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Why A Web Site Now??
By Casey T. Call concepts@rconnect.com
1. This is the Information Age, No Marketing Mix is complete without a Web site.
2. A Web site shows your products and services in detail like NO OTHER medium can.
a. Use Photos, Video Clips and Audio Clips to demo the features and benefits of your company, products and services.
b. Use Virtual Tours of manufacturing, service advantages, and facilities to show your company's strengths.
3. Your Web site will allow interactive communication with prospects AND customers via E-mail and forms.
4. Add to your database and collect detailed demographic information through online contests and promotions with virtually no data entry by staff.
5. Reach new market segments on the Web your normal advertising never reaches.
6. Generate cash flow by offering new products or services to the massive Web audience.

Retailers:
1. Make offers and sales 24 hours, 7 days a week.
2. Handle customer service issues via E-mail 24 hours, 7 days a week.
4. Post store locations and business info for instant world wide access.
5. Build a customer database automatically.

Distributors and Manufacturers:
1. Keep dealer network informed of inventory issues, stock, back orders, and new products.
2. Make it EASY for dealers to participate in CO-OP advertising and promotions via the Web site interactively.
3. Accept payments 24 hours, 7 days a week via I-Check, credit card or digital cash programs.
4. Dealers can place orders or check order status 24 hours, 7 days a week.
5. Dealers can update their information via E-mail and then post to your database with ease.

No doubt you have products or services that will interest Internet users. Whatever you sell, whatever services you offer, there are a lot of people today using the Internet looking for your company. The web may be the perfect medium to reach market segments that might never see your present print, radio, or TV advertising. Have you seen the Dell Computer TV ad that says there are two kinds of companies today, those who are determined to master the Internet and those who will be left behind? Which kind of company do you want your company to be? Another important consideration of Why have a Web site Now is, can your company promotes its web site through other media? If you can bring a percentage of your prospects to your Web business center for a fast and easy sale, then you needed a Web site yesterday.

One way to generate new sales for a small manufacturer would be to include an information sheet in any contact with your client list (billings, newsletters, ect.). Let them know your web site has up to the minute interactive product and ordering information available to them.

Be CREATIVE with a web site. For your site, you might consider giving away promotional items or selling them at a bargain price; for example, a T-shirt for only $5.00. This will entice people into joining your database. An Online Contest will also get people to register with your company, adding to your valuable database. You can’t use these automated, cost effective customer base building tools if you don’t have a Web site.

Web Users Are Getting Even MORE Connected, INSTANTLY!
By Joe Call concepts@rconnect.com
It has been said by many internet gurus that the KILLER APP of the Internet is e-mail. Everything else is just getting rolling and it will take a lot of time to sort out what is useful and what is fluff. If you send and receive e-mail you know what a mixed blessing it can be. If you are very active on the web like I am, you may get 30 to 50 e-mails in one day. Many of those can turn out to be SPAM or junk e-mail from people who sell, recruit and promote EVERYTHING you can imagine. One of the newer ways to keep in touch with a select group of internet users is called instant message systems. These are also known as Buddy Lists by those who use America On Line. These are a few of the software solutions available today. The one I have the most experience with is called ICQ. It is pronounced by just using the letters and sounds like I SEEK YOU. The other main programs that allow for instant messages to a personalized list of select users are, America On Line Instant Messenger (AIM), Ding, Ichat Pager, and Live List.

The AOL program was the first of this type to gain a following because America On Line has always had a substantial number of users who chat and interact with each other. Other folks out on the internet connecting through a myriad of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) had to go to special web sites to chat or to the Internet Relay Chat channels to converse directly. Software companies soon got the idea that there may be a market for this kind of web client program and ICQ has developed a very sophisticated program that is much more PC usable than Macintosh friendly. I have the program on both platforms and the PC version includes many more features than the Mac version does. One of the COOLEST features of ICQ is it allows 2 users to do point to point file transfers without having to use e-mail attachments!!

All of these instant message programs work in much the same way, and AIM and ICQ are free to use (at least for now). They let you see which of your friends are online, so you can send and receive instant messages from people on your list. The features, the look and the feel of each program is how they differ. First you'll have to go to a site to download the program. You can get ICQ and many other message and chat programs from www.tucows.com. Next down load the program and follow installation instructions. The installation for my PC was easy using the Add/Remove program in Win 95. The Mac was easy too, but Mac users remember to turn off your extensions before installing or you could run into conflicts. Then you'll have to register for the program with your name, e-mail address, other personal information, then choose a nickname or user name and password, all of which is retained in the system server of the program. The program in the system server uses your IP address so others can see and send messages to you.

