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Site updated Sunday, January 09, 2005 |
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This section of our site contains what we feel is valuable information about starting a business on the web. I guess we think it is valuable because we’ve spent a great deal of time and money to acquire it! As professionals in the industry, we’ve purchased and read A LOT of books, magazines, trade journals and news articles. We are in direct contact with a variety of other professionals in the Information Technology and Internet/Web Services industries on a daily basis. We are actively involved in IT and Web development projects in both corporate and small business settings. We keep a close watch on related developments in academic and industry-sponsored research into Information Systems including the World Wide Web. What you will find here is a summary of what we know, and what we think you should know, about starting and running a successful business on the web. The organization of this section is by topic. We cover each one in a paragraph or two, which really just presents an overview. Where we have made more detailed information available, there will be a link to it at the end of the topic. We may also provide links to Related Topics that we think may be of interest to you. If you don’t find what you’re looking for here already, just Contact Us and let us know! It is probably a good idea for you to establish a presence on the web. The web is a great way to advertise your business - it has the potential to reach many more prospective customers at a tiny fraction of the cost of more traditional means like TV, radio, telephone books and print. They key word here is “cost.” The web is also a good way to simply keep in touch with your customers. The web can also be an effective medium for the actual sale of goods and services of many kinds. Like just about everything, creating and maintaining a presence on the we will cost you something. It will cost you time, and money, and effort at least. It is just a matter of how much of each your willing to spend, and for what kind of return. Business is after all, about getting a return for what you have invested A good first step in establishing your web presence then, is deciding how much you are willing to have it cost you, and what you want in return for the investment. Initially at least, you don’t need to do this in a lot of detail. Just think about it in “ballpark” terms: spend very little/get back at least something; spend quite a bit/ pull in piles of money! Again, the main point is just that you should think of your presence on the web the way you think about the other investments you make in your business. It should be a part of your formal business plan. If you don’t have a formal business plan you might consider creating one. At the very least, you should create one for your online business, i.e., your web presence that we’re talking about here. We’ll go into more detail on business plans in another topic, After you develop at least a rough idea of how much your web presence should cost you and what you expect as a return, you need to make an initial choice of what type of presence you will have. There are lots of different ways to categorize types of web sites but for now we’ll just break it down into the following three:
Informational sites give basic information about your business that you believe would be useful to the customers you expect to serve. Your business name, contact information, and descriptions of the goods and services you offer, are the kinds of information typically included on informational sites. This type of site is basically an on-line advertisement for your business that can be as simple or as elaborate as you care to make it. Simple is typically pretty inexpensive; very elaborate is often quite costly. Customer Service sites are often informational, but provide interactive features as well. They allow customers to contact you in specific and guided ways, such as to check on the status of orders they may have placed with you previously, or request specific product or service information, download product manuals, search for technical support information in a database of problems and solutions, or find the dealer nearest them that has your products in stock. This level of site is just like what you might provide over the phone or by mail, but it is instantly available 24 hours each day, every day of the year, from anywhere in the world. Commerce sites allow people to actually order or purchase your products and services using the Internet, and to pay by electronic check or credit card. Oh yes, and Commerce sites typically have all of the features and capabilities of the Informational and Customer Service sites as well. Commerce sites typically include some kind catalog from which to select products for purchase, and a “shopping cart” to allow customers to purchase more than one product at a time, showing the total purchase price including shipping costs all the while. If you would like to know more about things you should consider before taking the leap on to the World Wide Web, just click here to: Contact Us. Once you have made some initial decisions about the type of site you want to have, how much you are willing to have it cost you, and what you expect to get from your web presence, you can take the leap into the online world. You need only two more things in order to take that leap:
