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Beyond Web Sites
Ten Tips For Using the Internet to Outpace Online Competition
"Is your business on the Internet?" In response to the question, you may first think of your Web
site: a home page, a picture, contact information.... However, the Internet is
a set of many, many technologies, all of which can be used to enhance your business. The tips
presented here go beyond the typical home page by using often-overlooked Internet
technologies to increase your presence and your efficiency.
Tip #1
Tip #1 is so easy that anyone can implement it. It outperforms both search engines and banner
advertising in its ability to send people to your business. It's a technology that automatically
places your contact information in the computers of anyone you wish. It's an e-mail signature.
An e-mail signature is a few lines of text placed at the bottom of every e-mail message you send.
Typically, it contains your business name and contact information, and includes a link to your
Web site. Here's a great example from a local Kittitas County business:
Mary Pittis, Innkeeper
Iron Horse Inn B&B
(509) 674-5939 or (800) 2-2-TWAIN
www.ironhorseinnbb.com
Relive Milwaukee Railroad history in comfort and style
Every e-mail that owner Mary Pittis sends has the above signature automatically placed in it.
It consistently sends prospective guests to her Web site every month. And, until they delete her
e-mail message, they have her contact information automatically stored in their computers.
Tip #2
How would you like to provide an instant response to anyone who contacts you -- even when your
business is closed? The answer is an auto-responder. An auto-responder is set up to automatically
send a predetermined message to anyone who contacts you via e-mail.
Let's say you're an apartment complex, and you receive e-mails every day from potential tenants,
all of whom ask you pretty much the same questions: how much is rent, how do I apply, do you have
any vacancies.... With an auto-responder, you can send a response to every person who e-mails you
within seconds. You can provide answers to the most common questions, point them to your Web site,
and let them know when they can expect a personal response from you. Imagine their immediate
impression of your business when they see a message from you in their inbox within minutes of
contacting you!
Auto-responders are typically set up on your Internet server. Contact your Internet solutions
provider or ActivePage Design to have an
auto-responder solution set up for your business.
Tip #3
This tip relies on your Web site but takes it a step further by connecting your business in the
virtual world to your real-world business. It encourages people to leave your Web site and come to
your store. It's an online coupon.
You can provide an online coupon by creating a page on you Web site that looks much like your
paper coupons. Then, your customers can print your coupon on their own printers at their own
expense and bring it to your store to redeem it. You avoid the printing costs of all those paper
coupons that are going to get lost in the mud, the sofa, the trunk, and everywhere else before
reaching the potential customers' eyes.
Tip #4
This technology takes the above-mentioned real-to-virtual connection the other way by bringing the
ambience of your physical business location to the virtual world. It's a webcam.
A webcam is an inexpensive digital camera that can be placed at your business to feed an
"almost-live" picture to your Web site. A golf course, for example, could use a webcam to show
its Web site visitors a view of its course. Immediately, visitors will know what the course looks
like and what the weather is like. A lot of "Westsiders" would be very impressed by the abundant
sunshine of Kittitas Valley! Here's a live shot of the Central Washington University campus:
Tip #5
It's not an easy task to evaluate the effectiveness of traditional non-Internet advertising methods.
How do you know if it was your radio spot, your television commercial, or your newspaper
advertisement that really sent people to your store? The Internet provides a tracking system:
site statistics, or server logs.
Your Web site server tracks the visits of every single person who looks at your Web site. It
tracks, among other things, where people came from, what they were looking for when they found your
site, who sent them to your site, what pages they viewed, and how long much time they spent on
your site. You can use this information to tailor your Web site to better serve its visitors, and
you can use it to track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns by setting up different
"entry pages" for each campaign. For example, send radio listeners to your-web-site.com/this-page,
and send TV viewers to your-web-site.com/that-page; then track how many visits each page receives.
Tip #6
Establish your expertise with tip #6. This tip allows you to stay in contact with your potential
customers on a regular basis, keeping your business fresh in their minds. It's an e-mail
newsletter.
Through an e-mail newsletter, you can answer common questions related to your field of expertise.
At the same time, you can promote your products or services as solutions to those questions.
Receiving your newsletter on a regular basis, your potential customers will become satisfied that
your truly offer the expertise they need -- and they will likely come to you rather than your
competition when they need something, because they remember and trust you.
Tip #7
Let's take a local business that has an office in Ellensburg, another office in Woodinville, and a
home office, also in Ellensburg. And, let's say that the staff in each of the three offices need
to have access to the accounting database. Let's go even further and say that additional staff have
been temporarily hired to take care of end-of-the-year tax preparation. How do you allow all of
these people to use the same accounting database at the same time? Use the Internet for accounting.
The most popular accounting programs all have multi-user capabilities that allow them to be used
by many people in the same office, but the Internet provides the link for connecting users in other
offices. Using Virtual Private Networking (VPN, included in Microsoft Windows), multiple offices
can maintain a secure network over the Internet. Other services provide Web-based accounting (for
example, QuickBooks, by Intuit) for a monthly fee that
allows secure anywhere-access to your accounting files without the need for an intranet.
Tip #8
Let's take another geographically-distributed business: a consultant who has home offices in
Ellensburg and Seattle, and who travels frequently between the two offices and throughout the
Puget Sound area. How can he keep his Palm V scheduler in sync with his secretary in Selah? He can
use the Internet for scheduling.
With Internet connectivity for scheduling, the secretary can schedule meetings, and the
consultant can periodically sync his Palm via his cell phone to avoid double-scheduling. Before the
Internet, this task would have required frequent phone calls to the secretary throughout the day,
and it would have required that the secretary be available on a 24-hour basis.
Tip #9
Many of us have purchased personal items on the Internet. Perhaps we do a lot of our gift shopping
on the Internet. Have you thought about using the Internet for your business purchases?
The supplies regularly used by your business are available online. When you shop online, you
usually pay less for purchases and you save travel time and gas. Additionally, Web sites at which
you regularly shop can remember your payment and shipping information, so you spend less time
"waiting in line." Try searching for some of your most common business purchases online, and you
may be surprised how much time and money you could save over your Costco runs.
Tip #10
Here's a fun one to finish with -- a technology that allows you to combine your mail preparation
process into one step. It's Internet postage.
An Internet postage service like Stamps.com allows you to
pre-purchase postage in $10 increments and then print your postage directly on envelopes or mailing
labels. The application will remember the addresses of your mail recipients by placing them in your
computer's built-in address book, and it will verify the validity of all addresses before printing
your postage. You never need to worry about running out of stamps, and you can always use the exact
amount of postage that you need for a particular mail piece.
More Tips
Is that it? No, of course not! Another ten tips could easily be presented here. ActivePage Design
will gladly discuss additional ideas for using the Internet in your business. Just
contact us. The key to using the Internet effectively
is to ensure that you approach it as part of your strategic plan, rather than just "taking the
plunge." "Including the Internet in Your Business
Strategy," in the Guide to the Internet series,
explains how to make sure your Internet solution is strategy-based.
Adapted from a presentation given by Joshua Legler at NetFair 2001, February 24, 2001.
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