What can the web do for you?

As a small business the web is both a potential source of income, an advertising platform, a communications service and a mess. The trick is to get the web to work for you rather than making it your work.

The web/internet offer some unique opportunities to small businesses. It can automate;

- Order Processing
- Credit Card Transactions
- Business to Business Communications
- Business to Customer Communications (individuals or lists)
- Advertising
- General Information for customers and partners

To be realistic, some of the things being on the web/internet does not guarantee are;

- Increase in sales
- Reduced amount of time for customer communications
- Better customer communication
- Cheaper advertising rates

It is important to understand that the web is much like a cash register, a more efficient way of keeping records, but when it doesn't work, you are in trouble.

With that out of the way, let's get down to the nuts and bolts of what the web can do, how do you find out more about it, when should you get an expert to help you, and what is it going to cost you in time and money. The first two subject are email and internet connectivity. If these are unfamiliar subjects, I would recommend picking up a step-by-step guide at a local bookstore or library or take a class at a local community college.

Low or No Cost Email can be found at the following sites;

- Hotmail (http://www.hotmail.com)
- Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com)
- Google (http://gmail.google.com)

Internet Connectivity is available from the following vendors. Any of the choices below will be OK, though dial-up and wireless tend to be slower and less reliable than DSL or Cable. Some examples of companies offering internet connectivity are listed below;

- Comcast Cable - http://www.comcast.com/
- Southwestern Bell - http://public.swbell.net/
- Web Perception - http://www.webperception.com/site/services/wireless.htm
(local wireless internet provider)

After you have an internet connection and an email address, the next iteration or enhancement for a business is to reserve a domain and create a website. In most cases, the same provider will do both services, but they are separate and charged separately. A domain name is the part of the web address after "www." and before the ".com" or ".biz". We won't worry about ".org" or ".net" for this article. A web domain can based on your business name, a product you sell, a service you offer or anything else. As a business, I would recommend that the domain name you opt for is closely related to your business so that your customers and suppliers can remember it without calling you to ask for it all the time.

After you have a few ideas go to Register.com (among others) and look up the name to see if the "domain" you want is available;

- http://www.register.com/

Register.com is a provider of websites as well, but I would look at a few others first such as;

- Yahoo - http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/
- Go Daddy - http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/default.asp
- Hostway - http://promo.hostway.com/index.htm

For more info on these and other providers, check out the CNET review at,
- http://reviews.cnet.com/Internet_services/2001-6028_7-0.html

The price on websites is based on the services provided. If all you want is a place to put an already built site, cheapest may be best. If you want help with building a site or an online template for creating a site or if you need to promote the site to search engines afterwards, you will want to look around before jumping. A few hours of a consultants's time to help you figure this out would be well spent.

We will finish off this article by dipping into the ecommerce realm. What type of commerce are you trying to promote. Do you want to sell tickets to a single event or meeting? Do you want to sell your products online? The solutions for each of these would be different.

If you want to sell tickets or capture registration fees check out Molly Guard (http://www.mollyguard.com/) or Acteva (http://www.acteva.com). If you are interested in selling products online use an online shopping cart* such as;

- Yahoo - http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/
- Go Ecart - http://www.goecart.com/default.asp

and of course, to sell a single product, ebay (http://www.ebay.com) is a good choice.

(Before going into ecommerce, please talk to a consultant/web designer and your accountant to make sure you are choosing the right product and you have covered yourself for any tax ramifications)

* shopping cart - the technical term for a virtual shopping basket that allows you to buy product(s) fom an internet site without recurrence (not for subscriptions)

Yahoo and other vendors charge you for the use of their shopping cart and you should review compare the fees associated with each shopping cart in addition to the credit card processing fees before you choose one. Some sites that offer a comparisons are;

- http://www.infomerchant.net/merchantaccounts/shopping_carts_comparison.html
- http://www.goecart.com/Shopping_cart_software_comparison_yahoo.asp (1:1 comaprisons with goecart)