In a leaner, harder global economy, the Internet is a new conduit for communications, it thrives on the entrepreneurial energy behind many dynamic companies. Bringing your business to this global network extends your reach and gives you access to a wealth of information with relatively inexpensive technology. But turning promise into productivity and profits just isn't as easy as plugging your LAN into the Internet or setting up a Web server.

To integrate the Internet into your business, you need a cohesive approach that fully maximizes your chances to improve on your investment. The framework for success varies from company to company and is in a state of constant flux, but a wide range of businesses have begun to understand how a combination of automated E-mail and effective Web sites can help a company reach new customers, stir up interest in its products and services, and even ultimately reduce its overall workload.

Web Advertising and Marketing:

As appealing as automated E-mail can be, it barely taps the Internet's potential as a way to communicate and build a business. For big companies, a corporate Web site is becoming a business necessity, while small companies are beginning to realize the Web's potential to reach new customers and even to compete more effectively against larger companies.

A Web page is accessible from networks all over the world, 24 hours a day. Thanks to HTML's simple standards, the Web reaches most users, without regard to platform. You can also factor out major distribution expenses, such as for printing and mailing, reducing your overall expenditures as well.

The key to a successful Web site involves combining easy navigation and attractive graphics with interaction, and spicing up your image with enticing premiums or novelties to keep customers coming back again and again.

Godiva Chocolatier offers a good example of the current state of advertising on the Net. The Godiva Online Web site (http://www.godiva.com) offers online shopping via a digital catalog, product descriptions, and information on the company's many stores all over the world. This material simply mirrors the company's print catalogs, but the site also offers recipes and stories and a clever E-mail-based gift-reminder service that can prompt you to buy truffles for your sweetheart two weeks before Valentine's Day. Godiva collaborated on the design and implementation of the site with a contractor that updates the message and handles the mechanics of the site with a staff of three to four people at any given time.

The Web has the potential to reach an extremely lucrative demographic audience: most surveys suggest that people who browse the Web are well educated and have lots of disposable income. Even if you never intend to sell online, you can reach many customers who are likely to buy your products off-line. While Godiva realizes no profit from direct sales online, the company attributes a marked increase in in-store sales to the Web site.

Making Your Web Site Effective:

A good Web site can open up a whole new market for you, but remember, increasingly the opposite is also true. A poorly designed site can drive people away in droves. The Web is a new kind of medium. What works in print or television may fail abysmally online. A good Web site is not unlike a successful piece of software: both need an intuitive interface, a coherent design, and absolute reliability.

Experimenting with the Web can be a great way to learn about this new medium, but you should judge the value of new technology like digital-audio radio in the context of your business, not only for its gee-whiz factor. Choose the technologies that complement your business. If you sell toothpicks to restaurants, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to bother to provide digital-audio files on your Web site. On the other hand, for a publisher of books-on-tape, an audio component could be a tremendous selling point. Sample clips from your bestsellers or your new titles could draw repeat visitors who want to stay up-to-date.

When Hot Hot Hot, a small store in Pasadena, California, decided to advertise some of its spicy foods online, it worked with a contractor to create a fun Web site. The interface is bright and colorful, matching the store's style, while allowing visitors to view the products in variable layouts (see the screen shot "Spicy Views"). In addition to online shopping options, Hot Hot Hot runs contests and includes E-mail links for customer feedback. The company uses that feedback to make changes in its product offerings, recognizing the Web's capacity to provide instant and continuous marketing data about what works and what fails.

Another potential benefit of an Internet business site is the ability to gather information about your customers via surveys and contests. But be careful. The Internet community frowns on unsolicited advertisements and even perceived breaches in privacy. Selling your E-mail mailing lists to others or sending promotional E-mail can get you into trouble fast with customers or even bring on a deluge of flames. Surveys and feedback forms that respect your visitors' privacy, however, can help you get good information on the services that your customers want. Consider surveys that don't ask for detailed personal information, and always be very clear and open about what you intend to do with the information you gather.

