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weByoU provides
web design services for Acton, Caledon, Erin, Fergus, Georgetown,
Guelph, Orangeville, Milton, Mississauga, Ontario and the
Rest of the World!
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Do
I need a Website?
To succeed in tomorrow's highly competitive business
environment, businesses will need to find innovative
and effective ways to communicate with customers, employees
and the world. Because of the immense number of users
and explosive growth rate, the market potential for any
business on the WWW is phenomenal. A web site is one
of the most powerful marketing tools today.
20 reasons to have a web site are
1. To establish a presence
2. To network
3. To make business
information available
4. To serve your customers
5. To reduce costs
6. To break
down the barriers to your customers
7. To sell things
8. To make pictures, sound and film files
available
9. To reach a highly desirable
demographic market
10. To answer frequently
asked questions
11. To stay in contact with
salespeople
12. To open international markets
13. To create a 24 hour service
14. To make changing
information available quickly
15. To allow feedback from customers
16. To test market new
services and products
17. To improve communication
18. To reach the education
and youth market
19. To reach a specialized market
20. To serve your local market
As the internet becomes more widely available, can you
afford not to take advantage of this advertising medium?
Even a small, inexpensive site can be one of the best
ways of getting your message across.
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To establish a presence
It is estimated that more than a billion people worldwide have access
to the World Wide Web (WWW), and that figure is increasing by the minute.
No matter what your business is, you can't ignore a billion people.
You need to be on the WWW in order to reach them and you can be pretty
certain your competitors will.
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To network
Passing out your business card is part of every good meeting and every
business person can tell more than one story of how a chance meeting
turned into a business opportunity. The web is like a giant business
card, information center, and round the clock Sales Executive for your
business rolled into one. This giant business card can be easily passed
to thousands and maybe millions of potential customers and partners
around the world 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, inexpensively and
simply on the WWW.
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To make business information available
What are your hours? What do you do? How can someone contact you? What
methods of payment do you take? Where are you located? What is today's
special? Today's interest rate? If you could keep your customer informed
of every reason why they should do business with you, don't you think
you could do more business?
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To serve your customers
Making business information available is one of the most important ways
to serve your customers. How about making forms available to pre-qualify
for loans? Allow your customer to punch in sizes and check it against
a database that tells him what color of jacket is available in your
store, without tying up your staff on the phone to take down the information?
All this can be done, simply and quickly, on the WWW.
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To reduce costs
The simple use of e-mail will substantially reduce your administration
costs as well as your long-distance telephone/fax charges. Company's
can send unlimited correspondence for a fixed monthly rate. Postal
charges, envelopes, printing and material management costs are reduced.
Your web site will enable you to promote your products and services 24
hours a day, 365 days a year, to new markets all over this vast globe
for less than the cost of a single regional magazine or Yellow Pages
advertisement.
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To break down the barriers to your
customers
Excellent customer service and customer satisfaction is one of the keys
to a business being successful. One of the real promises of the Internet
is being realized by corporations who are breaking down the barriers
between themselves and their customers.
The results? Quicker and more accurate order processing, more effective
customer service and lower cost - all contributing to increased customer
retention and improved margins.
The Internet is more then an advertising vehicle. Imagine if your customers
could review your catalog, place an order with client-specific pricing
and then confirm delivery status with your courier.
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To sell things
E-Commerce, that is what it is called. With all that information on your
web site, why not let your customers fill in clear, well designed forms
for which they can purchase your products or services right off the
net? More and more people are becoming comfortable with E-Commerce
and increasing technology pertaining to secure transfers contributes
to that comfort. All they want are value, products, and reliable service.
You can provide them this, professionally, easily, and inexpensively
on the web.
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To make pictures, sound and film
files available
Imagine a brochure with pictures, sound and movement. Imagine your products
actually moving on a brochure, wouldn't that be great? Your web site
allows you to do all that and more. The only limitation is your imagination.
A picture is worth a thousand words, but you don't have the space for
a thousand words? The WWW allows you to add sound, pictures and short
movie files to your company's information which may well serve your potential
customers. No brochure will do that.
