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10 Ways Your Offline Business Could Benefit From a Website
by: Jeff Couret of WebNola.com
1. Co-branding
Co-branding is a way of advertising and/or business partnership with a non-competing business. There are lots of ways to accomplish this, and Co-Branding is especially effective over the internet. In this example, Geico and Mrs. Butterworth use Co-Branding in a TV commercial to help build both brands. This mentality is easily brought to the internet to both help offset advertising cost, and work to build all involved brands. In the same example, the somewhat groundbreaking commercial was put on YouTube to receive over 18,000 views.
Co-Branding isn't just for videos. Two non-competing companies could split the cost of banner ads, text links, or even have the other company's logo on their virtual or physical products. This results in less expensive advertising and easier brand exposure.
2. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing, simply put, is a way of hiring online salesman to sell your product or service online. More often than not, these affiliates will work on a commission-only basis, so you only have to pay them for the sales or leads that they drive to your website. You can pay your affiliates a flat rate per sale, a percentage of the sale made, or a flat rate per lead sent. Affiliate marketing is a cost-effective way of generating new business.
3. Much more broad target market
This one is fairly simple, and is perhaps the main draw for an offline business to go online. Most offline businesses can only realistically target customers within a small radius. With a quality web presence, a New Orleans shoe store can now target customers as far away as San Fransisco and Maine!
4. Syndication
If your site will feature content that is updated on a regular basis, you can consider syndicating your content using RSS feeds. RSS feeds allow users to read your content from feed readers like Google Reader. The user's feed reader will update automagically when your site is updated. This leads to higher brand loyalty, and lifelong readership. Guess who'll be the first to know when your next product is released? Your feed readers, that's who!
5. Not having to rely on car/foot traffic
If your offline business is centralized with one or more "brick and mortar" locations, chances are you rely heavily on passerby traffic from cars and/or pedestrians. Let me ask you a legitimate question: What would happen to your sales if road construction set potential customers on a detour away from your business? You'd lose many of them as customers, that's what. This could put your business in a very binding position, especially if you are just starting out.
When you build your online web presence, your business can begin to rely less on passerby traffic by selling your goods and services online. A well thought-out web presence just might keep your business booming in the case of an unfortunate emergency.
6. Other revenue streams
When your business has a website, there are other ways of generating income other than just selling your goods and services. You can sell links or banners to non-competing businesses, or even become an affiliate of another website and sell their products along with yours.
7. Automatically generated statistics
One great thing about having a website is the fact that you can easily get very detailed statistics on what your surfers are doing while they are on your site. Compare that with walk-in traffic, who might get offended if you watch their every move while they are in your "brick and mortar" location. Knowing what your users are doing is a great way to test new idea implementations, and to find potential errors and issues with your site.
8. Ease of communication
Before websites existed, business owners fretted about having multilingual employees. With a good web presence, your users will be able to easily change the language of your site. As soon as you offer multilingual versions of your site, your business becomes "international" in every sense of the word.
9. Paperless
How much money does your business spend on paper every fiscal year? With a quality web presence, your business may be able to do away with paper altogether. This solution would be great for your pocketbook AND for the environment. Make your business "go green" by becoming paperless!
10. Always-there portfolio / business card
Have you ever wished you had a business card, but forgot to re-load your wallet with extras? If you have a website, you can simply tell the person your web address. If you are in the business of design, you can't always bring your hard portfolio with you wherever you go. Give out your url!
Thank you for reading this article about ways to benefit from taking the big step of incorporating a web presence in your business. I hope that this article helps you make an informed decision on our Web Services. If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to go back to the web design articles list. If you would like a quick free estimate on your upcoming project, just contact us. Thanks again for taking the time to read this.
-Jeff Couret (Founder/Developer - WebNola)
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