From Sales to Profits:

These techniques work well to build awareness of your products and communicate with customers, but be realistic about your investment. Few companies have figured out how to sell products online, possibly because few consumers have become comfortable buying online as yet. And while Macs have an inherent security advantage over more-open Unix systems, if you plan to put sensitive information on a Web server that's accessible over the Internet, add the cost of a security consultant who can help you protect your data from prying eyes.

The Last Word:..

A successful Internet presence, like any successful business, starts with a solid plan. Many businesses launch a Web site without the resources to support its maintenance and growth. First decide why you want to be on the Net and what resources you can dedicate to your Web site. Be modest at first but build your system for easy growth.

The most thoughtful business plans also exploit the Web for internal company use. Focusing inward, a rapidly growing number of companies use in-house Web sites as an extension of their LANs and WANs, in pursuit of alternatives to more expensive options like Lotus Notes or inadequate office E-mail products.

Using HTML and the basic Internet mail protocols as core technologies, these companies are experimenting with shareware and inexpensive Web browser software to distribute hyperlinked human-resource documents and training materials (like interactive job listings), while providing a centralized site for electronic data. And software developers are taking notice. With its recent purchase of Collabra Software, a collaborative-discussion company, Netscape Communications is aiming squarely at the groupware market, and you can expect other entries into this new software market later this year.

With few exceptions, the most successful business sites on the Net are sticking to basic HTML and eschewing the Netscape and Microsoft extensions to the 5.0 HTML standard. By doing so, these sites reach a wide audience on all platforms.

In the end, the most savvy companies using the Internet have developed their Net presence organically, learning and adapting to this rapidly changing medium. They budget high enough to show a solid Web presence and weather the frustration of evolving technologies and standards. And they'll be among the first to reap the Web's rewards.

Ten Steps toward a Solid Net Presence:

To stand out from the hordes of businesses arriving each week on the Internet, you need to create a strong online presence. While akin to image advertising, which attempts to create a personality for your business, a company's Internet presence should do more. To gain the respect of people who use the Internet, your business needs to participate and interact with the Internet's culture and accepted practices. And your site should reflect that. Here are ten steps that will help you get started.

1. Encourage interaction. Include E-mail addresses and forms for suggestions, kudos, and complaints. In some cases, it may even be appropriate to post visitor responses in an area of your Web site. Be sure to respond within 48 hours, even if it's just to say that you received the message.

2. Start small and grow. Trying to create an epic site in one fell swoop can make your site feel prefabricated and false. Let it grow and find its own shape gradually.

3. Dedicate adequate resources. The Web is an ongoing project and requires cultivation and dedicated staffing. An unresponsive or unreliable Web site is worse than no Web site at all.

4. Foster personality. Remember the people behind your site. Personal pages are some of the most commonly hit pages on business sites. They give your venture a human face.

5. Surf early and often. Take the time to explore the Net and learn its history and customs. Encourage your staff to be active in online forums that relate to your business. This can help build your reputation online. When posting to newsgroups or responding to E-mail, your staff should include your firm's Internet address(es) as part of their signature.

6. Contribute to the Web's interconnectivity. Add value to your site by providing links to other Web sites that relate to yours. If you sell fishing lures, link to a page that details the National Parks' best fishing spots. The owners of those sites may in turn link to your site, generating more traffic.

7. Respect your visitors' time. Most people make online connections from home via a 56-Kbps modem, so keep your site's graphics small and easy to download. Expedite visitors' ability to find what they want at your site with good navigation and search tools.

8. Update your site regularly. Web pages are always under construction; viewing them as works in progress increases the creative dynamism of your site. Elements that change regularly, joke of the day, or offer of the week, will increase your online traffic.

9. Sponsor contests and online-only promotions. A sure way to attract more visitors is to give things away. A monthly premium, free promotional materials, and special online sales can greatly increase attention to your Web site. Make your contests interactive and fun, ask visitors to answer trivia questions or write a short E-mail essay, for example.

10. Make your Web site URL as commonly known as your phone number. Promote your site address on your business cards and advertising.
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