What could you do with a website? Useful cost/benefit analysis suggestions

A web site is essential to any serious business these days but it is a significant cost so how do you get the maximum benefit out of your investment?

For some companies the cost/benefit analysis is clear. For others it is more difficult to find enough tangible benefits to offset the cost. However the importance of the internet is undeniable and an organisation’s web presence sends a clear signal of how seriously it takes the internet.

An organisation must consider what damage a poor website can do to it’s reputation.

The website is a reflection of the company and its image, it can open up new avenues. It is a good interactive medium to find out about clients needs and requirements. Once a client is taken on-board, the website can be used to build on the client relationship, using on-line training or questionnaires for example.

A generic list of possible benefits of a good web site:

• Provide Information – give everyone easy access to all the up to date information about your company, products and services.
• Contact – make it possible for anyone anywhere to contact you easily and cheaply.
• Broadcast – provides a cheap and effective medium for news items, announcements and general communications about the company, services or products that you wish to broadcast.
• 24/7 Support – provide constant (24/7) worldwide support for your products or services. No-one has to wait for you to send documents or answer ‘Frequently Asked Questions’
• Coordinated Marketing –  website activity can be part the main platform of a coordinated marketing campaign across various marketing and social media channels.
• Build Credibility – an effective web site gives a positive impression of a progressive company and builds credibility for your organisation as a serious market player.
• Low-cost marketing intelligence – obtain low-cost market research by asking web site visitors for feedback on your services and products.
• Build marketing database – collect valuable contact information from site visitors for use in other marketing campaigns.
• Recruit – members, employees, subscribers or partners. For a growing company, recruitment is an expensive business and to find the right people and make sure that the people know the right information about your company is important, this can be done through the website, and by keeping the site up to date people will keep coming back to see what jobs are available.
• E-commerce – sell to anyone, anywhere in the world if you wish. This can be products, services, training courses, events, ebooks … anything you can think of.

So much can be done with web sites to enhance your business and marketing efforts. Unlike other advertising mediums which have a short lifespan your web site is permanent and therefore significantly more cost effective.

Cost savings could come from:

• Less need to provide direct support by staff on demand.
• Marketing – reduced print, re-print and publishing costs (also consider that if comprehensive information is provided on the web site items you still need to print – brochures, adverts, circulars, announcements, updates etc – can be simpler and cheaper as they can refer to the site).
• Reduced distribution costs.
• Reduced waiting time as there is ready access to the information.
• Reduced effort through improvements to existing office processes or b2b processes by using the internet to gather or disseminate information and integrate this into other office processes. Online forms, requests, automated processes, data gathering, record updating, automated responses, automated distribution to email lists, subscribers, integration into other administration, product or service based systems and databases can provide real opportunities to use the modern internet technologies to increase efficiency and reduce costs.