Articles

Date: September 15^th 2008
Author: Ali Kanchwala

Benefits of a Website

1. Reaching Millions of Potential Customers Quickly and Economically

Tens of millions of people worldwide have access to the Internet. Internet users, like most people, are interested in convenience. Many prefer the ease of finding services or shopping and ordering directly from their home or office.

i) Selling Products and Services Online

Websites are powerful because helps to expand your advertisement campaigns. This is also the best distinction between electronic and other advertising channels. Users can have direct access to your company as they see your advertisement. With the click of a mouse, they will be able to order or send an inquiry quickly to you.

ii) On-Line Publishing

Publishing a website online requires a fraction of the investment than any other form of publishing medium and allows for quick and easy updates without having to redo reinvest into the publishing campaign.

2) Leveraging You Advertising Money

There is a limit to the amount of information that can be placed into a magazine, newspaper, radio, TV commercial or any other print ad. These mediums can be quite expensive as well as time consuming. However, in addition to having a website you could include your website URL into a small print ad or 30 second infomercial and you have now directed your customers to your website which can contain unlimited information.

i) Increasing Sales

Most people listening to the radio or reading a newspaper or magazine are doing so outside work hours and so if they do hear your advertisement, more than likely they will be unable to contact your company to get additional information as you will be closed. This is where the power of the internet comes in; having an online presence means that your company (for information purposes) can be open 24/7. This gives potential customers the ability to view information at their convenience and still have the ability to contact you if they need additional information.

ii) Reduce the Cost of Printing and Mailing

Companies can save hundreds of thousands of dollars in printing and mailing costs by creating online catalogues. This gives you the ability to add all sorts of product information, images, etc, as well as promoting an eco-friendly environment.

iii) Updating Information Quickly and Easily

Websites can be updated on a regular basic. Some modifications may require a great deal of technical know-how while other can be updated quite easily especially through the use of dynamic website like content management systems, which give you the ability to add/modify pages using an online text editor. These sites give you the ability to effortlessly upload information and images with little to none technical knowledge.

iv) Attracting People to Your Business

An attractive and informative website is particularly helpful in this area, especially for those running TV or radio commercials. Potential customers as well as old customers can look at your website in order to get all of the information that they need at their own convenience.

vi) Multimedia Enabled Websites

The Internet enables you to display photos, sound and short or even long movie clips at a lowered cost. Taking advantage of various multimedia technologies can be quite advantageous to online marketing. A picture is worth a thousand words, and so by combining images, audio and video you can help to improve the attractiveness of your website and yet still provide the necessary information and get your message across.

3) Getting Known

There are already thousands of companies out there with websites, yet many have still not moved in to exploit the internet as a tool. Getting known online can take sometime, but in most cases it is well worth the time spent. Being able to reach millions of customers simultaneously can be a huge advantage over your competition and can even help with your branding. Having good online popularity can help increase your chances of repeat customers as well as referrals.

4) Increasing Productivity & Reducing Costs

There are many ways to use the internet to better serve your customers. For example, you can put a sample music or video so that customers can view it before they decide to purchase the it, you are an accounting firm and want your clients to be able to see what type of loans they can get and what the interest rate are, financial calculators can be created to give users the ability to quickly and effortlessly see different scenarios. All this and more can be done, simply and quickly, through the web.

i) Making Information Available

Valuable time can be saved for both the customer and you if you place basic business information on your website. This can help to reduce the amount of people that lets say call in to find out basic information about a certain service, instead they can go straight to the website and view this information at their leisure and if they are interested they can then call for additional information.

ii) Frequently Asked Questions

Most people generally have either the same or similar questions. So instead of spending time answering the same question you can simply put up frequently asked questions (FAQ) on your website answering all the frequent questions that any customer might have.

iii) Feedback or Contact Forms

By placing feedback or contact forms on your site you give the user the ability to complement you on a great service, or let you know if you need to improve something. This is generally a good way of getting peoples opinions. Also if someone needs to contact you instead of calling you or sending an email, they can directly send you a contact request from your website, making it easy and saving time.

iv) 24 Hour Service

Having the ability to see information or order a product at anytime can be quite advantageous. Websites help to serve your customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week and best of all without adding to your costs.

5) Public Relations

Having an online presence is becoming extremely important for PR (public relations). Maintaining an online presence is like having the ability to pass out your business card to thousands, maybe millions of potential customers, partners, etc. More and more people are using the internet to search for various products and services and having the ability to say "This is what I do. If you are ever in need of my services or my products, you can reach us over the web, 24 hours a day."

i) Releasing News, Images and other Media Inexpensively

Information can be made available on your website at any time; with all related materials such as news, events, photographs, biographies, manuals, etc.

ii) Becoming Popular

Every kind of business needs the exposure and the internet can greatly help with this. With the Internet hype at the eclipse of its power, an innovative website, product or service will more than likely get reviewed, discussed (on review sites, forums, blogs, etc) in one publication or another. This can greatly help your popularity, and having a website available for people to be able to go to and see what you have to offer at anytime can be extremely beneficial and great for marketing.

6) Streamlining Company Information

The internet is the fastest, most economical way to disseminate information within an organization. Instead of relying on the distribution of memos, phone calls, etc, employees can visit their company's website at their convenience and get the required information. Websites can also include secure access to allow entry to authorized personal only so that sensitive information is only available to them.

i) Staying in contact anywhere, anytime.

ii) Information at your fingertips while on the road.

7) Total World Exposure

Being on the net bring great advantages like being able to target markets across the globe with the ease of sitting in front of your computer anywhere. Marketing on the Web is the easiest way to begin doing business on an international level. Though a website you can open up dialogues in international markets as easily as with someone across the street.

8) Testing New Products And Services

Having the ability to test products and/or get reviews and feedback from a wide range of customers can be quite beneficial. Getting results can be fast and economical. For the cost of a few web pages, you can gain useful insight into where to place your product or service in the marketplace.

9) Reaching Specialized Markets

There are thousands of newsgroups and communities representing every sport, hobby, interest, group imaginable. No matter what your niche is, your customers are more than likely online. Furthermore, it has been found that some of the most successful businesses on the Web are those that target niche markets. By just having a website multiple search engines and directories are more than likely to find you making it even easier for your interest group to easily find you. Some search engine optimization may be required for optimal results.