Can I make money with my web site?

According to my experience making money from a web site is possible but not simple. If you think that publishing a web site with information about your company and products will sell automatically I think you will be disappointed with the results.

In order to make a web site profitable it is needed to create the site with a business model and resources to realize it.  There are many advantages on making a business on the Internet.

The challenge is promotion.

If your business is already running and you are thinking on expanding your market using the Internet then the possibilities are even higher because you already have a reputation, customers and experience. Here my advice:

1.       First think in saving costs. A web site could make easier existing processes that could make easier the communication with your customers: subscribing to news, access to price lists, catalogs of products, press information. After that the members of your team could send links instead of problematic attachments on the emails. A web site is a great way to save money in postage, papers and printing. Your email signatures could include links to the most important documents published on your web site: www.company.si/catalog/ or www.company.si/pricelist/

2.       Second think on optimizing processes. Your web site is available 24 hours a day and that should be considered for improving processes especially if your customers or providers work in different time zones. An extranet for customers is a great way of improving your processes, with that they could access to private sections of your web site and check the status of their orders, contact information, opened orders details, past invoices and of course a simple way to generate new orders; all that without having any person from your company “awake”.

3.       Third think on keeping or retaining your existing customers. If you invest 5% of what you spend for achieving new customers for retaining existing ones you can increase your revenue until 95%. In 5 years you will lose 50% of your existing customers. Make a survey to your current customers and request them what would they like to have on your web site in order to facilitate your relationship with them. Customize your web site to your customer’s needs, not to what you think would be good for them.

4.       After the first three steps, think on a new business model. If you achieve satisfactory results with the first 3 steps then you can be sure you made something very good for your business. Creating a new business model depends on your goals and your market. Break with paradigms and bring in to the team your most creative persons, experienced sales persons, marketing pros and maybe even thing on including some of your customers (on the right moment and without making them to lose too much time).

5.       Check your statistics. One of the most important ways to evaluate your success is following your visitor’s behavior. There are many products available and some of them are great and even free. The statistics will help you to understand where to focus your advertisement, which are the most interesting pages on your site, who is referring visits, how many unique visitors are using your web site, how many of them are returning, how much time your visitors spend on your site and from which countries are they coming from.  Without that information you could be spending effort and resources on the wrong spot.

I hope that information is of use. Please don’t doubt on sending your comments and experience.

Is the word “trust” part of your plan?

Some years ago when B4Contact was born it was difficult for us to define a realistic target. We were trying to find the best way to get customers. We found that a good and friendly approach to them would be effective to keep them closer to us and to propitiate “word of mouth marketing”.
We made many mistakes. First of all we needed to define what our offer was, then we had to create a very clear target, then approach them and present our offer, make some PR in parallel and then start following up prospects. Instead, we targeted a big group of companies, we introduced the company and explained a very general concept of what we offered, no PR and almost no follow up because there were not many prospects.
Why we made that? Well, we wanted to catch as many customers as possible. By making general concepts and increasing the amount of targeted companies we thought we would get more chances. The good thing was that we perceived what the market expected from us, what is valuable from our offer. Thinking positive, we got at least that from our mistakes.
How would I proceed now, having that experience, in order to get more customers? I would base my complete strategy on the word “Trust”; Our potential customers are busy with their affairs and have little time to remember who is B4Contact, being friendly is fine but it is not a key factor to start a business relationship. Being trustworthy would help. To do that from the start, I think:
It is important to introduce the new company to the Chamber of Commerce and other institutions related to the business development in your area, participate with them and try to find which are their short term goals and activities.
It is a key for success to find partners with a solid presence in your market. The Small Business Specialist program is a great way to be a special Microsoft partner and a way to show expertise. Your partners should help you to find prospects and creative ways to promote your services.
I would try to communicate more effectively with a very simple and clear message of what we do. Making a general message will just confuse the market and you will have to pay for that for many months. Even we are known locally we still receive questions like: “So… Actually what do you do, I know you are in the business of computers, right?”.
I would focus my services on making my customers to trust on the company. Friendliness is not enough, solving the problem fast is not enough. Solving the problem for ever is the right way. (The solution is not to restart the computer, it is to find the source of the problem and solve it).
The “word of mouth marketing” would start much faster if the services we offer would be impregnated with the word “trust”.
I’m sharing this post with the aim of receiving your comments and suggestions. I’m sure we could get many interesting lessons if we consider many different perspectives and experiences, so please fell free to criticize and comment.