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BUSINESS BASICS CHANNELS 
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Is Your Business Net-Able? Back in 1994 when we first started doing web design professionally, we'd accept any job that came our way. We were in our infancy, and we have originally swallowed the hype of the net, hook, line and sinker. Now, five years later and using the 20-20 vision of hindsight, its possible to see some our own errors as well as those of others with a greater clarity. The question one begs to ask, and should be asked by every small business is a simple one. "Can my business profit from having a website?". This article will examine the issues involved in having a website, and explore this question, hopefully to the point where you will be able to answer that question for yourself. In our early days we did websites for all kinds of businesses, from small retail to catalog sales to mlm's (multi-level marketers, i.e. Amway). Some businesses made the transition from from one outlet to online with little difficulty, others failed miserably. We'd like to think that the failure was no reflection on our part, but failure of any sort is good cause for reflection and analysis. Our own analysis led to some very obvious conclusions that any good designer should be able to explain to you. But far to often they don't. Lets backtrack and start with the basics. Suitability: Before you can consider putting your business online, ask yourself just "What does online mean to you?" Here it is in a nutshell. Having your business online means that you have expanded the scope of potential customers from your town, to the world. It means that instead of having a customer who lives 10 minutes away, you might get a customer who lives 10,000 miles away. The distance factor is a problem. For one thing, you've lost the person to person touch you've used to build your local business, for another, you now may have to deal with items that you never dealt with before, like shipping, or import/export laws. Even if you factor in the cost of shipping to the customer in your pricing, it still takes time to package products and ship them. In addition to the above items, there are potential language barriers, your only means of communicating with your customer might be email. Telephone calls to Saudia Arabia, or to Bali can seriously erode your profit margin. Fortunately, english is one of the most predominant languages on the net today. Ask yourself the three questions below, if you answer yes to all three, then you're probably ready to make the leap into net oriented business.
Question 1 is supremely important. Consider if you will, a business that deals strictly on a local level such as a combination gas station and mini-mart, or even perhaps a restaurant. Quite obviously this sort of business will see little to be gained from being online. This isn't to say that they should not have a website. But you need to weigh that against the bottom line. If you don't see a way of a website adding to your income stream, then there probably isn't one. If fact, you could probably profit better with a location centric business, if you sponsored a tourist related website for your area more than having a site built specifically for the business. Suffice to say that businesses that are reliant on location, make unsuitable additions to the net. And, unfortunately, rarely are worth the cost of putting them online. Concept: From the first moment you begin to think about putting your business online, it is important to start thinking about how being online will affect your business. What kind of website do you need? Your first thought before even contacting a designer must be to clarify in your mind what you wish to accomplish by having a website. The fundamental concept behind any business is to make money for its owner, whether the business is a personal service type like automobile repair, or a retailer of children's clothing, the end result is always sales or jobs. Lets divide businesses into two categories for the purposes of discussion here. Each type reflects a different style of website. Sales and Services. This is not a narrow definition, there are plenty of companies that offer both types of business models under the same name, and for our purposes here, sales doesn't include those companies selling high end ticket items such as homes, airplanes or automobiles etc. Your typical sales company offers a line of products, in effect, a catalog. This appropriately enough describes the style of website needed. A sales oriented business needs the following abilities from their website at a minimum;
The above describes the basic functions of a piece of web software called a "Shopping Cart". You will note that it doesn't mention anything about credit card processing. Credit card processing can be done off-line at the business location, or you might elect to use one of the online services which offer integrated credit card and shopping cart services, such as CCNOW. http://www.ccnow.com. As much as people like the instant notification of a credit card transaction, online services like CCNOW add additional overhead, thus reducing your profit margin. Many customers can live with off-line processing of their cards, which can allow you to use your existing merchant account (if you have one). The service oriented business makes for a more difficult website to create. For one thing you need, in the span of your website, to be able to convince the potential customer that you are an expert in your field. Whereas the sales oriented site turns into a POS (point of sales) location in cyberspace, the service oriented website is merely a POIC or point of initial contact. POIC websites are difficult because you need to provide sufficient detail online to give the potential customer/client a warm fuzzy feeling about your competence. Content is king. This is something that few understand. The internet represents the most literate body of consumers in the world. You cannot give them too much information. Websites that describe services in detail, perhaps contain an article or two on selecting the right service, emphasizing the site owner's expertise in the subject material, tend to succeed rather well. Owners of service oriented businesses must realize that the website is merely a knock on the door. From the moment of they receive the first email from a potential client, they must use email to respond in a timely manner, woo'ing the potential client into a signed client. The website is the bait, but your email is the pole and reel. Now that we've discussed the two basic types of websites, lets turn to the costs involved. Costs: You need three basic things in order to get a website built. First comes the domain name, then you need to pick a designer and host. We will not talk about the free webspace services here. Our personal feeling is "If a business can't take itself seriously enough to buy a domain name and get real hosting, then how can they expect us to take them seriously?". Domain names: This is your web address plain and simple. It should define who and what you are. A domain name can be up to 26 characters in length. Domain names should make sense, what is the point of buying a JoeBlow.com when it doesn't mean anything to someone that might be seeing it? If you're trying to build up name recognition, then its important to try to include some idea of what the site is about in the domain name itself. For example; Both of these names give clues as to the content of