Becoming Web Integrated: More Than Just a Website

According to Barlow Research, over 70% of companies with revenues greater than $5M now have a website. That’s the good news. The bad news is that a scary large portion of those website equipped companies believe they have addressed the Internet challenge - got their website up and running, and then returned to focus on the blocking & tackling that has been the historical basis for their success.

Websites are an excellent cheerleader for your company and they show up right where you need to be - in the web marketplace. They provide a place for you to inform your web savvy customers about your products and how to purchase them. But they can’t go it alone. If buying a domain name and creating a website is all you’ve done to engage the Internet marketplace then you may be forfeiting customers to the competition. “Website equipped” is good, but “Web Integrated” is better.

Of the many functions in your business, there are six that face the market:

• Informing – you must responsively provide the pre-sales information that prospective buyers might seek in support of their decision process.
• Marketing – you must proactively educate the marketplace about problems that need solved, advantages of your solutions, and why they should choose your solution now.
• Selling – you must turn a prospect that understands their problem and your solution into a customer that purchases your solution for their problem.
• Payment – you must document the purchase agreement and collect payment from the customer or a third party financing company.
• Fulfillment – you must deliver your solution to the customer.
• Support – you must provide all of the post-sales information and follow-up that will maximize the success of your solution for the customer

These six functions must be considered as you move your business down the path to becoming web integrated. There are state of the art methods and technologies for each one of them to implement automated Internet systems where manual systems were previously the sole approach.

A web integrated business is optimally using automated Internet systems to address the growing web-accessible marketplace.

If your business is not web integrated then you are over relying on manual offline systems and only addressing a declining subset of your market. That’s a sobering situation you should not let stand.

Some businesses are not optimally web integrated until all six of the market facing functions are implemented with automated Internet systems. Other businesses are optimal with two of them. You should determine the point that is optimal for your business and move towards web integration. Pay special attention to your Marketing function. The emerging systems and technologies for web based marketing are nothing short of revolutionary, and it’s likely one of the functions that is key to your web integration strategy.

There’s really good news in all of this. The web-accessible marketplace is growing rapidly. And while everything about manual systems is getting more costly, everything about Internet based systems is on a declining cost curve. When you web integrate your business you’ll find new ways to achieve competitive advantage, new ways to gain efficiency, and more customers within reach as each new day arrives.

Bill

The magis group focuses on helping companies achieve their growth objectives and web integration is a key growth strategy that we can help you with. Please check us out at www.themagisgroup.com for more information.