A web site is just a collection of “web pages.” Web pages, in turn, are just a collection of files that contain information that special computer programs like Web Servers and Web Browsers know how to make sense of. You probably know that already. You can create web pages yourself, using one or more of the many software programs that are available to help you with this activity, or you can hire someone (like us) to do it for you. You also probably know that “a place to put it” means a computer somewhere on the internet that is set up to hold web pages and is running Web Server software to accept requests for pages from browsers. The key term here is “a computer somewhere on the internet.” We might go into detail on the nature of the internet and web servers in another topic. But for right now we’ll just assume that you are going to select a web hosting service (like us) to make your site available on the internet. That’s it! That’s all you need!! You don’t even really need a computer of your own or a connection to the internet by phone, cable, satellite, cellular service, or any of the rest. If you don’t already have some of these though, you aren’t reading this ( duh!). Here’s the main thing about taking the leap though: You don’t have to make it a BIG one. Start small, and then grow your web presence as demand requires, and actual return on investment allows. Invest a minimal amount in a basic Informational presence on the web, and look for just some return, any return, in the form of e-mails asking for more information, or phone calls in response to the contact information you’ve listed on your site, or something else just as simple. At some point you will probably begin taking orders over the web, for which you get paid by check or money order sent by mail, or by credit card over the phone. Eventually you will have accumulated enough profit from these sales to pay for an expansion of your web site to include an interactive product catalog, or online payment processing. The point is, that you don’t have to do it all at the very beginning. Taking the Leap should really just be a small first step along the lines I’ve just described. Even this much will feel like a leap though, believe me! But it will be one that can be a lot of fun, at relatively little cost, and give you the greatest chance of success as you grow into the future. If you would like to know more about actually taking the leap on to the World Wide Web, just click here! Once you have established your presence on the web, you will want to start attracting visitors to your site. In the early days of the web you didn’t need to do much to attract visitors - automatic “spiders” would find your site very quickly and announce you to the world whether you wanted them to or not. The world of the web was a pretty small place then, and everyone in it was anxious to see every new site that came along. The World Wide Web is a very different place today. There are millions upon millions of web sites for all to see, and thousands of new pages are being added every day. There are hundreds if not thousands of “crawlers” and “bots” (descendants of the original spiders) that are cataloging and indexing information on the web 24 hours a day, every day of the year. However, it is unlikely they will never discover your site on their own. You will need to take some sort of action to make your site known to the visitors you would like to attract. That is, you will need to advertise your site somehow, in ways and places that will reach your intended audience. This is known as, you guessed it: Marketing! There are a number of ways to market your site that range in cost from free to very expensive. The top five or six ways are:
A thorough description of any single one of these web site marketing methods could fill many, many pages. We will touch only briefly on them here. Links to more in-depth coverage will take you to the details if you’re interested. Search Engine listings. You have probably heard of Internet Search Engines like Google, Hot Bot, Lycos, Ask Jeeves, and others. These are web sites that let you type in a description of what you are looking for, and then get a list of web sites that might have something like that. Having your site be listed by one or more of the major search engines is one of the best ways to make your site known to the world in general and your intended customers in particular. Here is how you do it: Most of the major search engines have a link on their home pages that will let you add your web site the their list of sites to search and index. All you need to do is visit the search engine web sites, find the “add a site” link and click on it, then follow the instructions for adding your site. You can usually do this for free. However, the old adage “you get what you pay for” applies as much to Internet and web site marketing these days as it does to anything else in business. Virtually all of the major search engines offer paid listing services now in addition to a free service. The differences between the paid and free services include how quickly your site is indexed into the search engine’s database, where your site appears within the list of sites returned by a search, and special promotional placements for your site. The free service offered by search engines can be more difficult to locate on their web sites, offer no guarantee that your site will ever be listed, can take six months or more to include your site if they do, and usually will list your site far down in the list returned by a search - below all the other paid listings. Still, getting your site listed with the major search engines is something that you really must do. Exactly how you do it is not as important as doing it. It is up to you to decide how much if anything you are willing to spend. I can tell you from experience that using the free options works just fine - it just takes somewhat longer to see the results. I have only just scratched the surface of search engines and getting listed with them here. If you would like to know more, Contact Us and let us know. We can give you a LOT more details, and point you to other sources of information on the web. Links from other web sites. Next to getting listed with the search engines, having other web sites link to yours is one of the best ways to attract visitors. Of course, this method works best if the sites that link to yours attract a lot of visitors themselves - preferably the same kind of visitors you would like to have visit your site. The best way to get your site listed on other web sites is to find sites you would like to be listed on and ask them to list you. The search engines can be helpful in finding appropriate web sites for you to check into. When you find a site you think would be a good match for your marketing efforts, find