the site without even visiting them. Remember that people will be searching based on subject material, not on your name, or your company name. We strongly suggest that you pick out at least 5-10 possible domain names, then check them out here; http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois/ Enter each name one at a time, adding a .com to it, and press "search". Either it will come back with a match (meaning the name is in use) or it will not match (meaning its available). Currently the cost of a domain name is $70 dollars for the first two years, then $35 dollars for each year after that. The hosting company or the designer usually setup the domain name for you, but its critical that you insist on being the Adminstrative contact for the site. The cost of the domain name normally goes to Internic, the domain authority for the United States. Hosting company: The host is the company that owns the computer on which your website resides. Some design companies have a financial affiliation with a particular hosting company, which means they get a kick-back for bringing your account to the hosting company. Others, like Northern Webs, have no affiliation with anyone and can therefore suggest a host suited to your needs and budget constraints. Typical hosting costs can run anywhere from a low of $20 dollars per month to a high of nearly several hundred dollars per month depending on the level of complexity of the site, and the additional features you may need. The average site hosting costs for a site with a secured ordering form and some simple cgi should run about $25 to $35 dollars a month. We always suggest that you do not host locally if you're not in a big city. The reason for this is simple. The local ISP may be capable of hosting your site, but he/she is not usually directly connected to the internet. Nor do they have the resources to maintain tech support on a 24/7 basis. Avoid the bargain basement hosting companies. Companies advertising less than $20 dollars a month usually try to make up for the lost revenue by sticking as many domains as they can on a single server. Too many hosts on a single server can lead to sluggish performance on the part of the server. A slow website is a kiss of death these days. We highly suggest your checking out
the Ultimate web host list, in particular the top 25 list they maintain;
http://webhostlist.InternetList.com/screens/toplists/ Web Designer: When you're in the process of selecting your web designer, look at their track record. In this business cheap designers usually mean they are either very new to the business or not very good. Most designers will charge by the hour (although some do it by the page). A good designer will work on a website format/layout first before putting any client material onto the site. Basically the format/layout of a website should be maintained across all of the pages in the site, this will reduce any confusion a visitor may have since all of the pages/buttons look and work the same. The designer should always ask the client's opinions about a proposed format for a site BEFORE proceeding to add in all of the client supplied materials. Designers come in many shapes and sizes, here are a few things to be wary of. You should avoid designers that don't seem to be able to supply a reasonable set of references. We suggest that you ask to see at least three, preferably five domain level sites they have designed. The above requirement will annoy a lot of new designers, but domain level sites have a unique set of requirements that many of the newer designers might not have any experience with (such as installing cgi programs). Make sure the designer provides you with a firm cost estimate. Unless you're changing the design requirements during the design, there is no reason for the designer to hit you with additional charges. If you are changing design requirements mid stream, the designer has every right to alter his/her estimates. If the designer talks in glowing terms about how much money is being made on the web, or how many people can visit your site. RUN, don't walk, to the next designer on your list. Yes, billions are being spent yearly on the net (source Internet Indicators http://www.InternetIndicators.com/ ), but that doesn't mean you're going to see a significant portion of that money. And yes, there are literally millions of people online. But again, that doesn't mean millions will visit your site. Think of it this way, if you owned a food store in a small town of 5000 people, what would be the odds of all 5000 people visiting your store daily? Slim to none. A website is an extension of your business, in effect, a virtual storefront, but the traffic it receives will be directly proportional to the effort you put into promoting the website. And any designer that doesn't mention this has obviously swallowed the hype we're hoping to dispel with this article. Once the site is completed, most designers perform a basic level of promotion for the site. After that, unless you contract them to do more, promotion becomes your headache. Finally the material you supply your designer with can make or break the design effort. Try to have your material available in electronic format. If your designer needs to retype your copy, or spend days scanning hundreds of images, that 20 hour estimate could easily slide into 2 weeks. Recurring Costs: Ideally the only recurring costs for a business, after the site is online, are the monthly hosting costs (usually billed quarterly), and the enteric fees. However a website is not a series of static documents. You should plan on updating the website periodically, fresh content is a blood transfusion for websites. Talk to your designer about either contracting them under a retainer or hiring them for periodic updates. Additionally, get your designer to help you understand the site statistics coming from the log analysis. Closing thoughts: During the course of this article we've explored the types of businesses which can profit from being online. Now we have to turn to final question. "My site is online, but where is the business??!?!?". Promotion. Promotion. And even more promotion. And when you get done, start over again. This should be the mantra of every website owner. We suggest spending a minimum of 1 hour per night promoting your website online, but don't forget the offline promotion effort as well. Add the url to your checks, your business cards, your letterheads, include it in any conventional advertising etc. Select the "Search Engines" and the "Directories" links and print them out. Spend an hour each night submitting to each and crossing them off the printout when you've submitted. Its tedious, but manually submitting to these systems will give you an edge you won't get from the submission services. It should be obvious by now that even though our business is putting people and businesses online, we don't feel that every business needs to have a website. In fact some can not profit from a site at all. Our contribution to those failures we mentioned earlier was a gung ho attitude without looking at the business as a unit. Now days we'd rather turn away a potential client than take on a design for a business we don't feel is suitable to the net. As a businessperson, you should be better informed at this point, capable of determining if your business is suitable to the net, and if you have the mindset needed to make that transition from offline to online. -Bob Minnick of Northern Webs
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