Putting the Web to Work for Your Company

Within two to three years the Internet will affect virtually every business in Southwest Florida, whether or not that business has a Web site.

Why? Because your clients and your competitors will be using it for news, research, customer service improvement, marketing reach expansion, buying and selling. Very likely, many of your new clients (or your competitors' clients) will get their first introduction to your company and its products via the Internet.

If you are giving serious thought to building a Website for your business, you are in very good company. In fact, when we surveyed our readers in August 1998, we found that 60 percent of you are using the Internet for business purposes -- many of you to buy and sell products. Moreover, of the 60 percent of our readers who don't yet have a Web site, more than 50 percent are planning to build one within the next year. That means Southwest Florida may be the home to thousands more Web sites by this time next year.

Should you jump into this maelstrom? For most organizations, the answer is an unequivocal "Yes."

In this issue we'll discuss the basics: Should you join your colleagues in cyberspace? What is it about the Internet that makes it uniquely important? Why you should create an online business plan before making the leap. Can you do it yourself? And we'll show some examples of what we mean.

In succeeding issues we'll explore the specifics of building basic types of Web sites with examples of the best web practitioners at varying budget levels. In addition, we will discuss Website marketing, because a Website is like a retail store or a mail order catalogue. If you can't get anyone to visit or to view your wares, you have wasted a lot of time and money.

Eight Ways Your Company Can Benefit

1. If you are selling products that you ship either locally, regionally, nationally or globally, you can probably do much more via the Web. Many Southwest Florida companies are already conducting ecommerce activities.

2. If you are providing a great product or service that users outside of our region would clamor for, you can develop inexpensive distribution on the Internet.

3. If you spend a lot of time answering the same product/service questions over and over again, you may be able to do this more effectively on the Internet. You can then spend more time on more complicated problems.

4. If you would like to your customers to be able to buy from you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you can let them do it on the Web.

5. If you would like to capture new arrivals to SW Florida before they get here, the Internet provides the opportunity.

6. If you need to provide product catalogues for your prospects and they are out of date almost as soon as you print them, the Internet provides an answer. Once your site is established, the cost to add or modify pages is a fraction of what it would cost to reprint that brand new four-color brochure.

7. If you and your colleagues have areas of expertise that would draw more clients to your organization, you can make that happen on the Web.

8. If you use television, radio or print advertising, within a few years you will be able to combine to impact of all three within a sophisticated multimedia environment that your prospects will be accessing at very high speeds.

What Makes the Internet So Powerful?

Hyperlinks: The Linchpins of the Internet and of Your Website

The potential value of the Internet and of a Website relates in large part to the power of a hyperlink. Hyperlinks were envisioned in the early 1960s as the theoretical building blocks for connecting every bit of human knowledge on any topic.

The Internet as it exists today is the practical, if imperfect, implementation of this theoretical construct. In fact, today's hyperlinks enable a sort of three-dimensional set of connected pages of information and navigation among them. Hyperlinks work internally within a Website and externally among the millions of Websites and Web pages now in existence. This phenomenon permits you to present a rich variety of information that can be extremely valuable for your organization.

On our Website, we permit our users to explore every part of our site by clicking on hyperlinks. They can get to a full article, to an archive of past issues, to business reference pages and to external news and reference information -- Hurricane or Year 2000 Links, for example.

You can take advantage of the hyperlink phenomenon to connect loads of information points within your site and around the Net. For example, you can show a visual representation of your product(s) and include hyperlinks so visitors to your Website can click and go to more detailed explanations of your products. You can also send your visitors to valuable, related information elsewhere on the Web.

Before You Jump: Create an Online Business Plan

The most important work in creating a Website may well be the creation of an online business plan. Whatever your objectives in setting yourself up on the Net, you need to determine:

What are your measurable objectives in being on the Net?

How will this site grow your business, cut costs, improve customer service, etc., etc.?

Who is your intended audience?

What will motivate them to visit one time or many?

What information do you need to communicate?

Do you want to sell products or services?

How large an investment in money -- and time -- are you willing to make?

Can your organization keep the site current and meaningful?

In short, what specific plan will you execute to achieve a measurable set of objectives?

A great local example of an informational business site is that of Rolsafe, www.rollsafe.com.

It is very straightforward with intuitive navigation. It has some great visual elements that underscore the importance of preventing broken windows, for example. As a potential client, I would learn enough from the site to take the next step and contact the company, and I can do it by email right from the site. The site even offers a "All Risk" informational brochure -- a great way to build a prospect list. It is easy to imagine that as multimedia becomes more practical on the Net, Rolsafe can add video or audio elements to achieve even greater impact.

I don't know how much Rolsafe invested in the site, but it was probably comparable to what they might spend on a good quality product brochure. Brochures can be effective, of course, but a well-executed Website need never go out of date, with an unlimited "virtual" print run, and a painless response mechanism, email.