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Traditional Businesses on the Internet

Have you ever thought of putting your business on the Internet, but simply not known where to start or you’re not sure whether the Internet is really meant for your business?

Most of the time we see the big Internet businesses like Google, Amazon and Yahoo or the big corporations like Microsoft, Airlines companies and banks being successful on the Net. On the other hand you find someone with a brilliant idea who slaps a website together and makes a huge success with very little effort simply because they had the right idea and acted on that idea. Of course, there are also those who recognizes a good idea, jumps on the bandwagon and shares in that success.

Bu what if your company does not fall into any of those categories? What if you have a traditional business where you manufacture a product or offer a service to your local community?

Does your business still belong on the Internet?

Most definitely!! Other than a place to share information, the Internet is intended to be a marketplace where we can find things that add value to our lives. If your local community finds value in your service or product, then the rest of the world should also. And even if your product or service cannot be made available to the rest of the world, which is hard to believe, the Internet could be used simply to make your product more attractive to your local community.

Can your business still be successful on the Internet?

Again, the answer is most definitely!! It simply depends on how you choose to use the Internet.

Let me give you two examples of local, South African businesses that successfully use the Internet to advance their business.

The first is Sizanani.com, an Internet logistics company that is tremendously successful in South Africa. They do not rely on their website to bring in new customers and yet the website is the core of their business. To my knowledge, Sizanani is the largest logistics trading zone in the Southern hemisphere. They have more than 200 customers and more than 400 transporters (who are actually also customers of Sizanani) doing huge amounts of business on the Sizanani.com website every day. Yet, when you look at their homepage, you would not believe that there are hundreds or probably thousands of transactions processed on that site every day.

In my opinion, the secret of Sizanani’s success is not in their brilliant Internet marketing skills, but rather lies in a concept often forgotten on the Internet - Human Interaction. Every customer, including the transporters, has physically met a representative of Sizanani. When a customer needs help with the Sizanani system, they do not send an email to some faceless email address or fill in a meaningless form on the website. Instead, they pick up the phone and talk directly to someone they know at the company. In other words, this is a real-life, old fashioned company doing traditional business as we knew it before the Internet. The only difference is that they are using the Internet as a viable and convenient medium for delivering their service to their customers.

The second example is Qushum.co.za. This is a fairly new website and is not nearly in the same category as Sizanani. However, it is again an example of a business successfully using the Internet to deliver their service to their customers.

Qushum is a consulting company that helps their customers to obtain ISO 9000 accreditation and maintain that status. By placing their service on the Internet, they are not offering some incredible solution to their customers which has never been possible before, but the Internet is simply making the service more accessible to their customers and therefore making the customer’s day-to-day life more convenient. Also, by putting their business on the Internet, they have taken a lot of mundane tasks out of their own hands, which allows them to spend their time more effectively on growing their business.

These are only two examples of traditional business being conducted successfully over the Internet. I am sure there are millions of other such examples, but I simply wanted to show you that the Internet can be used as an effective medium for traditional business. In both cases they are not putting their faith in specialized Internet marketing techniques or employing search engine optimization specialists or any of those concepts that generally scare old-fashioned business owners away from the Internet. They are simply using the Internet in a fashion that adds value to their businesses. Isn’t that the whole idea?

So how do you get started?

There are millions of articles on “Getting your business on the Internet” and I won’t repeat that here.

If you approach a web design company and ask them to “put your business on the Internet”, they will most probably sell you a complete restructure of your business with online payment and product catalogues and whatever else goes with an online business. Not because they are necessarily trying to make a quick dollar out of you, but simply because this is what most people think they want from the Internet.

My advice to you is this: Before you approach anybody about designing a website for you, decide what it is you want. How can the Internet add value to my existing customers? Think of the two examples above and try to use that approach in your own business. If you can find a solution to that question, then, by default, you will have a solution that will add value to new customers as well and your business will sell itself on the Internet.

