need my services, this is how you can reach me.
To Make an organization’s information available - What is a basic organizational information? Think of a Yellow Pages ad. It provides the answers to these basic questions: What do you do? How can someone contact you? What are your hours? Where are you located? What methods of payment do you take?
Now think of a Yellow Pages ad where you can have instant communication. You can tell customers about today’s special, today’s press releases, and even next week’s 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?
To better serve your customers and clients - Making information available is an important way to serve your customers and clients. Using Web technology, you can serve them more efficiently. How about making forms available for pre-qualified permits, searches available to obtain additional information.
Heighten Public Interest - With web page information, anybody, anywhere, who can access the Web is a potential visitor to your web site and a potential customer.
To Release time sensitive materials - What if your materials need to be released no earlier than midnight, such as: the quarterly earnings statement, the grand prize winner, the press kit for the much anticipated film, or the merger news? The information can now be made available at any time you specify. Imagine the anticipation of "All materials will be made available on our web site at 12:01 am" with all related materials such as photographs, bios, etc. released at exactly the same time.
To sell your product or service - We believe you should consider selling things on the Internet and the Web after you have done all the things above. Why? The answer is complex, but the best way to explain it is, do you consider the telephone the best way to sell things? Perhaps not. You probably consider the telephone as a tool that allows you to communicate with your customer, which in turn helps you sell things. That’s how you should consider the Web. The technology is different, but before people decide to become customers, they need to know about you, what you do, and what you can do for them. Then you can turn them into customers.
Make Pictures, Sound, and Film files available - Your widget or service is great, but people would really love it if they could see it in action. A picture is worth a thousand words, but you don’t have the space for a thousand words. The Web allows you to add sound, pictures, and short movie files to enhance your company’s information. No brochure can do that.
To reach a highly desirable demographic market - The demographic of the Web user is probably the highest mass-market demographic available: 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 for advertising. Even with the addition of the commercial online community, the demographic will remain high for many years to come.
To answer frequently asked questions - Those who answer the phones in your organization can tell you that their time is usually answering the same questions, over and over again. These are the answers to questions customers and potential customers want to know before they deal with you. Posting them on a Web page will remove another barrier to doing business with you and free up some time for that harried phone operator.
To stay in contact while on business trips - Your employees on the road may need up-to-the-minute information that will help them make the sale or pull the deal together. If you know what that information is, you can keep it posted in complete privacy on the Web. 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 open international markets - Your postings are certain to bring international opportunities your way. Before you can go onto the Web, you should decide how you want to handle international business. 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 dialogue with international markets as easily as with the company across the street. Another added benefit is if your company has offices overseas, they can access the home offices information for the price of a local phone call.
To create a 24-hour service - If you’ve ever called the opposite coast too early or too late, 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 customer, client, and partner, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. No overtime is necessary to accomplish this either. The page can be customized to match needs and collect important information that will put you ahead of the competition before they can even get into the office.
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 a day as you need. No printed piece can match that flexibility.
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, PR, and advertising equals 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 obtain valuable insight into where to position your product or service in the marketplace.
Further Web opportunities - Every kind of business, government, and private organization needs the exposure that the media can bring, as we touched on in reason number five. 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. Information is their main product and they can get it more quickly, cheaply, and easily online. Online 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 uploaded on tight deadlines. All of this can be made available on a web page.
Perhaps you sell fish tanks, art reproductions, flying lessons, and think that you don’t need to be on the Internet. Think again. The Internet isn’t just computer science students anymore. With the soon-to be 57 million and growing users of the Web, even most narrowly defined interest group will be represented in large numbers. Since the Web has several very good search programs, you interest group will be able to find you. Or your competitors.
No matter where you are,
