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NOW WHAT?
Okay so now you have a website, great. When you started out your goal may have been to get a presence on the Web, or maybe to set up an e-commerce storefront.
You hoped that having a Web site would send your business to the next level and beyond.
You may, or may not, have the world beating a path to your door throwing money at you, pleading to buy your product. There are many factors that could be effecting the commercial
success of your site and we can talk about those another time. Increased sales is not the point of this article.
What I want to get into here are the benefits other than increased sales that your site can do for you. Other benefits? Yes, other benefits!
For many of us the flush of excitement and anticipation has faded. We look at our investment, we might wonder how to enhance it.
Email and Communications
One of the most important tools you can give to your company is to have every employee using e-mail. Yes, I did say every employee. Once everyone has it, USE
IT. Communicate up, down and sideways in the chain of command. Use it to spread the word about goals and progress toward them; get ideas from your employees; plan the company picnic; let people know when they are
expected to do what; have them use it to tell you it is done.
Email bulletin boards and discussion groups can transform employee communication; change and flexibility are greatly assisted.
There is some overhead involved in this process, but it can change the culture of your business for the better. If this is done well, employees can change from
feeling like disenfranchised worker units to being part of a team.
Documentation and Forms
Get your companies forms and documentation up on the Web; on secure pages if need be. It is amazing how much money is spent mailing and faxing all types of
forms and documents down the hall, across town, or around the world. Rather than printing documents again and again only to have them gather dust in desk drawers you can post them to the net.
Just about any form that is filled out by hand can be done on the internet, often for the better as you can give people opportunities to access needed
information, set required fields and quality check the form as it is being done.
Here is the real kicker; when you change that document or form, and you will, you only have to change the one on your site. Throwing away old documents and
wasting money printing and re-printing can become a memory.
Education and Training
Use your Web site as a training and educational tool.
For your customers you can present instructions, product specifications, replacement part order forms. These days almost everything comes with a little manual
that tells you how to use a product. How often can your customers find them two weeks after purchase. How many products are under-utilized or misused as a result?
How many customers calls to your 1-800 phone lines could be saved if your customers knew they could get all the info they want about your product and warranty
policy on-line?
Procedures for more complex products can be presented as multi-media tutorials that really teach your customer how to use the product you have worked so hard
to craft for them. One of the wonders of the computer is its ability to show you how something works. This is so much more effective than written words with a diagram or two.
In house the potential for training your employees on company procedures is endless. Every process that has to be shown to a new employee more than once is a
good candidate for this. Further you can use the web to test the employee to ensure understanding and retention.
Points of Interest
I admit this one crosses over to the area of marketing your site. It is one of the smartest things you can do to bring em' to your site and keep em' coming
back! Add on pages that provide ancillary information about your industry or area. If your site is for a hotel, create a "points of interest" page for your area. Have a restaurant guide. Whatever it is
that you and your customers might be interested in is fair game. If your site sells widgets, include a page about the history of widgets, a newsletter about widgetry. I think you get the idea that you can be
creative and develop pages that will be interesting to you, your employees and importantly your customers.
Bill Patz is a web designer, programmer, Internet business strategist, and intranet manager. He runs a collective of Internet professionals. Visit his WE Concepts site at www.weconcepts.com
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