Defining the Purpose

Why do you need a website?

• To increase the strength of your brand.
• To help build a high-quality database of potential customers.
• To connect your best customers to your company. If you develop an easy-to-use system for online ordering and train your major customers, they will be unlikely to switch to a competitor.
• To provide all the detail that can't be included in other types of advertising, and to have the ability to say 'For more information, please visit our Website' on your other promotional material.
• To provide easy access to service or technical information and other material you already provide in printed format.
• Customer Relations Management (CRM), order entry and order checking can all be done online. This eliminates personal interaction, can ease the burden on your own customer service people, and makes the process an entertaining experience for the end user - your customer.
• To gain feedback on your own products or services.
• To track customers' buying habits, preferences, tastes and opinions.
• To provide additional customer service and satisfaction - as timeframes are continuously collapsing, businesses need to be more agile to compete. On the Web, customers get answers faster and without waiting in queues.
• To set up discussion forums about products, issues and ideas, and to build loyal customer communities.
• To sell products directly over the Internet.
• To provide up-to-the minute information updates far more quickly than you can ever do by reprinting a brochure.
• To advertise vacant positions within your organisation.
• For cost effective advertising - compare printing and distribution costs with Internet costs and you will easily justify your investment in the Web.
• To provide on-line registration for conferences, trade shows and other events. The benefits include convenience for your customers and data entry savings for your company. You should also tie this in with email reminders just prior to the event.
• For cost effective customer service - the cost of delivering self-help via a knowledge-base posted on the Internet is significantly less than a human answering an email or telephone call.
• To provide a media resource - a page of graphics, logos and brand requirements can bypass the need to save logos to disk and courier them, fiddling with formats, etc., and the inevitable inaccuracies that occur at the other end.
• To train staff in outlying areas - parts of your site can be password-protected so that only your own staff can access them.

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