Corporate Web Presence
Advantages and disadvantages of a Web
Presence The World Wide Web is a World
Wide Market. It is a new way of
selling. More and more customers expect to find
your product news and
specifications on the web. But even on the Net, you have
to advertise your
product. Using Internet as a media to advertise your product
is different
from traditional media. Through Internet companies can be present
all over
the world. Using the web as an advertising tool is the cheapest way to
be
discovered at every time. You can also quickly change your
promotional
campaign, in order to gain attention that may lead the consumer
to the product.
Online services become so popular because they provide
two major benefits to
potential buyers: Convenience: Customers can order
products 24 hours a day
wherever they are. They don't have to sit in traffic,
find a parking space, and
walk through countless aisles to find and examine
goods. And they don't have to
drive all the way to a store, only to find out
that the desired product is out
of stock. Information: Customers can find
reams of comparative information about
companies, products, and competitors
without leaving their office or home. They
can focus on objective criteria
such as prices, quality, performance, and
availability. Customers can expect
the advantage to pull the information, to be
drained into detailed catalog or
other information about products and services
for sale that they are looking
for. They do not feel forced, they are looking
for the information by
themselves. Nevertheless it seems that Web advertising is
much more price
than image oriented. Web advertising does not seem the
appropriate way to
advert a product. According to BMRB International (annex 1)
37% of UK Net
shoppers are not ready to purchase off-line They always fear to
give their
account number to a company they do not know. Today a well-known
brand is a
real competitive advantage. BRMB International has shown that 16%
of
purchases has done thanks to an implicit trust of established
brands.
Nevertheless it does not mean that it will stay an advantage in
the future.
Moreover the difference with more traditional media is that
customers come to
you and not you to the customers. You cannot retain their
attention if they feel
that it does not worth it. When you wish to expand
your market share trough
Internet, you have to consider the specificity
of your target audience. At the
present time people who buy through Internet
are young, daily users of
computers. But there are not only people used to
Internet. Because e-business is
growing up (annex 2), we can assume that most
people have no experience in
e-business. The audience can be both good
Internet users and beginners. Dealing
with communication interaction Security
The World Wide Web is the fastest
growing part of the Internet. Increasingly,
it is also the part of the Internet
that is the most vulnerable to attack.
For users, a secure web server is one
that will safeguard any personal
information (bank account number) that is
received or collected. It is one
that supports their privacy and will not
subvert browser to download viruses
or other rogue programs onto their computer
For a company, a secure web
server is resistant to a determined attack over the
Internet or from
corporate insiders. In order to increase security, you can use
a system for
automatically encrypting information as it is sent over the
Internet and
decrypting it before it is used. One of Netscape Communication's
early
innovations was its SSL. You can also use firewalls, which is a device
that
isolates an organization's internal network from the Internet at
large,
allowing specific connections to pass and blocking others. Marketing
/
Communication It is really important to get people inform of the
existence of
your web site. You will have to shout it from the roof tops! You
can use your
letterhead, your cards or your leaflets to write your web
address. You can also
through a TV or board advertising campaign let people
know about your site
existence. As Jim Sterne says: "your web site can be
funny, pretty, useful,
crisp and clean, but if you don't promote it, its
message won't be seen".
By the way you can also manage to register
different key words on browsers in
order to put make know your web site when
people look for information in your
business area. Deliveries and Payment If
you use e-commerce on your website,
once the buyer has searched through a
catalog and made his decision to purchase,
the order, the payment, the handle
fulfillment and other aspects of order
management have to be processed. The
order processing must include the ability
to group items together for later
purchase; this capability is called a shopping
cart in the case of retail
transactions; it usually includes the ability to
modify the contents of the
shopping cart at any time. This way the buyer can
discard items, add new
ones, change the quantities and so on. To the purchase,
the buyer will have
additional charges such as sales taxes and shipping costs.
The order
processing system presents the buyer with an itemized order form
including
all the charges so the buyer can pay for the items. Information
effect
With the Internet, it is now possible to obtain accurate and
immediate feedback
from your customers (A daemon can count the number of
hits). With access to this
information, your business will be able to add the
most personalized value to
the customer. Tool such as the World Wide Web
helps you to build more of your
business decision-making based on outside
information, and find out more about
your non-customers and what
non-customers and what they are doing, and why they
are not customers. Fiscal
and legal implications Internet is still largely
unregulated. Because
Internet is global (no territorial limits), electronic (no
"writing") and
digital (perfect copies can be made almost
instantaneously and repetitively),
it is a source of different problems. The
state of California tries to
regulate e-business in California (annex 3). It
seems very complex to set up
a world wide regulation and, at the present time
nobody knows what to do if
something going wrong in the cyberspace. Concerning
taxation, applying
existing tax rules and system to the Internet world is
tempting but does not
answer to the needs of this marketplace. One key aspect to
resolving the
taxation issue of Internet commerce is to keep tax policies
universal,
uniform, and neutral. Resources needed to maintain the Site
Obviously,
resources need to maintain a web site is going to depend on the size
of the
web site. Whatever the size you firstly need to ask you few questions
such
as: Will this solution be flexible enough to accommodate change? Do we
have
the technical competencies to support Internet initiatives? Is this
solution
customizable to our needs and our customer needs? Do we have the
technological
infrastructure (network services; hardware, software) required
to develop and
scale? Do we have sufficient funding for ongoing web site
maintenance? Do we
have operations capabilities to support our Internet
strategy? Web creation
There are two different ways to create a web site.
You can do it yourself or ask
an agency to manage the creation of your web
site. If you decide to create
yourself your web site, you will need special
coding software. But if you decide
to delegate the creation to an agency, it
might cost you around $750 for a basic
web site (annex 4). Web maintenance
However you must also take into
consideration the maintenance. When you have
created your web site, you must
care to make it alive. You need to care about
your human resources skills
According to the "Business Marketing Web
Consortium" the following
roles should be filled: · A Web Editor.Depending on
the size of the site, this
could be a part-time or a full-time person. The
Web editor is responsible for
content for a site. · A Web Master, responsible
for the infrastructure and
technology supporting the website. Making sure
that links link, and the site
performs · An Infomaster responsible for timely
response to inquiries · An
overall Technology Leader, defining corporate
standards and resources required
Poor maintenance can severely damage a
company's image Site Design and Structure
As we have pointed out since
the beginning, e-business is a new way of selling.
When a potential
customer gets connected to your site, you have not sell
anything yet. There
are different ways to attract customers to your product.
Firstly, you
need to care about your web design. It means that you should not
forget that
if there are too many pictures or electronic animations, download is
going to
take a while. If your site require downloading applications, they
should
downloaded in twenty seconds or less. Users of Internet expect fast
and
functional site (avoid horizontal scrolling). Web sites must be
customers
oriented rather than product oriented. Information value is much
more important
than "glizz". Customers stay loyal because of the service, not
because
they like your web site. Simplicity and speed differentiate your
site, making it
easy for business customers to order. Secondly, Web marketers
must ask if their
markets are comfortable with English. Global marketers
recommend adding local
languages when needed. Thirdly, in order to maintain
interest in your site, you
have to make it interactive. Internet is both a
business and communication tool,
you must provide to users a page where you
give relevant information on your
product but also on your industry area. It
is recommended to let customers
express their feelings through email. But you
do not do it only for the fun,
your site must be professional (ie: updated,
fast answers), that is why you have
to deal with your e-customers as you are
used to do with your offline customers.
In order to support the design of
your future web site, we would like to present
this tree structure.