The program will send out pings at intervals to see who's online. If the ping sees someone's IP who is on your list, the client reports that person is online and their name moves to the online section of your program window. Then you can use whatever features that program offers to send messages and request private chat with that person. The rule is this; not only must you both be online at the same time to message back and forth or chat, but you must also be using the same program. This is one of the big reasons that the AOL program is popular with internet users not on AOL because it's the only one that can connect up non-AOL users and AOL users.

What is really happening here goes much farther than just having a neat new way to get in touch with someone besides e-mail. The companies who have created these programs hope that some day their software will be the favorite flavor of the business community to conduct meetings, carry on customer support and service, as well as build virtual communities where commerce and interaction are all on their channel (so to speak). It's a high stakes game of poker being played for a piece of future interactivity. Most of these companies offer solutions for server products to page, chat, conference audio and even video. Netscape has added the AOL Instant Messenger functions to the browser package.

We hope you have found some useful information here and will make use of one of these programs to enhance your internet experience. Until next time, may all your downloads be swift and your installs go smoothly.

For more on any of these products see the links below.
ICQ visit http://www.icq.com/
Ding visit http://www.activerse.com/
Ichat visit http://www.ichat.com/
Live List visit http://www.onlive.com/
AOL Instant Messenger visit http://www.aol.com/aim/

What Is E-Commerce and What
Does It Have To Do With Me?
By Larry Alger answers@3aweb.com

Have you ever driven across the desert in the great American Southwest? If you have, then at some point in the trip you must have thought to yourself, "How did the first pioneers do this on foot and in covered wagons?" Speeding along at 70 miles an hour, or more, in air conditioned comfort as the seemingly endless miles roll by, you have to feel at least a little lucky to live today and not back then. The same feeling comes to me looking out the window of a jet airliner flying across the landscape, how lucky I am to fly high above the harsh desert, and get across the country in a matter of a few hours instead of weeks or months.

Progress enables us all to go farther, faster and do more than our fathers or grandfathers ever imagined possible. Today the convergence of telephone, television and computer, which is the Internet, has brought us progress at an unprecedented rate of change. These changes are defining our future as surely as the automobile and the jet airplane shape our present.

Electronic Commerce (E-commerce) enables sellers to provide their goods and services to buyers world-wide through the Internet. E-commerce empowers both buyers and sellers to meet, retrieve information, interact and at mutual agreement do a transaction in moments. This includes payment and fulfillment, without leaving the home or office. E-commerce reduces the cost of doing the transaction for consumer and provider. Virtual vendors reduce the selling costs of brick and mortar overhead as well as reducing the cost of doing transactions. Every day buyers can find CDs that retail in stores at $13.99 to $16.99 for maybe $10 to $12 in web stores. Computers that are advertised by national chains at $1,399 can be found on line for $900 to $1,000. These savings over retail shop prices abound for those online. Today however, the real return on internet investment is being realized by large corporations using servers and web browsers to streamline their business systems.

The November Internet Business magazine cover story reported in depth on the new internet based order system for Mobil Oil's 300 North American stocking automotive lubricant distributors. These independent business people supply Mobil products to thousands of retail outlets. Mobil made a modest investment (for a 70 billion dollar per year company) in an internet ordering system, and a year of development and deployment. The article quoted Forrester Research estimates that this type of system can reduce the cost of processing a traditional paper purchase order from $45.00 to just $1.25. That is BIG money cost reduction in anybody's business with increases in work flow and convenience too. One small distributor, instead of investing in a new windows computer system uses the Mobil extranet from the public library to place orders. In Mobil's case the savings translates to a 194% return on investment over 5 years time. Or put another way, the system rolled out last year will have paid for itself twice over by the year 2003.

Many people reading this may think to themselves, what has this got to do with me? I'm not an oil company, Ford, General Motors or Wal Mart. My answer is "True", but you probably BUY from these companies. Or someone in your family or neighborhood works for these companies. And if business can reduce costs, improve service and save you some money, then e-commerce really is touching your life, isn't it?

"The more you know,
the farther you can go" -
The Tri-State Computer Chronicle

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