out if you can list your site with them. Sometimes sites will have an “add a site” link similar to the search engines. Sometimes you may need to send an e-mail message to the web master asking if they would be willing to add you. Some sites will list yours for free and others may do so only for a fee. There are also a variety of formal link-sharing arrangements on the web that you can look into. Known as “Affiliate Marketing Programs”, “web rings”, “reciprocal link sharing” and other titles, these arrangements allow you to have your site listed on other sites by joining a dedicated organization of participating web sites. Again, some of these are free and others will cost you some money. Usually there is some criteria that you must meet to join, such as being willing to host advertising banners for the other sites on yours. Having other sites link to yours is important. It allows you to take advantage of the marketing efforts that have already been undertaken by others. It can also help you with the search engines, once you are listed with them. Most of the search engines try to list the most popular sites first when responding to a search request. One criterion the engines often use to measure the “most popular” sites is how many other sites link to them. Online discussion forums. There are any number of web sites and other resources that fall into a category known as “online discussion forums”. So called “chat rooms” are probably the most familiar ones you may have heard about, but there are others including threaded discussion groups, bulletin boards, and internet news groups. Most of these are organized around a particular topic and allow people to post their thoughts and information on the topic for others to read and respond to. A series of “posts” and responses are linked together in a “thread” of discussion. Some of these forums will allow you to post information about your site and invite people to visit. Some actively encourage this kind of posting, while others may prohibit commercial postings altogether. You need to do a bit of research first to identify forums that are on topics related to your site and to find out which of those might allow you to advertise your site, but this is usually time well spent. Traditional advertising. You should not rely on web-based promotions of your site alone. The web these days is such a large place that no matter where you mange to get the message about your site placed, relatively few of the people you really want to attract are going to find it. You need to include your web presence in any and all advertising you may do through traditional means as well. By traditional means I am referring to business cards, newspapers, yellow pages, magazines, flyers, mailings, radio and television advertising, and even the signs you may paint or stick on your vehicles. E-mail. Electronic mail is becoming a bigger part of how we all communicate with each other every day. From America Online to the corporate workplace, nearly everyone has access to electronic mail. Just as you may receive advertisements and coupons in the mailbox on your street or house, electronic mailboxes are being filled with “stuff” as well. You can and should take advantage of electronic mail to advertise your site, but you need to do it an a carefully considered way. You do not want to become known as a “spammer”, constantly flooding the in boxes of millions of people you’ve never heard of with information about your site that most of them are not the least bit interested in. Carefully targeted messages to specially selected recipients can be a very good thing however. Starting with family and friends, begin to send your message out. Include your web address as part of your “signature” in every e-mail message you send to anyone for any reason. Scan the discussion forums mentioned above for messages from people who are specifically requesting information about sites like yours and send a message to them. Finally, if you are already a member of some trade association or group, see if you can get access to their mailing list, or have your message sent out along with their own. The possibilities for the responsible use of electronic mail as a vehicle for marketing your web site are nearly endless. You just need to invest some time and effort into identifying the opportunities that are best suited to your wants and needs. Word of Mouth. Word of mouth has always been the most effective marketing tool for all kinds of traditional businesses. It is just as effective for electronic business on the web. The best way to get your words out of other peoples’ mouths and into prospective customers’ ears to to create satisfied customers. Positive stories about good experiences with your business and your web site are the proverbial ”manna from heaven” for you. In addition to satisfied customers, tell your family and friends about your new web presence and ask them to spread the word. Give your business card listing your web site address to every one you come into contact with. Ask everyone from your coworkers to the checker at all the stores you visit regularly to visit your site and give you feedback. Always keep in mind that it takes a lot more than technology to make a business work, even if your business is technology-based. At the end of the day, your business or other presence on the World Wide Web won’t do you any good if no one knows about it. To have a successful web presence, you need to market your site effectively. With a fair amount of effort applied to research, filling out “site submission” forms on search engines and other web sites, carefully targeted e-mail messages and word of mouth to get your message out, you can attract quite a few visitors to your web site for very little money. If you have some money to spend on advertising, you can get your message out further and faster using paid placements on the search engines and other sites, or join various affiliate marketing programs. If you would like to know more about actually marketing your web presence effectively on to the World Wide Web, just click here! |
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