There are three parts to any successful website. The Internet portion, which the public can view, the Intranet portion, which is for your employees, and the Extranet, which is a secured area your customers can use. Most websites only have the Internet portion built. This section is an online brochure that tells the world what you do and historically is also a waste of space and money. If you are a really savvy Internet guru you can set it up so people will find your site through search engines or email campaigns, but overall the "billboard site" is not very effective. Unless you can give the surfer a reason to come to your site, and keep returning there, it will join the millions of sites on the Internet that do little more than allow the owner of a business to say they have a web site.

Some people think that when they open their website that the world will come flocking in to buy their product or service, in turn making the company rich. Nothing could be further from the truth. You MIGHT make money with a billboard site, but you WILL save money by Incorporating the other two parts of any Internet presence and ensure repeat business by keeping your employees and customers well informed about things like current specials or promotions.

Here are some ways to make the most out of your virtual real estate:

• The Intranet - Tools for your Employees (and You)
  • Incorporate a contact manager, scheduling calendar or other applications your employees use daily to improve their performance. For example, when one of my employees works on a customer account they make an entry in the Time Management section of our Intranet. This entry is automatically sent over to the billing department which bills the client. The Time Management section also allows me as the employer to track productivity and see what, if anything, my employees are spending their time on.
  • Send out marketing materials, reminders or any other type of message to your customers via email, automatically. One of the most useful applications I have seen is a sales follow-up system we developed. If you were a car salesman, you could enter information into the Intranet on the day you sold a car to a customer. Periodically, the web server would send email messages to your customer, from you, checking on their satisfaction, wishing them a happy birthday, anniversary, etc. This is all automated by the follow-up system. All these things appear customized to the customer, so the salesman keeps his name fresh in the customer's head. How useful would it be to that car salesman if he was told when the customer was 90 days from the end of a current lease?
  • Automate billing and eliminate licking stamps and envelopes by sending invoices via email every month. During a promotional period we offered a discount to customers who would accept email invoices instead of mailed ones. The invoice states the same information as the paper one, but the email has a link at the bottom which allows the customer to "Pay This Invoice" right now using a credit card. We often receive payments before the system is done sending out the back of e-invoices every month and we have cut our mailing expenses considerably
• The Extranet - Tools for your Customers
  • By including tools like Order Status Checking or providing records, or billing information on your extranet you keep connected with your customer and keep them involved. Nothing discourages a customer more than a busy signal, voicemail or an email address they dont get replies from. Try to include sections in your Extranet to answer any question a customer could ask.
  • A Service Call Management system is another extranet tool which increases communications and decreases your costs. On of my clients has a national serviced based business. His customers go to his web site and log in with username and password to a customized console where they can add service calls, location information and track the status of current service calls. In addition they can pull up a service history on any particular location, and pull reports based on date to get an idea of usage during a particular period. Because the customer does the service call request entry this allows my customer's service staff to concentrate on coordinating the call instead of spending all their time transposing the information from the customer on the phone and typing it in to the database.

These are just a few examples of ways you can use an Internet presence to make your business more efficent and in turn save you money. A lesson can be learned from the captains of industry that use this model every day. Keeping yourself, your employees and your customers connected no matter where they are is the one of the keys to growing a prosperous company.