About The Author

Dirk Wessels is a web designer and owner of Getquotes-IT.com

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Internet Fax Guide- How to Start With Internet Fax

Due to advancement of Internet a new option, Internet fax, is available for you. An online service that provides facility to send or receive faxes without fax machine is known as Internet fax. Basic requirements of internet fax are PC with an Internet connection and an email account. It is also known as online fax, email to fax and e faxing. You’ve to just signing up with an Internet service provider that performs decoding/encoding of fax. You can easily send and receive multiple faxes simultaneously without using fax hardware.

Internet fax enables you to send or receive faxes in a short while. You don’t have to wait for a long time. It can be send from wherever you are to anywhere you want. Without facing the problem of paper jams, faxes can be sent instantly. Due to its transparency factor, your business partners can regularly send faxes to a fax number. You can even use a local or toll free number as virtual fax number. You can easily manage your time with Internet fax.

Subscribers have to pay small monthly fee to use an Internet fax service. Whenever a fax is sent to your virtual number, the service provider accepts it and turns it to a file that can be easily forwarded to your accessible email address. Internet fax services are costly due to extensive collection of programs. You should always choose the best suited to your requirements. You can also start e faxing with a free trial.

You’ve to pursue following steps to get started with Internet fax:

Create an email account (if you don’t have any)

Create an account on any one of Internet fax services. (For that purpose you just have to go to website of the service provider and log in. Use their free trial offer)

Download or install Internet fax software on your system.

After opening new email message, start writing contents of fax in the body section of mail. You can also attach text files with the content.

Fill all the requirements of e-fax like destination number, recipient’s name and then choose ’send and receive’ option to send the fax.

After doing all these process the fax will reach the recipient instantly.

Internet faxing is an inexpensive and convenient way to send fax to someone. You can get fax at any time because your fax number is active 24 hours a day. Subscribers don’t have to be familiar with faxing software or fax machines but email knowledge is required. Several service providers offer toll-free fax numbers for United States and Canada. Subscribers don’t have to pay phone charges for internet fax but they have to pay small Internet charges.

Monthly charges for Internet faxing service are from $0 to $19.95 that totally depends on the package, which you choose. Fax to IP is another type of Internet faxing. Subscribers may send or receive faxes in PDF format, Microsoft documents format, CAD drawing format and graphical formats etc.

The Author owns a website on Internet Faxing. The website provides information about cheap internet fax and internet fax software. Get all information about internet faxing at his site Internet Fax Software.

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Newsletters in Plain Text or HTML - Which Work Better

A common question asked when you first set out to write an email newsletter is whether it should be a plain text email or HTML (web page style). This is an important consideration since your choice impacts on how many people read your newsletter and how they respond to it. Let’s look at the obvious pros and cons of each format.

HTML Emails

THE GOOD

• Interactive - active elements can be inserted into emails limited only by what email clients can handle. May include movies, games, surveys or any active content.
• Metrics - Code can be placed into emails to provide detailed statistics on whether your email newsletters are read, for how long and which links are clicked and followed.
• Formatting can be controlled to the finest details including fonts, spacing, and design.

THE BAD

• Creating HTML emails take a lot of time and technical proficiency.
• Not everyone has an HTML capable email client in which case you will be excluding some people.
• Your basic message may be lost by the excessive content and “eye candy”.
• The range of options available in HTML are extensive and can lead to what I call “TMOS” - Too Many Options Syndrome, which is the antithesis of the concept “KISS” - Keep It Simple Stupid. TMOS can stop you from functioning efficiently because you are bogged down with how many things you could do, you end up doing nothing.

Plain Text Emails

THE GOOD

• Easier to create - just type words.
• Less chance of formatting problems making the email display incorrectly.
• Less chance of a SPAM filter blocking the mail.
• Message will be easily digested by the reader provided you write it well.
• No distractions from graphics or over stimulation from too much content competing for attention.
• You sell with words, the most powerful sales tool available on the web if used correctly.

