Business Solutions

There are a number of companies available that help your business grow through the use of the internet. They will do this by the use of a web site. A good web site will help your business. It is designed to work for the customer. It can translate prospects to customers within minutes; taking them through the marketing, selling and ordering phases. A poor website will leak customers at each of these stages.

Business Web Solutions

The aim of these companies is to assist clients in making the most of the opportunity offered by the Internet. This means they can use the web to support existing business strategies, such as increasing numbers of customers, increasing repeat sales to existing customers and reducing their operating costs.

There are six important opportunities where the web technology and the Internet offer a significant advantage. These are:

Targeting New Markets - The Web offers a number of advantages to your business in terms of allowing access to greater markets. It will offer an increased customer volume by extending your market, both geographically and demographically. There will be more convenience for the customer and better shopping hours to suit the customer. Top consumer sites will be busy from 9am in the morning to 1am the next day. You will have a cross-link with other markets, for example, if you are selling car insurance, then links from 'What Car' or 'Auto Express', or even from local garages, tyre fitters, etc can create customer visits, which with the right product and website can convert into sales. You will also have a greater exposure through search engines - a good search engine positioning will also increase the number of visits and hence sales.

Increased Sales Revenue - It is predicted that £3.5bn has been spent on the web over a normal Christmas period. Most businesses should be thinking about at least 10% of their business being online. Web based sales offer several advantages to your business such as increased customer volumes by extending your reach geographically and demographically, higher value per sale - by careful design the web site can up-sell or cross-sell related goods and services, thus increasing the value of your goods and higher retention and better information capture - by careful design the web site can legally capture customers details and provide opportunities for future marketing.

Reducing Cost of Sales - A website is a great way for automatically taking orders. It does so 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If it is successfully managed, it will be considerably cheaper than any other method (between 50% and 90%, depending on your market and business operating approach). Cost is eliminated at all stages of ordering, by providing the following types of online service - stock enquiries, advanced orders / pre-ordering, product selection application and product selection advice, ordering - including capturing customer details and payment details, delivery tracking and enquiry support, invoicing viewing and payment handling and returns and exchanges.

These services also remove mistakes being made by your customers and your staff again reducing cost.

Reducing Calls to help lines and call centres - By providing self-help, self-service and answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) on a customer facing website, customers can be directed away from help lines and call centres, allowing these to add more value by solving more difficult issues.

Marketing literature, bills, invoices, product instructions and the company's voicemail system can all highlight the availability of this service, by letting customers know the website address.

Call volumes can be reduced considerably by the careful analysis of call types and effective deployment of web solutions. Some typical examples of these would be address changes, service change requests, request for information, product literature, prices, etc and policy / support questions - returns, exchanges, warrantees.

Improving Customer Service - The objective of most customer service teams is creating customer experience that strengthens the relationship with the company. However achieving this can be difficult. The service will only be as good as the last call and staff turn-over, training, monitoring and motivation can all be significant challenges.

It would be very beneficial for any company to have a website. The more your website stands out and catches the customers’ eye, the more likely you are to have a high volume of people looking at it. This will therefore, increase the possibility of more sales and repeat customer orders. It is definitely a possibility that all companies should think about doing, as it is basically an easy selling market as no selling is required from your salesman, as long as you have an attractive, informative and easy to use website.