eBusiness: Why have a web-site?

A web-site can act as an on-line brochure, attracting potential customers to contact you about doing business.

It can also establish your credibility in a certain field, if your site is full of authoritative information on a specific topic.

Last (though not a good reason for incurring the expense if that is all it is) is that it can act as a symbol of “corporate up-to-dateness”.

The stages are:

• Typically, web-sites begin as an on-line brochure, simply moving the business’ corporate “message” into a new medium
• The next step is to list the products and services on-line – a “catalogue” site
• Next, the business decides to allow customers buy these products or services on-line and provides some form of payment mechanism, ideally with on-line credit card clearance
• Once customers have bought from the site, it’s good marketing to encourage repeat buying – so the site develops “customer retention” features, like free updates or support for registered customers
• The final step is to integrate the web-site into the business so that it becomes the business, reducing costs because of the use of the Internet itself.

There are many examples of the first three types – brochure, catalogue and on-line sales. Software companies, probably because they have a digital product and are tuned into the medium, have some of the best customer retention-type sites. Most integrated sites are found in the Business-to-Business (B2B) arena, where industry-specific sites for buying and selling can deliver economies of scale.

Some sites combine more than one stage of development. For example, courier companies like DHL and FEDEX allow customers track shipments on-line, giving customers more “power” but also reducing their own costs since they no longer have to field telephone enquiries.

Other eBusiness topics:

• Getting started
• Why have a web-site?
• Setting up a web-site
• On-line marketing & sales
• Security
• Legislation
• Domain names
• Other issues.