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To reach a highly desirable demographic
market
The demographic of the WWW user is probably the highest mass-market demographic
available. Usually college-educated or being college educated, making
a high salary or soon to make a high salary.
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To answer frequently asked questions
Whoever answers the phones in your organization can tell you, their time
is usually spent answering the same questions over and over again.
These are the questions customers and potential customers want to know
the answer to before they deal with you. Post them on your web site
and you will have removed another barrier to doing business with you
and freed up some time for that harried phone operator.
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To stay in contact with salespeople
Your employees on the road may need up-to-the-minute information that
will help them make the sale or pull together the deal. If you know
what that information is, you can keep it posted in complete privacy
on the WWW.
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To open international markets
There is no market boundary for the Internet. With your web site, you
are now selling your products and services to the world. With a web
page, you can open up a dialogue with international markets as easily
as with the company across the street. As a matter-of-fact, before
you go onto the web, you should decide how you want to handle the international
business that will come your way, because your postings are certain
to bring international opportunities your way, whether it is part of
your plan or not.
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To create a 24 hour service
If you've ever remembered too late or too early to call the opposite
coast, you know the hassle. We're not all on the same schedule. Business
is worldwide but your office hours aren't. Trying to reach Asia or
Europe is even more frustrating. But web pages serve the client, customer
and partner 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No overtime either.
It can customize information to match needs and collect important information
that will put you ahead of the competition, even before they get into
the office.
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To make changing information available
quickly
Sometimes, information changes before it gets off the press. Now you
have a pile of expensive, worthless paper. Electronic publishing changes
with your needs. No paper, no ink, no printer's bill. You can even attach
your web page to a database which customizes the page's output to a database
you can change as many times in a day as you need. No printed piece can
match that flexibility.
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To allow feedback from customers
You pass out the brochure, the catalog, the booklet. But it doesn't work.
No sales, no calls, no leads. What went wrong? Wrong color, wrong price,
wrong market? Keep testing, the marketing books say, and you'll eventually
find out what went wrong. That's great for the big boys with deep pockets,
but who is paying the bills? You are and you don't have the time or
the money to wait for the answer. With a web page, you can ask for
feedback and get it instantaneously with no extra cost. An instant
e-mail response can be built into web pages and can get the answer
while its fresh in your customers mind, without the cost and lack of
response of business reply mail.
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To test market new services and products
We all know the cost of rolling out a new product. Advertising, advertising,
advertising, PR and advertising. Expensive, expensive, expensive. Once
you have been on the web and know what to expect from those who are
seeing your page, they are the least expensive market for you to reach.
They will also let you know what they think of your product faster,
easier and much less expensively than any other market you may reach.
For the cost of a page or two of web programming, you can have a crystal
ball into where to position your product or service in the marketplace.
Amazing!
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To improve communication
Electronic Mail is a message, file, or picture transmitted via the Internet
from sender to recipient in a few seconds. "So... I can use my
fax for that too!" Yes you can, but can you edit a spreadsheet
faxed to you and then send it on to someone else without having to
retype the entire sheet? With electronic mail or E-mail for short,
you can receive a file, save it, open it using your favorite Word Processor
or Spreadsheet software and edit it anyway you like. E-mail is now
the fastest and cheapest means of effective communication.
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To reach the education and youth
market
If your market is education, consider that most universities already
offer Internet access to their students and most K-12's will be on the
Internet within the next few years. Books, athletic shoes, study courses,
youth fashion and anything else that would want to reach these overlapping
markets needs to be on the web. Even with the coming of the commercial
online services and their somewhat older populations there will be nothing
but growth in the percentage of the under 25 market that will be online.
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To reach the specialized market
With a billion, and growing, number of users of the WWW, even the most
narrowly defined group will be represented in large numbers. Since
the web has several very good search programs, your interest group
will be able to find you, or your competitors.
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To serve your local market
We've talked about the power to serve the world with a web page. How
about your neighborhood? If you are located in The Greater Toronto
Area, Guelph, or Kitchener/Waterloo there are probably enough local
customers with web access to make it worth your while to consider web
marketing. Some restaurants even take lunch orders over the Internet!
But no matter where you are, if the big client has web access, you
should be there too
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