• Message ...
• Do local businesses need the web? ...
• Anatomy of Internet representation ...

"The degree to which people are increasingly turning to the internet as their source for information, and the diversity of information and services businesses are making available to them, make the web more important for a local business today than it was for a global business only a few years ago."

Many businesses are by nature local. People are not going to drive a thousand miles to buy nails at your hardware store. Similarly, many non-profit organizations such as interest groups, associations etc. have a local scope and reach. For this reason, the management of such businesses and organizations ask if it really makes any sense for them to have a web presence. They may be reaching hundreds of millions of people via the web, but very few of them will become customers or members.

The answer is almost certainly yes. You may not be attracting business from those millions of eyeballs around the world, but nowadays people are turning to the web in the expectation of finding services and information on-line from any business or organization. The web is rapidly replacing the telephone book and other traditional sources of information, and if you're not there you will be driving your current local clientele to your competition.

Among the things that people turn to the web for regarding a local business, and which you will want to provide are:

• An attractive website that sells your products and services 24 hours a day. When we say "sells" we don't mean just, or even particularly, on-line e-commerce. Studies show that the greater part of on-line sales results from people who use the web for comparison shopping before buying in person. If you're not there, they decide among those who are.
• Contact information such as maps and driving directions, phone numbers, mailing addresses, fax numbers and e-mail addresses. These things are among the most frequent things for which people turn to the web when dealing with local businesses and organizations.
• Pricing, information and details of available choices, models, options and out of stock items are frequently accessed by people who want to get the answers before they bother to make a trip to the store.
• Additionally, there are things you will want to offer to people visiting your web site to enhance your marketing and provide services to your customers. These may include:
• Collecting e-mail addresses from customers for later follow-up via e-mails telling about specials, new products, coupons, etc.
• Registration for on-line newsletters that allow you to proactively reach out to your clients with news of your industry, useful information and helpful tips.
• Auto responders to provide product and service information, and PDF format files (which can include brochures, formatted text and images) that can be downloaded and printed by the client with extended product information, instructions, guarantees, etc.

Finally, don't write off the people who are finding you on the web by search engines or other means, even if they are only a tiny percentage of the global internet population. People are now searching the Web for local services. They simply include the name of the city or region in their search, and if you’ve properly set up your keywords and registration (including local-area listings in on-line directories such as Yahoo) then they will find you.

The degree to which people are increasingly turning to the internet as their source for information, and the diversity of information and services businesses and organizations are providing them, make the web more important for a local business today than it was for a global business only a few years ago

• Ubiquitous information – As a global network of connected computers, Internet provides the unparalleled reach of information globally on a 24/7/365 basis.
• Effective information management – Built on the client-server architecture, Information can be effectively managed on the server side for consistency and accuracy.
• Low cost – The continuous fall in computing hardware/software prices coupled with proliferation of Internet technologies is making it very cost-effective to have an Internet representation for even the most limited budget organizations.

Some of the areas of Internet representation are as follows:

• World Wide Web: Based on the hyper text transfer protocol (http), the web is the most popular feature of Internet representation. It has widely grown during the last decade as shown by the following figure.
  The advantage of web based sites is that these can be easily accessed by any computer having an Internet connection and a browser – a software application freely available from companies like Microsoft (Internet Explorer), Netscape Communicator, Mozilla among others.
  The lingua franca of the Web is Hyper Text Markup Language (html), a simple language to present information on the web. However, html is limited by its capability to present only “static” language. To develop data-driven dynamic web sites and applications, there are many technologies such as Active Server Pages (.asp) from Microsoft, Java Server Pages (.jsp), Cold-fusion, php etc. These are the technologies that add life to the web by making it dynamic and interactive as seen in the examples of e-commerce carts, search engines, Instant Messengers, web-based emails, on-line banking etc.
  The evolution of web services and xml are new developments in the process of data-driven dynamic web.
  The Network Economics has developed exemplary expertise in web sites and applications development based on some of the latest emerging technologies in the market. Based on Internet standards, these technologies provide high degree of scalability, flexibility and robustness.
• Email: Another great feature of Internet representation is email. Because of its ease of use and fast delivery (dependent on network speed), email has emerged as the prime means of communication in organizations of all levels.
  For professional and security reasons, it is becoming imperative for organization to have their personal domain-specific email addresses.
  We – at The Network Economics – can help set-up and manage your email servers/clients for you to have your company’s domain-specific email system.
• Intranet: A secured username/password protected area restricted to authorized employees from your organization, Intranet is a great tool to improve productivity and cut costs by providing news & information, email access and other knowledge base specific to your organization.