Type the phrase “great bargains” into any web search engine, and you'll be presented with adverts for hundreds of thousands of products and services at what purport to be discounted prices or great value propositions. You will also be looking at what is arguably the greatest bargain for businesses that ever came along, the World Wide Web.
In the first article in this series, we looked at how broadband adoption in the UK has made the Internet so popular in households that being without a credible web presence, or, worse still, ignoring the web, is like throwing business away.
However, the good news is that establishing and maintaining a web presence has never been easier or cheaper. In some cases, it's free! Another attractive property of the web is its scalability; different types of business require different types of web presence, which may change as the business grows. For example, the requirements of a chain of dry cleaners will vary considerably from those of a chain of travel agents.
In the case of the latter, a website will need to support the selling of holidays, hotel rooms and flights online, complete with complex databases to enable the customer to mix and match options and play around with dates and prices. All this will need to come with a secure payment system. It's no wonder, then, that some businesses delay implementing something they suspect will be complex to manage and costly to run.
However, not every small business needs anything so intricate to create a valuable presence on the web. Let's examine the more modest requirements of a dry cleaning chain. In this case, a prospective customer, new to the area, will typically browse the web to find out the nearest such service in their area, its opening times and a general price list. There is unlikely to be much point in spending significant resources on creating an online store with payment facilities, as the customer will have to come to the store with their clothes anyway.
If we stick with this example, it would be possible to create a valuable web presence with a minimal upfront expenditure. At the very least, the dry cleaners should create a listing with several of the leading online listing services such as Yell.com, Thomsonlocal.com, Touch Local and Google Maps.
Yell.com, which is a web offshoot of the original Yellow Pages, claims that 39% of all UK Internet users visited its site in the last 12 months, citing figures from market researchers, GFK NOP. All these suppliers offer a free of charge basic listing service for businesses, which display their name, address, telephone number, a classification of their business, and a brief description.
Google Maps is another attractive option. If you create a listing with this service, your business appears as a coloured map pin on a local Google Map, and clicking on it displays the address, contact details and directions on how to get there.With free services like these, obtaining a listing should be a no-brainer for all small businesses, especially as implementing them is just a question of filling in a few items in an online form.
Not surprisingly, web-listing services have paid-for options, which they hope businesses will upgrade to. For example, Touch Local has a paid-for service, called Touch Lead Finder, which at the time of writing, starts at £24.50 per month. This is a service that is designed to transform a listing from a simple advert to a system for generating sales leads. Extra features include free phone calls for customers, who've seen your listing and want to contact you. Customers can also email you through the Touch Local service. Other perks include space for graphics like a company logo or a picture of your premises, and your business listing is more prominently displayed.
All the web listing services offer similar ranges of paid-for options, and some even provide design services to help you make your listing stand out. And none of these services require much financial or staff input, while having the potential to add incremental business. Even some businesses with well-designed web sites sometimes overlook the importance of making sure they are represented in the listings sites.
Another free way to establish a web presence is to at least consider setting up a page in a social networking site, like MySpace. It's not just populated with troubled teenagers and pimply bands, and it is astoundingly popular. According to the web usage tracker comScore Inc, Fox Interactive Media (which owns MySpace) had the eleventh highest number of unique visitors of any UK webhost, during December 2007*.
Lots of businesses have set up sites promoting themselves or even dedicating sites to their products. Admittedly, this tends to be more the preserve of cutting-edge media companies and clothes outlets, but there are pages dedicated to restaurants, and even products like inkjet printers, bizarre as it may sound. This sort of approach may not be suitable for all businesses, but it is free of charge.
In the next issue, we will take a look at how setting up websites, even ones with online shopping carts, is getting easier and less expensive.