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There are many business uses for a web site. Many people assume that directly selling your
product over sophisticated "secure" web servers is the only use for a web site. Although
many businesses are selling in this manner, most business oriented web sites don't.
Most businesses are using their web site to provide customers, and potential customers, an
additional communication pathway to their company.
Examples of how your business might benefit:
- Providing answers to "frequently asked questions" about your products or services.
- Providing suggestions to your customer on how to take better advantage of your products
or service.
- Linking your customers to related sites that they might find useful.
- Providing customers with "on-line" questionnares. A great way to get feedback from
your customers!
- Providing sales information to prospective customers. In other words, promoting
your business.
- To allow remote sales people to communicate with you and the rest of the company.
- To provide information to your company's stock holders.
Other useful business features:
- Professional looking E-mail addresses. If you have your own domain name, you can use
E-mail addresses that match that name. If your domain name is "bigbusiness.com", you could
use "bob@bigbusiness.com" as your E-mail address. This looks much more professional than
an address like: "bobsmith@aol.com". This is not a slam against AOL, they are a great
connection for millions of users. But which would you rather have on your business card?
You can also use different E-mail addresses for different purposes - all forwarded to you
at "bobsmith@aol.com". There is a great benefit to this. You could use
"sales@bigbusiness.com" for brochures, "promo1@bigbusiness.com" for a specific radio ad
campaign, etc. All of this mail could ultimately be forwarded to you at "bobsmith@aol.com".
An additional advantage to this is that if, for some reason, you decided to leave AOL and go
to a different provider, no problem. You don't have to have your business cards and
letterheads reprinted, just change the "forward to" address! It's quick and easy and
inexpensive. Imagine how much it costs for new business stationary!
- Parts of your web site could be password protected. This could be used for "internal
use", or for specific customers.
- A web site can be changed quickly and inexpensively, and often.
Can the Yellow pages?
- The list goes on...
- and on...
- and on...
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