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You have started your business, you
have a great idea for a website, now what are you planning to have
the website do for you? Many people are a little confused on just
what a website can do for them. There are four (4) basic types of
websites:
Websites Are:
1. The personal website. - anything goes.
2. The information support site. This is usually
either a professional or business site, that is strictly concerned
with supplying information to visitors. This is usually not a big
money maker, BUT IT CAN BE A TREMENDOUS MONEY SAVER! For many stores
that get a substantial amount of customer support calls (customers
calling with problems or questions), a website can be an incredible
money saver and an incredible support tool for your customers. Many
companies have a large catalog with high reproduction and distribution
costs. A website can cut these costs by over 90% in some cases.
3. Cooperative sales support site. This type
of site is usually a secondary sales site. Typically, this site
allows visitors to purchase repair parts, accessories, etc. Usually
these sales are tied to the sale of a primary product. Additionally
as with the information support site, stores that get a substantial
amount of customer support calls, a website can be an incredible
money saver and a 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, support center
for your customers. Companies with a large catalog with high reproduction
and distribution costs can save over 90% in some cases.
4. Front line sales store. This type
of store is often referred to as an E-Commerce front line store.
E-Toys and Amazon are examples of this type of store/site. These
stores do not typically have traditional retail stores, and they
serve as the primary (usually only) customer contact point. Currently,
this is turning out to be a failing proposition. Some of these stores
are actually extensions of the typical "brick and mortar"
retail stores and seem to be doing better than the "e only"
stores.
websites Are
(with some exceptions)…
 1.
Not good front line advertising tools.
2.
Not good front line marketing tools.
3.
Not good customer relations tools (although this can be turned around)
Think
of it this way. When a retail store sends an advertisement to your
home, they do not drop the entire store on your house in an attempt
to get you to purchase everything! Instead they send a small piece
of paper in your mailbox telling you that they have great stuff
and you should come to their store and see what they have. Just
being physically located somewhere, does not produce advertising
or marketing that draws customers in. All the traditional tools
used for advertising and marketing are used to draw customers to
any retail store and the Internet is no different. For the most
part, the saying, "build it and they will come" is not
true for retail stores and it is not true for a website! For both
retail stores and websites, build it, advertise it, market it, promote
it, involve it, and generate referrals to it, etc. apply equally
to retail stores AND websiteS!
There
are exceptions to these statements, but as a general rule, most
customers have spent time looking in the retail stores and reading
publications or the phone book prior to finding your site through
a search engine. If you are relying on just search engines to bring
in customers, then think about this. Your customers have probably
already seen your competitor's adds and products, they have probably
already considered purchasing your competitor's products, and they
have probably already been to your competitor's website (or worse
their retail store) they found from your competitor's advertisement,
and your competitor is probably listed in the search engine before
you so your potential customer may have never even made it down
to your listing. Relying on a website
as front line marketing and advertising means that you are almost
always going to be playing catch up to get customers to purchase
from you, rather than your competitor!
Some
people claim that there is an exception to these above statements.
The one industry that is making excellent front line marketing use
of the Internet is the pornography industry. There is very little
off-line promotion of these companies. Don't be fooled. The two
major marketers of pornography (at least to the American public)
are Playboy and Penthouse. For both of these companies, the Internet
represents a very small portion of their revenue. Much of their
website revenue that is produced is a direct reflection of promotion
in their own magazines and ads. ALMOST NONE of the web front end
pornography sites are making money and most are failing.
© 2001 - Barry
Wroobel - Discovery Data Systems, inc.
(note: Set left and right printer margins
to 0.25" for printing)
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