Beyond Your Online Brochure

OK, so you have your web presence. You are now online and visible to the world. What next?

A web service is great as a one-way communication medium and this coupled with e-mail this is your first step into the online world. Now the good gets better as you evolve your site into a powerful two-way communication medium.

Your web server is capable of much more than publishing. It is based on a general purpose computer that can facilitate broad-based interaction with your partners, customers and prospects. It can become a communications hub for your business.

A world of possibilities

The first step should be your customer database. Give your server access to it, preferably by moving it onto your server platform. Now any customer information you receive online can be posted directly into your central database. In addition, outgoing communications can be dramatically simplified.

Now add forms that handle incoming enquiries. These can work like emails but the system can easily keep track of them. Forms can be general just like regular email or contain specific questions that enable you to route the message to the right member of staff and that make it easier to respond quickly and appropriately. You can also semi-automate replies to the common questions using templates.

Customers are normally quite happy to help you maintain your database by using online forms to log in and correct their addresses, phone numbers etc. This way you improve your service and save cost. This also enables you to start profiling them by adding in a few supplementary questions. Incentives are required to get them doing this but it may need nothing more than an offer of a report on a relevant topic or some appropriate form of competition (best lawyer joke?).

Now you are in a position to start sending out regular bulletins electronically. This saves an enormous amount of administration and helps you to better keep your company in your customers' minds. Remember, the best bulletins are little and often. If you want to give large and complex message place it on your web site and make a link in your mail so they can get there in one click. Despite this, do make room for some branding (so-called HTML email includes colors and graphics).

Another useful step is to run your incoming email through your server. This allows you to get reminders when your correspondent is not in your database. This is very useful if your email database is inadequate because it is new. Central email functions such as an archive can also be made simpler this way.

Another useful form of online communication lies somewhere between e-mails and web pages. Generally referred to as a discussion board, such a tool is made available to a community that you define and allows them to freely interact online. Customer service is a great application for this. Customers can review past discussions in the form of a series of messages. They may well find the answer to their issue by looking at what went before. If not they can enter their question. A member of your staff should moderate to answer the appropriate questions and perform a certain amount of editorial. This is all stored online until you choose to delete it.

Another useful tool is an on-line Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) facility. This is another way to deal with enquiries more efficiently. Putting it fully online would enable your staff to add of edit the content and allow customers to make their own suggestions. The discussion board content is one good feeder for your FAQ content.

The list goes on but from here a lot of it depends on your specific business. For example, if you are a retailer you will wish to take orders online. If a courier, you could allow customers online access to their package shipment status. If an engineering firm you could have your staff track spares inventory from their mobiles.

Getting this done

As always, the first step is to make a plan. Which facilities do you need and when? Who will specify in detail the necessary forms and explanatory texts? Who will be responsible for ongoing maintenance of the data you will be gathering?

You will need a somewhat more capable web service but this could be a simple upgrade to the one you have. You need database and programming capability and server security in the form of "SSL" that protects information traveling between your server and your customer's PC. A complete web server with all these facilities located in a secure environment can typically be rented for around £250 per year, including online technical support - a must.

You also need software and there is a huge range of this on the market, ranging from shareware to major software products with 7-figure price tags. There are also some big questions if you need to integrate these online capabilities with existing systems that have their own customer databases. You will probably need some help to choose and install the right solution.

There was a time when almost all projects like this involved major costs either for software packages, custom development etc. However, good new tools are now arriving that will remove this barrier.