On 10 Sep 98, Suzanne wrote:
> A few types of businesses (i.e.
> specialty items like antique guns or Dave's jewelry) are ideal. But there
> are other benefits, such as being able to rapidly dessiminate information,
> etc."
Yes, profit can certainly be measured in ways other than sales. Anything
that reduces a business's overhead contributes to profits, and the Web
has much to offer in this regard.
I've been looking after marketing and publishing duties for my father's law
firm for awhile now, starting out in DTP days writing and designing their
newsletter, and since 1996 maintaining a Web site for them.
Dad's firm is forty years old and quite prosperous, so they don't especially
need new clients. That component of the Web site, marketing the firm's
services, is minor. Where the site pays for itself is in expediting
communications between them and far-flung clients, many in Asia. The
single most-used feature is a page of documents for downloading by
clients, relating to the patent applications, copyright assignment, and so
on: clients can download, complete and return in a day paperwork that
used to take weeks to travel back and forth by surfacemail. This is real
bonus for both parties, and aids profitability.
Dad also no longer distributes a printed newsletter to clients; naturally, it
exists only on the Web now. Previously it was an expensive and lengthy
process distributing the newsletter: write and edit the copy, give it to the
designer (me) for lay-out, send it to the printer, stuff it in envelopes and
mail it -- we figured the per-unit cost (staff wages, printing, postage, etc
etc) to the firm was about $10, for a document that was basically out of
date by the time it arrived. Now, of course, it can be updated and
distributed almost instantly, at nearly null cost.
(I often use this analogy when pitching would-be clients hesitant to invest
in the Web: "OK, what do you spend on conventional marketing and
distribution now? Your last brochure cost how much? Ten grand. And
how many copies are still in the storeroom? That many, eh? Huh." Etc.
When you get a client looking hard at his existing direct-mail or other
conventional marketing costs, a Web site can start to look pretty good.)
As for your basic question, who's making money on the Web:
It's been my observation that a general (though not exclusive) rule for
success in Web marketing is this:
"You'll have a much better chance of succeeding if your product
or service is one that customers are already accustomed to
buying at arm's length."
People have been buying merchandise by mail and over the phone for
decades: the basic model of buying over the Web is nothing new. There
is precious little substantive difference between ordering a CD via a 1-800
number in a TV ad, and buying books from Amazon.com. (Again, people
are *used to buying books this way*, as the enduring success of Book of
the Month-type selling proves.)
On the other hand, Web merchandising is still tainted in many people's
minds by its technological novelty, and the attendant (largely distorted)
publicity about security risks. (As I point out to people concerned about
such things, "Look, you'll sit in a dark smoky bar and hand your credit card
to some 19-year-old waiter without a second thought -- do you have any
guarantees that he's not misusing it while it's out of your sight? Well, the
chances of your card being abused on a secure Web server are *much*
smaller.")
Anyway, so products will sell better on the Web if customers are already
used to buying them by mail or phone. This encompasses obvious
categories -- books, CDs, software and hardware, travel bookings -- and
less obvious ones, such as breeding services for livestock, collectable
items like dolls and stamps, specialized maunfacturing processes, and so
on.
And as others have pointed out, even if you don't generate a lot of direct
sales from a site you should be on the Web anyway, simply because it is
increasingly expected of businesses. I suppose my objectivity here is
suspect, but when I hear that a company I want to deal with doesn't
have e-mail or a site, I tend to discount them as somehow "shady" or
unreliable. Unless it's a plumber or garage or something like that. But
even that will change, I imagine. A Web presence will be as basic as a
Yellow Pages listing for most businesses, in a few years.
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Brent Eades, Almonte, Ontario
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Town of Almonte site: http://www.almonte.com/
Business site: http://www.federalweb.com
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