Turn Your Web Site into Cash

Pam Baker

A business web site is not just a good idea, it is an essential sales channel for any business. “Our meal check averages are 15% to 25% higher since we added our Web site,” says Lee Greer, former IT manager and now marketing director of Jason’s Deli, a Texas-based family-operated restaurant chain. “Upselling has been kicked up a notch while kitchen errors have plummeted.”

There’s more to it, however, than just posting a Web site and waiting for cybershoppers to fill your bank account. Here are some steps to help ring in the sales:

Flashy intro pages, spinning graphics, and consumercustomized pages make it very difficult for Web crawlers to search your site. Yet entrepreneurs continue to invest in flash over splash. “Entrepreneurs tend to build Web sites that are drop dead gorgeous but operate badly, and search engines can’t find a bloody thing,” laments Alvarez.

“At least one-third of your Web site design budget should be allocated to necessary things like placing key words, reviewing pages for Web crawler friendly attributes, and developing a site map,” advises Alvarez. “Ditch the flashy animated intro page that most viewers skip anyway and apply that money to site discovery.”

TAKE CONTROL. Launching and maintaining a Web site can be intimidating and time consuming. The temptation is to pass the responsibility on to tech-minded pros. “Don’t!” says Glen Giles, co-owner of Georgiabased Gorilla Guitars, a full-spectrum specialty guitar shop that got its start on the Web. “Subs never seem to finish the work or get the site exactly the way you want it. And if they leave, you might find you are missing original materials or can’t revise the site since you don’t know how it was set up in the first place.”

Put a tech person on payroll instead, advises Giles. The key is to maintain oversight and control of Web site activities. Make sure your tech employee keeps clear records in case you have to change the site.

There are a number of applications on the market to boost your technical capabilities as well. For an excellent guide on these, consider Alvarez’s $95 report “Choose the Right e- Commerce Model” on www.gartner.com. There are a number of Web sites that serve as valuable resources as well. “Yahoo! Store was too difficult for me, but eBay’s www.prostores.com was easy to use,” offers Giles.

“Organizations that are budget conscious, have sufficient open source skills, and only need the Web site basics should consider off-the-shelf tools such as AgoraCart, Interchange, osCommerce, MonsterCommerce or XCart,” advises Alvarez.

“But I don’t think any of them offer site mapping, so the need to hire a designer doesn’t go away when you open the box,” he warns.

FINISH THE JOB. Above all, remember that the customers clicking orders on your Web site are real, and they are expecting a real product or service. That means you must have a system in place to process Web orders quickly and accurately.

“We have a computer with speakers in the front of the store. A noise goes off every 60 seconds until any incoming Web site order is manually confirmed. Once confirmed, the order is printed and fed into our normal order system,” confides Greer.

“If a store loses its Internet connection and thus can’t get online orders, our IT team is instantly aware and will actually fax or call in the orders to the affected store so that the customer is never aware there is a problem and so that our sales are never impacted,” he adds.

The most profitable businesses use Web site and brick and mortar operations in tandem. “But you don’t want people coming to your store to try a product and then going home to order it cheaper online,” says Giles. “We place similar pricing on both, and both offer specials unique to the channel. We also offer free, private guitar lessons with every purchase to ensure they actually come to the store.”

A well-designed Web site will pump up your sales, but it must be executed in great detail—from Web crawler friendly set-up to inventory additions and added processes in your operations. If you follow through on all of these, the payoff from your virtual store will be incredibly real!

>BackTrack < 

---