Benefits to your Business

• Save Time and Money
• Make Your Small Business Look Big
• Improve Customer Relations
• Increase Sales/Advertising Benefits
• Provide 24-hour, 7-day accessibility
• Showcase Products and Services
• Gain An Advantage over your Competitors

1. Save Time and Money

Whether your customers or clients are local or global, the web provides an excellent place for an interactive brochure, which will tell potential customers everything they need to know about your business. You can show examples of your work, describe your pricing, and display customer comments. You can architect your site to provide an overview of your business or service and then link to pages that supply greater detail than would be economical in a printed brochure. And, you can update your online brochure frequently without costly reprinting charges.

Designing, printing, storing and delivering printed materials can be expensive. It's often one of the largest expenses a business can incur. Your website will vastly reduce your dependence upon printed media.

A website is a good vehicle for providing routinely requested information about products and services. After the initial investment in setting up a website, a large amount of information can be continuously available on-line at minimal cost - and with no further effort required by you. Compare this with a brochure or catalogue, with the costs of printing and mailing - and what to do with those left over out-of-date brochures. A website can effectively complement a brochure, and it may be practical to reduce the size of a brochure or extend its currency by putting detailed or time critical information on the website

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 You now have thousands of outdated brochures.

Placing pictures of your facilities, products, and premises on your website provide an important bridge between you and your customers. This is the most important aspect as so many people nowadays like to see information about the company they are about to contact and the beauty is you don't have to pay for printing or postage. If someone can see a competitor's brochure, they are more likely to go for it.

Other publishing costs can be reduced because with a website you can instantly publish other information: new product announcements, employment opportunities, contact information, job openings, surveys, coupons, investor information, almost anything, without material or delivery costs.

Save money on postage as potential overseas visitors can simply be given your website address and view information immediately. This also means you can get the information to them faster.

Reduce your cost in answering enquiries on products or services, by including a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page to answer questions currently handled by your staff, freeing not only them but also your telephone lines.

How much time do your support staff spend repeatedly answering the same questions by phone? What are the costs to track down and deliver solutions to clients? A website lets you publish support information with up-to-the-minute accuracy. In fact some companies, software companies in particular, only offer support through their website. If the website doesn't offer the answer an online feedback form is provided. This is perhaps the most underrated usage for business websites.

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.

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2. A Website Can Make Your Small Business Look Big and Enhance Your Image

A professionally designed website can make your business look more established and bigger than it really is. As a small business you can also have a large online presence which can help increase sales. Since every website starts as a blank slate the Internet offers the opportunity for a small-business "David" to portray itself as a big- business "Goliath".

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3.Improve Customer Relations

It is often said in business that it is 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. You can use your website to post information, troubleshooting tips, request forms and the like that will enable you to "keep your finger on the pulse" of your customers.

A website can be used to get feedback on what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong. They can also provide customers with answers to frequently asked questions and offer customer service and support.

Websites can provide powerful indexing and searching tools with which printed material cannot compete. For example, customers can search products by keyword or price, books by author (if you're a bookseller), or retail outlet by geographic area.

Let people know the availability status of your products.

You can have online enquiry forms that will allow customers to ask a question about your business.

Give your customer up to the minute news relevant to your business.Your web site can be used as a resource internally as well, allowing staff to have access to accurate information at all times.

If your business provides specialist goods and services then your customers/clients are likely to be spread over a wide geographic area. Since a website is generally accessible from anywhere with Internet services, it can be a good way to ensure potential clients are properly informed about what you have to offer.

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4. Increase Sales/Advertising Benefits

Our philosophy is that a website is a form of advertising and as such must pay for itself with increased profits or it is a complete waste of time having one. We aim to create good, affordable websites that, when coupled with the right off-line advertising and good search engine optimisation, are a real asset to a business in attracting new customers and selling more services or products.

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 Internet 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 catalogue, including full-colour photographs and graphics, available for instant viewing and ordering.

