Phoenix Technologies - What You Need to Know About Business Websites

Behind the Hype!
What you really need to know about
the Internet & business
By Jim Moore, Owner of Phoenix Technologies
Member - International Assoc. of Webmasters & Designers

As you no doubt know, there's been much more hype when it comes to Internet technology than it deserves.

From the beginning, it was much like the Wild, Wild West - no rules, no laws - and when the dust settled, not much of the Information Highway was left for the rest of us. The whiz kids and charlatans pocketed their millions and walked away from an industry that had suddenly turned from gold to ashes.

Oh, sure ... a lot of people get on the Internet, but as far as really making money, the conventional wisdom seemed to conclude that the little guy didn't stand a chance against giants like Microsoft and AOL Time Warner, who muscled in to take control of the money end of that World Wide Web.

It was very similar to what happened at the turn of the last century when the automobile industry was born. It was touted as the greatest thing since sliced bread and a lot of investors coughed up their life savings for the promise that the "horseless carriage" would make them multi-millionaires.

At the time, though, each automobile had to be individually constructed from the ground up, making it a product few could afford - and that the industry couldn't deliver. The infant auto industry crashed and thousands of investors lost everything.

It wasn't until "the Second Wave" when Henry Ford introduced the assembly line and autos were mass produced that the industry again took off and became one of the most successful of the century. Even today, except for cosmetic changes, little has changed.

Did you know that Henry's old Model A even put out less pollution than cars created 70 years later?

Today, the technology industry is at that same crossroads. Now that the initial excitement and recklessness has worn off ... it's time to get down to business!

Now, I'm sure you're sitting there at this point looking at your screen and asking, "Yeah, sure, great ... but what does this have to do with me?"

The purpose of this presentation is to show you the unbiased facts that will convince you YOU CAN INCREASE YOUR SALES WITH A WEBSITE - but only if it's done right.

This presentation also has a secondary purpose: to help you avoid the mistakes that drove so many Internet businesses to bankruptcy.

There's an ulterior motive behind all this. When you're finished, I hope you're convinced that I told you the truth, that I know what I'm doing, that I'll look out for your interests and that, as a result, you want my firm to handle your Internet needs.

In fact, I want to convince you of this SO MUCH that I am offering you FREE - on this CD - over 100 vital tips that will help your business whether you hire me or not!

"OK," you've finally decided, "I'm gonna get a website for my small business ... well, maybe." Actually, you're still hesitant. And in no way are you yet convinced you want Phoenix Technologies to do it!

Meet Fred; he's in your same shoes. He owns a small heating & air conditioning business in Nashville, TN, with four employees. He did have five, but had to lay one off because sales were slow.

"After all, the past two years haven't been very kind to all that high-tech stuff," he says disdainfully of the Internet. "These hot-shot smart-alecky kids from the West Coast came on like gangbusters, saying they were going to make Mom-and-Pop business obsolete."

Now where are they? Begging for jobs at McDonald's! And actually, he's kind of secretly satisfied to see them get their come-uppance. Nobody deserved to get so obscenely rich for doing so little anyway - especially since he worked his butt off for years to meet payroll and make ends meet.

In truth, Mom-and-Pop businesses have soared while the over-hyped Internet fell flat on its face. While the Nasdaq plunged 70%, the number of businesses with no employees jumped 6% from 1997 to 2000 (U.S. Census Bureau).

So, no, personally you don't give a hoot whether you ever have a web site. But so many customers have mentioned it ... and your competitor down the street's got one, though you can't imagine why.

Back and forth you waffle.

If you could see any value in it, you might. But the economy's been slow and sales are down. Can you really justify shelling out up to $5,000 for what might be a total waste of time?

Funny thing, though. Joe's Heating & Air Conditioning down the street - your competitor - doesn't seem to have any more cars parked out front than it ever did ... and yet he just bought a new delivery truck and he and his wife went on a cruise last summer. How come you never get to go on a vacation?

You've never even looked at his website. I mean, my God, what can a heating-AC store do with a website anyway? Sell air conditioners to Pakistanis?

Now, while our little scenario above may sound like a humorous little anecdote, the truth is it's based on a true story. You see, I designed the website for Fred's competitor, Joe, down the street. That puts me in a position to dispel a few myths.

First - sure, you can pay thousands of dollars for a nice website, if you really want to throw money away. The little guys in their basements who design websites would love you for it. While you're thinking in business terms, they get to talk all that gobbledy- gook nerd talk - like Java, SQL, HTML, Flash - all those terms that sound so alien to you. It makes them look and feel important - and high-priced!

