An advantage of the web is that the buyer is incurring most of the costs of sale. A website can push the potential purchaser to specify goods or services, place orders online and pay for them using secure payment methods. In some cases the customer can arrange fulfilment of the order and take delivery – all with the minimum of intervention by the seller.
By building the digital equivalent of the corporate brochure on the company website, you can encourage customers and potential customers to download the product and service information kept on the website.
This reduces costs by freeing-up other resources as well as minimising the usual fax, courier and postal charges incurred by businesses on a daily basis. Another cost advantage is the reduction in print costs – the website can be updated easily, whereas updates to paper-based literature incur the cost of re-prints.
One of the internet myths, is that it creates a level playing field, where smaller companies can compete with bigger rivals on an equal footing. If you think about the resources that big corporations have spent, and continue to spend, not only on the development of their websites but on the online and offline advertising and marketing of them, the equation becomes one sided, heavily in favour of the large corporation.
However, the difference between spending and effectiveness is disproportionate and many less expensive sites, well designed with highly targeted marketing, can come close to competing at the highest levels.
Another reason for having internet access alone is an entry to the vast reservoirs of knowledge and information. This is a compelling reason for internet access, regardless of whether a corporate website is being planned. If there is one word that can describe the internet, it would be information and it's a worldwide resource. The internet can provide access to information on new and existing:
- Markets
- Competition
- Customers.
Now think about how information on all of these could radically transform your business and with good communication how it could help to create a competitive edge. That is the internet. How you harness that information is the key to success - the virtual Holy Grail.
No one would dare claim that the internet is without problems but many of the technical issues prevalent even last year, are already history. Andy Irvine, sales and marketing director of Planet Online, believes that the barriers are coming down.
“Bandwidth, which determines internet speeds, is becoming less of an issue as new technologies with the introduction of ASDL, ATM, X25 and frame relay technologies. Companies can do now internationally what they already do nationally,” he says.
Dr. Roger Till, chief executive of the Electronic Commerce Association (ECA), which represents both industry know-how as well as e-commerce practitioners, agrees that companies should not be put off by the negative hype that has surrounded business on the internet.
“Of course companies should be aware of the issues and plan accordingly but it's important to get started. The infrastructure is becoming more robust and, in the business to consumer market, developments in TV and cable are going to make more bandwidth available in the consumer arena.”