Make Your Message Accessible
Suppose you'd like to find some new customers. If you place a print advertisement it's likely the only people to phone are those who have definite interest in securing your services. How many others might be swayed if they could learn a little more about you, your company, your products, etc., without having to phone or taking the time to meet you in person? A website provides that opportunity by allowing you to publish the Who, What, Why, Where, and Hows of your business in a powerful and attractive manner.

Buying advertising space, whether it's a newspaper ad, billboard, or radio spot, can be expensive. Adding to the burden are the hours that are spent trying to figure out the perfect set of words to say everything you want within the constraints of your ad.

The web is one of the most effective and cheapest methods of advertising available. For about the same cost of a small one time newspaper ad you can have a 4 or 5 page web site, open 24 hours a day with the potential to reach millions of customers.

Establish a presence
Current statistics show that with more than 100,000 prospective clients going online each month there are now more than 500 million potential customers to whom your products or ideas can be offered. 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 the smallest companies.

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 website address, that's exactly what you can do. A web address, such as www.generationxcomputers.com, 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.

A website can enable you to put small adverts in prestigious places which would have previously been too expensive (e.g. specialist journals, the Sunday Nationals). Something as minimal as a catchy slogan with your web address can lead a large number of potential customers to a site. Alternatively, a larger advert can be supplemented by comprehensive details on your website.

If you read any of the nation's largest magazines and newspapers, you'll notice that more and more web addresses are printed within advertisements. The reason for this is simple: The Internet allows a much higher degree of communication for the advertising investment-"more bang for the buck."

In many cases a website will actually save on advertising spend. If you can tell people where to find a comprehensive catalogue of your products and prices there is no need to list them a ll in a printed or radio ad. Some companies report a 75% reduction in advertising spending since setting up a website.

For a business servicing a relatively small area, the advantages are the same. More people in a given area have access to the net, than read any particular newspaper or magazine.

Having a website allows you to reach customers that your other marketing methods missed.

Test and expand your Marketplace.
Come up with a new advertising campaign and want to try it? Just update your website and tell your customers. Want to see if you can expand your marketing reach? Try placing a few small ads promoting the website in other regions to gauge the interest before you commit to a larger campaign.

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 catalogue. 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 catalogue. The Internet's two-way communication also enables you to receive immediate feedback from your markets.

By tracking when people visit your site you can immediately judge what advertising is working for you and what is not.

PR and 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.

Exploit international markets
Digital information has little respect for international borders. 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. You should consider how you intend to handle the international business that will come your way as you plan your website. Online marketing will bring international opportunities-whether it is part of your plan or not.

Reach Specialised Markets
With millions of Internet users, even the most narrowly defined interest group will be represented. The web is a great place to reach highly specialised markets. Use the right keywords on your web site and your customers will have an easy time locating specialised products and services that may be difficult to find elsewhere.

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5. Provide 24-hour, 7-day accessibility.

Make Your Business Available When You're Not
A website makes your information available at any time. So you can stop worrying about missing customers and potential clients.

Your potential customers can obtain product information when they want it, not when your business is open. Many people will give their custom to the business that supplied them with product information when they required it, which in many cases is outside normal trading hours.

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 website, however, the same potential client could have surveyed your brochure and placed an order-for less than it cost to send the fax.

When your customers have questions or need estimates, they can click on an email link and instantly be able to send a message to you 24 hours a day. And you can answer them at your convenience without being a slave to a telephone's ring. (You should, however, be prepared to answer within the day. Customers view communication in "Internet time" as a real advantage).

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6. Showcase Products and Services

Many times customers want to know what you offer or see examples of your products. You can also display photos and testimonials of satisfied customers.

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7. Gain An Advantage

Many people get on the internet each day to search for a product or service. By having your business on-line you can gain an advantage over your competition. However, if your competition has a website and you don't, you could be losing potential customers!

Be ahead of your competitors with technology.

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