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Article by Sam Martin, PE, CVS, President of OfficeOnWeb, Technologies. 7/4/1999

Your business can derive many benefits from a web site. To be most effective, it must benefit your customer. Here are ten ways to do just that, with a link to anexample web site for reference.

1. Put a coupon on the web. This allows you to give your customer a nice benefit while you identify where your customers are coming from and how you can improve service to them .

2. Make it easy for them to find you and reduce your overhead too. A map of how to get to your business and what the building looks like can save many hours on your part, helps your customer, and increases the number of actual onsite visits.

3. Make your web site and business a valuable resource that people will want to return to again and again. One way to do this is to give away products that give a good value to your customer but, once developed, cost your business little.

4. Demonstrate the quality of your work. Using photos, you can show how well your service performs.

6. Demonstrate your reliability. Your business does great work and has lots of satisfied customers. Asking them to give you written feedback in a form can generate great testimonials. Requesting their permission to post it on your web site will extend that rapport many times over.

6. Gather support. A web site can reach millions of people that would otherwise never know about you. Charitable organizations are finding that a good web site produces tremendous support and increases gift receipts.

7. Improve communication and attendance. When you place your calendar of events on the web and e-mail people each month to remind them, you can increase participation and awareness.

8. Collect a mailing list of potential and existing clients. A very effective way to achieve this is to run a contest and send out periodic newsletters by e-mail reminding them of your specials and events.

9. Display your products in detail, allow customers to order immediately. You don't have to be a huge corporation to have an interactive web site. The easier it is for your customer to see and order your products, the better for you both.

10. Advertise who you are and what you are doing. In a form that can be easily viewed and printed for later reference, tell people about your organization and plans. All web sites should be doing this one!

As of June 1999, web site addresses are being registered at the rate of 7,000 per month. For those who are aware of the secrets to success on the Internet, they can pay rich dividends. Please let me know of other ideas and web sites that you have found where customers and owner benefit.

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Did you know that in 1998 more than 95% of OfficeOnWeb's new customers made a profit from their web site within their first year of operation? Sad, but it is true. This compares to less than 20% industry wide ever even breaking even. Why? Professional and directed expertise. This industry average for people leaving their current web service provider is 4% per month! That's nearly 50% over a year! Ours is less than 1% per year. That is because we endeavor to make our clients money and don't just offer a "pat solution" that we know has a low probability of ever making our client a profit. Some of the features that make up the level of success that our clients enjoy are:

 Five redundant backbone connections

 99.999% up time on UNIX servers

 Redundant OC-3 connect to all five backbones

 Full data center services

RAID 5 system with weekly backup of critical systems

 True Web Developer Services

 Large support site for clients and visitors

 Four level or higherencryption on all e-commerce solutions designed by Office On Web (this is the government standard required if Government people are to use a site)

 We NEVER host a commercial site on an access server (that is really bad, but common in dial up providers)

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