A Web site is all in your mind. The usefulness of your Web site
can't outgrow your own mental concept.
So how do you see it? The on-line equivalent of one of those eighth-of-a-page
display ads which appear near the back of magazines? A headline,
a few words of text, a special, perhaps a splash of color and
a phone number? Are you hoping a reader will spot your ad as she
finishes an article which concludes near the back of the issue
and give you a call? Maybe she'll miss your ad altogether. Web
site as small display ad.
If you're a Fortune 500 company maybe you'll have a large,
splashy, Shockwaved Web site, on-line equivalent of a one- or
two-page spread near the front of the magazine. Striking
image, catchy phrase, company logo, and no telephone number.
Web site as large display ad.
But the Web can be more than a glorified billboard if you can
grasp a new concept, make a paradigm shift (to employ a well-worn
but still current expression). Many businesses are coming to see
their Web site as a new locus for doing business, a branch office
in cyberspace.
There was a time when people went out to a fast food restaurant,
sat down at red plastic-topped tables, and ate their fries and
burgers on colorful paper placemats. Then some hare-brained restaurant
owner invented the drive-through window. My local Burger King
manager tells me that nearly 50% of their food now goes out of
the store through that window. I can hear the old fogies sputter
"It's undignified!". Undignified or not, times are changing,
people are busy, and they'd rather not cook, but neither do they
want to dress up. Since they've outfitted their restaurants with
drive-through windows, Burger King is reaching people who were
never customers before, or retaining people who would otherwise
go elsewhere. Half their business!
Try looking at your Web site as a drive-through window, a locus
where you can do business with people as easily in New Orleans
as in Bismarck.
What will have to change? Maybe your contracts will be in HTML
rather than on watermarked paper. Maybe you'll need to supplement
your cash register with shopping cart software. Maybe you'll develop
a whole new way to relate to customers, stay in touch, provide
product support, and let them know you care about their needs.
Put yourself in your prospective customer's place. What will she
need? What will make him feel more comfortable? How can you design
your system so ordering food through a two-way speaker becomes
the way some people prefer to get dinner?
Paradigm shift? Yes. The scary unknown? You bet! But business
people who refuse to be scared off will learn how to do
business on the Internet. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow,
but soon, and for the rest of their lives. And those of us who
have the most to offer, who learn how to communicate effectively
via this brand new medium, will have built national and international
businesses two or three years down the road.
The stakes are high. Last week one of my clients called me: "Ralph,
how can we translate our Web site into Chinese?" Times are
changing. Today, I can buy egg rolls to go. Soon, who knows, maybe
the Golden Dragon will offer a drive-through window on the Internet.