I did Joe's site for well under $1,000 - and you're about to get a look at it at the bottom of this page. (Make sure your browser is running and you're connected to the Internet).

But just because something is a good deal doesn't necessarily give it any value to you.

The shoe store can sell its shoes at 90% off, but that doesn't mean much to a man who has no feet. Point is - do YOU really need a website?

Don't go into a website unless you know why you really want to do it. That's RULE #1.

Of course, that rule opens up a lot of questions. What's its purpose? Is there a market out there? What should it do? How should it look? In short, it's like that stray puppy your little boy brought home - it looks nice, but what in the devil am I supposed to do with it?

A business website has only one purpose - $$$

That is to help you make more money. If it doesn't do that, it's excess baggage. Every element of a website, from the flashy graphics to the tinny music, should support and reinforce that goal. If not, it doesn't belong there.

Would you prefer to use one of these old adding machines to do your bookkeeping - or a modern calculator or computer?

Would you think of running a business without a telephone? Of course not! But just how many measurable dollars and cents does a telephone bring in? That's harder to answer, isn't it? Like your fax and your delivery van, it's a tool.

A carpenter can build a house, but he has to have a lot of tools, and they have to be the right tools for the job. But can he pick up his framing hammer (as opposed to his finish hammer) and beam, "Well, hammer, you made me $4,587.53 this year!"?

Now you can do like the Air Force and pay $700 for your hammer - or you can be sensible and go to Home Depot and get the heftiest, best model they've got for $35. When you buy a hammer, or any tool, you want it to last a long time, do a good job, be maintenance-free, comfortable and easy to use.

Your website can be one of your most important tools, an integral part of your business' advertising & promotion plan - or it can just be some worthless gizmo that eats up time and money.

A lot of websites are for personal ego ... to show off what a hip "with it" person someone is. But the best business websites are for the customers.

A lot of web designers will do their best to convince you you're going to be reaching the world ... but does some homeowner in Greece really want to buy his nuts and bolts from your little hardware store in Iowa?

There's an old country phrase: "Don't forget who brought you to the dance." You got where you are today because of your existing customers - not that bird or two or three in a bush.

My RULE #2 is: Design your website to meet the needs of local or existing customers first because those "prospects" are just that - prospects. They're secondary at this point.

I put myself in the shoes of one of Fred's customers. It's 2 am and icy outside and the furnace has just quit. Where do I turn for help? Fred's has an answering machine, but they won't get the message until they open tomorrow morning.

In desperation I think, maybe it's something I can fix if I just knew how to diagnose it. Maybe the Internet could help. I get on the computer and do a search of every heating/ac company in Middle Tennessee. Their websites are varied - some of them attractive, some of them not - but not a single one of them tells me anything beyond what great guys they are. I need HELP!! NOW!

(Try it yourself with a Google search on "Tennessee heating air conditioning." Just highlight and copy the words between quotes and paste it right into Google.)

Then, almost ready to give up and get out the extra blankets, I stumbled on Joe's website. What a treasure trove of information! It didn't take me 15 minutes to find out what the problem was and have it fixed before the kids even woke up to go to the bathroom and discover how cold it was.

Sorry, Fred! Where were you when I needed you? Joe was there and you weren't.

But Joe didn't know that; he was home warm as toast in his own bed all night long. And unless I tell him, when I buy my next heat pump from him, he'll never know it was all because of his website at 2 am on a freezing morning.

Many website designers intent on "upgrading" you to the fancy animations, Flash screens and audio-visual content are all wet! This CD includes some of these gizmos for two reasons:

Just this page alone would take 2,774 seconds to download over a 28.8 kb modem - which is the speed most people get from their Internet dial-up service. Without the little 41-second movie below, it takes 180 seconds! The page you just came from would take 3,268 seconds to download.

If I want to listen to music, I've got a perfectly good cassette deck, CD player and now even a DVD player.

If I want to watch a movie, I look at it on a big screen TV lounged back on the couch, not hunched over a computer watching a tiny, jerky, fuzzy little imitation.

They scour the Information Superhighway for one thing - INFORMATION! Duh! It should be so obvious. So don't let some designer blind you to reality. Play the small movie here and let Vimi tell you more - but don't try this on your website! No one would stick around long enough for it to load.

One would-be client, a chiropractor, insisted that if he "gave away his secrets" on a website, patients would never come visit him in the office. He couldn't understand that by sharing a few of those "secrets" he was actually enhancing his own credibility and standing as an authority in the field.

