Here is an overview of what
businesses do with their websites to help the bottom line.
Sell your product or service online - If you
have products to sell, it is easy enough to get a shopping
cart and have site visitors buy items and checkout through
your shopping cart.
Presenting your product and/or service -
Beyond just having information, you can have video, Flash
animations, or even Microsoft PowerPoint presentations online
to help you present what you do in the most attractive manner
possible. These tools can take your website way beyond the
"online brochure" stage.
Get leads for your product or service - Many
types of businesses do not lend themselves to having an online
store. However, most businesses can benefit from starting the
sales cycle by collecting leads that may eventually lead to a
sale.
Sell a subscription to website content - Some
types of businesses can sell monthly subscriptions to their
online service or content.
Sell other products or services which are complimentary to
what you do - You can sell items which aren't yours,
but are items that go with what you are selling. Your profit
margin isn't as high, but you can still generate revenue from
this source.
Get paid for ads or affiliate programs -
Probably the oldest business model on the Internet is selling
banner ads, directory listings or participating in affiliate
programs to send your traffic and visitors to other sites.
For more ideas, please see the article on business models. |
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Cutting costs with
the web - Many businesses recognize that they don't
have to print brochures anymore, they just send them to the
Web site.
However, there are other things you can do on your
business or organizational web site to lower your operating
costs.
Reduce printing and mailing costs - Some
businesses have a lot of forms, contracts, support documents,
whitepapers, and other information they have to provide to
their customers. These documents can be converted to
downloadable pdfs and placed on the Web site in a special
section.
Reduce customer service calls & costs -
Certain businesses may benefit greatly by filtering, reducing
and intercepting some of the most common questions by using an
online support system, F.A.Q.s or ticket generation tool This
can greatly reduce cost of customer service or support in
certain instances.
Online presentations - do a presentation over
the web using the same techniques outline earlier. This type
of presentation can save your business travel and in person
meeting expenses.
Share data with your partners - If you are able to share
information and exchange information with your trading
partners, you can often save time, and thereby expense in
doing business with them. This may be achieved by simply
sharing pdf documents, catalogs, price sheets, etc available
on your web site, or you can create a special tool where they
can login and interact with your internal business processes.
This is sometimes referred to as an extranet.
Creating an extranet - An extranet can be a time and cost
saving tool for some businesses.
For more details see our
article on Intranets & Extranets.
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