You can use the World Wide Web to open new sales channels, extend your current business into a different product line, enhance customer service, or shape the first impression your company makes on its target market. You can reduce your marketing costs (printing, mailing, and travel) by pointing prospective customers to your Web site for preliminary product and service information.

There are many success stories on the Web:
· A small manufacturer that now sells its products retail
· A local shop that now competes with established mail order houses
· A golf outlet that discovered Japanese businessmen would pay the high shipping costs to get new golf equipment as soon as it became available on the U.S. market.

You can find 23 million-dollar success stories in the book StrikingItRich.com, which has a Web site at http://www.strikingitrich.com/.

Use the Internet to move into new product areas. The ease of posting new pages to a Web site and the ability to gather instant information about how customers react to new product offers lets you test-market new goods and services safely.

Enhance customer service. Even if your site doesn’t offer a direct way to purchase your products, it can be a useful, cost-effective tool for customer service:
· Post a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) to answer common customer questions to reduce the expense of toll-free telephone lines.
· Use e-mail to allow communication between your customers and your customer service staff.
· Use e-mail to combine your customer service campaign with your marketing campaign, by sending your customers notification of sales, new product releases, and special offers.

Make a strong first impression. A Web site makes small businesses appear much larger than they are. The way your Web site handles the technology of the Internet — serving up Web pages, taking orders — can make visitors feel they are dealing with a large, established business. Check out WorldSpy (http://www.worldspy.com/). This company’s Web site gives customers the impression it’s a large shopping mart, when in reality it’s staffed by a handful of employees.

Reduce your marketing costs. Putting up your Web site makes your marketing information available to millions. You can save the cost of printing and mass mailing a brochure by publishing your Web site address on your letterhead and business cards.

The Web is a huge opportunity to launch or expand your business at a fraction of the cost of the offline world. If you’re considering a business or looking to expand, mastering the Web should be a top marketing priority.

About the Author:
David Johnson is the founder, president and director of workz.com. He is a lifelong entrepreneur,
small-business expert, and Internet pioneer. Frustrated by the lack of small-business resources
available to help him launch and promote his own Web site he decided to create a trusted resource of
objective how-to information to help other small businesses.

internet business