Schewanick Computer Services

How do you do business? Do you operate offline? What is the objective of your web site? If you do business purely online, perhaps a home based business or affiliate scheme then hits are probably everything to you. However if like me you make your bread and butter primarily offline then focusing on hits and becoming obsessive could destroy you like it nearly did me. Think for a minute, what am I offering here? am I doing everything I can to make the most of this Virtual Customer in my Virtual shop? Lose your focus, stop paying attention to the things that matter and it could seriously impact on your business, you could become the "here" today "gone" tomorrow DOTCOM that your constantly reading about.

For a moment lets focus on the third point, what is the objective of your web site? If for example you manage a main stream engineering brand you may have decided to publish a web site to promote awareness of your latest offering or if the manager of a small bistro that decide to promote his "specials"menu, every time they changed the menu they leafleted everyone in the village to look online at their new menu and sent submitted a press release to www.24/7pressrelease.com . The point being that in both cases they are very much dependant on business offline and the objective of the web site is only consumer Awareness. They will not go bust if they the visitor to their web site doesn't buy anything or come in the shop.

Let me tell you about a bathroom fitter that spent 5,000 on his web site but didn't seem to be any busier when it came to bathroom fitting contracts. He was told by his IT people that it was down to hits, not enough of them and he needed to spend another 5,000 on SEO (search engine optimization - the science of high placement in the natural search results SERPS). Well do I need to do this he asked? The advice was NOT to spend another penny. Instead every time he completes a bathroom installation he should write his web site address ONLY on a post it note and stick it on the new tiled wall above the bath. Why? Viral Marketing or Chinese whispers, combined with the natural human curiosity will drive existing customers to look at his web site who in turn tell their freinds. Now admittedly he hadn't spent further money on SEO, neither had he paid for any clicks yet 6 months later his web site was getting hits like crazy and you cant book his service now for 8 months in advance.

Now lets consider a recruitment company in the same area although awareness is a primary objective, commerce comes first. You see they offer a reactive service based on a database of contacts, they advertise to gain customers and build contacts, by cross matching they are able to succeed. So Advertising is the essence of their business, the purpose of the web site, providing awareness of opportunity to candidates, who are data captured in to a database 24/7 through an automated process. They are also focused on customer service and deploy multimedia presentation of their unique selling point USP to candidates. Advertising is a cost based business so getting it right, finding a medium to communicate to both customers and candidates can be the difference between "here today and gone tomorrow". By using all the free open source technology open to them at no cost they are able to make use of the latest technologies to compete evenly, even taking the edge on presentation using "Wink" to make their online video offering http://www.debugmode.com/wink/.

The key to your success or failure will be the focus you put on your customer service and your workforce. If its online and automated, make sure you keep your servers up to date and don't slope off when it comes to maintenance, downtime in your case could be disastrous. You're on your own so make sure site says it all, content is KING. Why did Google become so popular? Quality of service and content, Who is Google? They are the fastest growing, most dynamic media company of all time. Take a leaf out of your leader's book.

For the rest of us off-liners's it's a another story, don't be to focused on hits, it could be your ruin. A healthy interest, some ambition to drive you forward and expert coaching will take you in the right direction. Obsession with Hits, traffic, website visitors can be the route to disaster when it comes to ecommerce for sme's. Let me explain if you focus entirely on generating numbers of visitors and plough all of your resources you may well get a surge of one time visitors but will they buy anything? And if you used all your resources what will you do if you don't make enough sales? Consider you're offering very carefully, are you giving your customer what they are looking for? Consider your Unique Selling Point very carefully. Consider the content of your website and finally consider this.... can you be found easily? 85% of surfers use search, that's a fact. When it comes to problem solving to day, with broadband at most people's finger tips its most likely the user will do an internet search to solve the problem.

Now unless you are going to Pay For Placement PFP or PPC Pay Per Click consider very carefully your content and optimize it so that the information can be easily found by the search engines. If you need step by step expert coaching on SEO techniques that you can apply, you do not need any programming or coding experience and everything is FREE, http://www.seotop10rankings.com you even get $600 of free goodies if you sign up to the iCaptain newsletter, did I mention that doesn't cost you anything either.

Are you reading this article and looking for inspiration, go and read this article from "The Times" it will inspire you to consider the way you present yourself.

Podcasting for peas http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8213-1979156,00.html

Go next and get this (Free , but NOT worthless - it's a $24.95 value) professional report on multimedia presentation, email and ezines are dying if you hadn't noticed. Address your audience with video and audio technology, it is the way forward, this is a digital age and we now have broadband. Customer relationships are the key to success or failure, today your customer is more demanding and expects a more personalised and caring approach. Pictures spell 1000 words so interfacing with your customers through video makes good sense for presentation. You can influence more through your video message and through the introduction of video ipod you can interface with them while they are in the gym, you have already learned about "Wink", get about using it for your benefit.

http://www.infomercialtoolkit.com/index.php

Get the report ...its FREE and it will help you to understand the impact this technology will have on your business if you implement it to best work or you. Data capture is the key building block, you can get a see a good example of data capture and get $600 of free goodies. The "one time offer " http://www.free-biz.uk.tp , the purpose of this page is data capture, the objective being to build a massive list of wanabe webmasters and online entrepreneurs. Why? So I can sell to them. When? When I feel I have built a trusting relationship with my list? Trust based on what? Proven, expert focused advice, sourced and provide free of charge.

What is FREE? Is anything really free? You will be trading your name and email address at the very least in return for free goodies. The price you actually pay is the data you provide. If you subscribe to the grab everything free forever view...you will soon choke up your email account with so much information you will be stuck at your computer forever and you wont be paying any attention to your customers. So be warned pay attention to the things that matter, only ask for information you are going to read, and when you read it try implementing it, or what was the point in asking!

At the end of the day there's no replacement, as an entrepreneur, for hard work and experience.

About the author:

Rod Gardner is a marketing services manger with White Star web hosting http://www.web-hosting.org.uk and has 20yrs experience in the media industry.