How many patients could have benefited - during hours he wasn't open - from having access to a few simple exercises or tips to reduce the pain from carpal tunnel syndrome or backache?

RULE #3: Internet visitors remember where they got their best information - and they return to those sites time and time again. Make sure your site is at the top of their list!

But isn't the Internet supposed to be lifeless territory for business?

After the big shakeout of 2000-2002, you might think so. After all, even the traditional retail industry has seen some of their "worst Christmas sales ever."

Did you know that Internet retailers have continued to enjoy double-digit sales increases even while the brick-and-mortar shops have been in recession?

It's a fact. The shakeout just made it better for those who stuck it out and approached it sensibly.

Compared with a year earlier, e-commerce retail sales in this year's third quarter skyrocketed to their highest dollar value since reporting began in 1999, according to a U.S. Department of Commerce survey released Friday, Nov. 25, 2002 (E Commerce Times)

The survey by the Census Bureau of 11,000 stores showed that sales, not adjusted for seasonal, holiday and trading-day differences, rang up to the tune of $11.06 billion. That figure represents a 34.3 percent increase from last year. In fact, the year-over-year increase is the largest since 2001's first-quarter gain of 42 percent.

Comparatively, total online and offline retail sales in the third quarter of 2002 were estimated at $827.5 billion, an increase of 5.8 percent from the same period a year ago.

What a drop when you add the brick-and-mortar retailers to e-commerce - nearly 30%!

The two top-performing categories were toys and games with 4 million shoppers, representing 34 percent growth over the previous week, and consumer electronics with 5 million shoppers, a 26 percent increase from the preceding week. Books, music and video took third place with 6.9 million visitors, an increase of 25 percent over the previous week.

Did your business see a 42% gain for the quarter? I thought not. Even the big boys are suffering, with Walmart nearly stagnant and most of the others showing drops.

Sales at stores open more than a year dropped a tenth of a percent last month compared with a year earlier, the first November decline since 1970, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd. said yesterday after crunching numbers from 79 chains representing $54 billion in sales. (Washington Post, Dec. 6, 2002)

Other retailers reporting same-store declines: Target Corp., Sears, Roebuck and Co., Abercrombie & Fitch Co., and Limited Brands Inc.

"They're all suffering from the same problem: an overcautious consumer," said Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard's Retail Consulting Group. "Consumers are spooked."

The biggest surprise of the month: Kohl's Corp. The discount chain, a star in retail circles this year, missed its November target and posted a 3.4 percent decline in same-store sales, or sales at stores open more than a year.

We've probably all read the news about the woes of AOL Time Warner and AOL's projected 40-50% drop in online advertising for this year (2003). But don't let that fool you into thinking everyone is suffering. The facts above show otherwise. AOL is having problems because of entirely different circumstances - circumstances that actually spell MORE profits for you!

Joe got to go on vacation and buy a new van because his little heating/AC website attracted as many as 12,847 hits an hour, according to an independent traffic survey. (Later, you'll learn why "hits" is a deceptive yardstick!)

Sure, a lot of those visits came from people all across the country who will never buy Joe's services - but found his website the only place in the country with such a treasure of how-to information. Just the numbers alone will tell you he was bound to get a lot of visitors from his own market area (Nashville), and the odds are pretty darned good that some of his paying customers dialed that number because of his website.

Most of his 51,944 peak visitors a month came in July - when air conditioners are beginning to break down. These are people who sought him out. Compare that to the cost of a direct mailing in which he would have been lucky to get a 2% response. Let's see - If 51,944 = 2%, then he would have had to send out 2.6 million mailings!

If you had to mail out 2.6 million pieces to get 52,000 "nibbles" (2%) just how much do you think that would cost you?

NOTE: "Joe" and "Fred" are fictional characters based on a real-life situation. I don't know for a fact that "Joe" did take a cruise or buy a new van, but the numbers above are very real and you can visit his actual website at www.energy-masters.com.

NEXT LESSON: Part 2 - Designing a website that works!

Jim Moore is manager of Phoenix Technologies, a website design and promotion service in Williamsport, TN, where he also serves as online editor of TennTimes - the News , America's largest online newspaper. He has won numerous writing and web design awards, is a member of the International Association of Webmasters & Designers and for eight years produced, directed and hosted "The Omega Report", a popular hour-long TV documentary cablecast into 1.5 million homes from Nashville to Boston.

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