"YOUR STORE IN CYBERSPACE"  

Page 2 {Back to page 1}

TIME AND COSTS

Plan on spending tow to three months developing your site. Then, allow for another four to six months fine-tuning it to turn it into a producer.

Costs for developing and hosting a Web site are divided into: 1) one-time setup fees and 2) ongoing hosting and maintenance fees. In each category, you will incur fees for the design and programming and for the hosting (your site's physical location; since the Net is global and your site is accessed remotely, location can be anywhere). In addition, you will incur a charge from the Internic (the keeper of domain names) for registering your name, (for example, www.gapent.com)

NEW PRODUCTS

At least once a week, you should update your site with new products, services, announcements, price changes, and other news. Place your site on at least 100 search engines (such as Yahoo!, Alta Vista, or Infoseek, which are global Yellow Pages to help visitors find your site). Send press releases announcing your new site to at least 100 publications.

PROMOTION

A major benefit of the Web is your ability to measure the effectiveness of your advertising. Not only will you know who read your "ad" (i.e., visited your Web site), but you will know what pages they read, how long they spent on each page and how often they came back! The Web is very content-rich, which means visitors will spend time reading about your business and your products and services. As such, you must convey a sense of stability, longevity and the ability to deliver.

The Net is not the only answer. Rather it is another advertising media - but a more complex one. It has great potential for business, but it needs to be promoted - in some cases like you promote anything else; in others, like you have never done before.

Assuming that your site has a good mix of content, graphics and "sex appeal" and that you promote it well, you should see excellent results.

The Net will work for you, if you work it!

{Back to page 1}