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Have you ever thought of putting your business on the Internet, but simply
not known where to start or you’re not sure whether the Internet is really
meant for your business?
Most of the time we see the big Internet businesses like Google, Amazon and
Yahoo or the big corporations like Microsoft, Airlines companies and banks being
successful on the Net. On the other hand you find someone with a brilliant idea
who slaps a website together and makes a huge success with very little effort
simply because they had the right idea and acted on that idea. Of course, there
are also those who recognizes a good idea, jumps on the bandwagon and shares
in that success.
Bu what if your company does not fall into any of those categories? What if
you have a traditional business where you manufacture a product or offer a service
to your local community?
Does your business still belong on the Internet?
Most definitely!! Other than a place to share information, the Internet is intended
to be a marketplace where we can find things that add value to our lives. If
your local community finds value in your service or product, then the rest of
the world should also. And even if your product or service cannot be made available
to the rest of the world, which is hard to believe, the Internet could be used
simply to make your product more attractive to your local community.
Can your business still be successful on the Internet?
Again, the answer is most definitely!! It simply depends on how you choose to
use the Internet.
Let me give you two examples of local, South African businesses that successfully
use the Internet to advance their business.
The first is Sizanani.com, an Internet logistics company that is tremendously
successful in South Africa. They do not rely on their website to bring in new
customers and yet the website is the core of their business. To my knowledge,
Sizanani is the largest logistics trading zone in the Southern hemisphere. They
have more than 200 customers and more than 400 transporters (who are actually
also customers of Sizanani) doing huge amounts of business on the Sizanani.com
website every day. Yet, when you look at their homepage, you would not believe
that there are hundreds or probably thousands of transactions processed on that
site every day.
In my opinion, the secret of Sizanani’s success is not in their brilliant
Internet marketing skills, but rather lies in a concept often forgotten on the
Internet – Human Interaction. Every customer, including the transporters,
has physically met a representative of Sizanani. When a customer needs help
with the Sizanani system, they do not send an email to some faceless email address
or fill in a meaningless form on the website. Instead, they pick up the phone
and talk directly to someone they know at the company. In other words, this
is a real-life, old fashioned company doing traditional business as we knew
it before the Internet. The only difference is that they are using the Internet
as a viable and convenient medium for delivering their service to their customers.
The second example is Qushum.co.za. This is a fairly new website and is not
nearly in the same category as Sizanani. However, it is again an example of
a business successfully using the Internet to deliver their service to their
customers.
Qushum is a consulting company that helps their customers to obtain ISO 9000
accreditation and maintain that status. By placing their service on the Internet,
they are not offering some incredible solution to their customers which has
never been possible before, but the Internet is simply making the service more
accessible to their customers and therefore making the customer’s day-to-day
life more convenient. Also, by putting their business on the Internet, they
have taken a lot of mundane tasks out of their own hands, which allows them
to spend their time more effectively on growing their business.
These are only two examples of traditional business being conducted successfully
over the Internet. I am sure there are millions of other such examples, but
I simply wanted to show you that the Internet can be used as an effective medium
for traditional business. In both cases they are not putting their faith in
specialized Internet marketing techniques or employing search engine optimization
specialists or any of those concepts that generally scare old-fashioned business
owners away from the Internet. They are simply using the Internet in a fashion
that adds value to their businesses. Isn’t that the whole idea?
So how do you get started?
There are millions of articles on “Getting your business on the Internet”
and I won’t repeat that here.
If you approach a web design company and ask them to “put your business
on the Internet”, they will most probably sell you a complete restructure
of your business with online payment and product catalogues and whatever else
goes with an online business. Not because they are necessarily trying to make
a quick dollar out of you, but simply because this is what most people think
they want from the Internet.
My advice to you is this: Before you approach anybody about designing a website
for you, decide what it is you want. How can the Internet add value to my existing
customers? Think of the two examples above and try to use that approach in your
own business. If you can find a solution to that question, then, by default,
you will have a solution that will add value to new customers as well and your
business will sell itself on the Internet.
About the Author:
Dirk Wessels is a web designer and owner of Getquotes-IT.com |