THE BAD

• Harder to capture statistics.
• Hyperlinks may not be active (most text based email clients convert HTTP links to clickable but some still don’t).
• Limited to text to convey your message.
• No multimedia can be included.

Why Do You Have a Newsletter?

Let’s cut to the chase here. Why do you have a newsletter? If you are running an Internet business your newsletter functions as a customer retention tool, sending out periodic reminders to pull your prospects/customers back to your site. Newsletters themselves also function as a direct sales tool. It doesn’t matter if you are selling affiliate products, your own products, a service or information, your newsletter is meant to do one thing - illicit a response from its audience.

In order for your newsletter readers to feel compelled enough to take action your newsletter must clearly state it’s message AND create enough of a pull, usually via emotional tugging, to get the reader to do something. The same rules that apply to websites and copywriting apply to newsletters except you have even less time to convince your reader to do something.

Newsletters fall into the domain of email, the most popular web activity. Email is mainstream, it has penetration and people of all ages and backgrounds know how to use it. Consequently the learning curve is a little higher and your readership knows how to at least complete the basic functions with email. This means that they are quite capable of giving each email about 1 seconds worth of attention before clicking that delete button. That’s not a lot of time to convince them that your email is worth reading.

Should I use Plain Text or HTML Newsletters?

In my opinion, plain text should be your choice for email newsletter format. Why? Because of the numbers. Email newsletters are a form of direct response marketing and in direct response marketing the numbers matter.

From the point of view of a small business owner with limited time and resources you want to maximise the results you get from your newsletters. You want a lot of responses to whatever your newsletter is trying to do. You should be able to easily test different copy and see which works best so you can maximise the numbers. It’s all about the numbers…

Your newsletter must hit the reader quickly and compel them to read on. Any delays or presentation errors are going kill your chance of capturing the attention of the reader. While plain text emails are not immune to display errors (more on this later) they are a lot more likely to be digested by the reader even if things don’t format exactly how you want them to.

A plain text email is more likely to reach a larger amount of people than a HTML email simply because plain text is more compliant to standards. Plain text emails are less likely to be blocked by SPAM filters. Plain text emails will display immediately, there are no download times waiting for graphics to finish loading. Plain text emails are more likely to display properly regardless of what email client your subscribers use. All this adds up to plain text emails being read more often…better numbers…see a pattern here?

Words Sell

Bells and whistles are nice. Interactive toys and flashy lights and sounds are great. But ultimately it’s words that sell. If you write compelling newsletter copy aimed at your target audience that have been carefully selected by the methods used to acquire newsletter sign-ups, you have the perfect vehicle to illicit a response using words that sell. Why dilute your message by wrapping it within colours and images or overstimulating your readers by providing too much information when a few paragraphs can create your desired results more effectively.

Why Not Use Both Plain Text and HTML?

Good idea! If you have the resources and skills to produce a quality HTML and plain text newsletter then by all means offer both to your audience and let them nominate which they prefer, or better still have the email automatically display the appropriate format by detecting what type of email client they have. If you offer both be sure to test to make sure it’s worthwhile. Are more people responding to plain text emails? Well in that case send everyone plain text.

In my case I’m a small business owner and I’m going to be writing the newsletters myself. I do not have time nor the skills to create a new HTML webpage for every newsletter I produce. I could perhaps have a nice standard template designed which I use for newsletters but as I wrote above, I believe that is a waste of time. Words sell, so I’ll focus on creating emotionally compelling words for my newsletters rather than waste time trying to get a box to align right correctly.

Tips for Better Plain Text Newsletters

TELL A FRIEND

Remember how I talked about the numbers? Your efforts should be focused on ensuring the maximum number of people are exposed to your email so your emotionally compelling and convincing newsletter can work it’s magic. This doesn’t have to be limited to just your newsletter subscribers — your subscribers can be turned into evangelists for your newsletter. Make it easy for your subscribers to forward your newsletter on to friends and associates - suggest it to them at the end of the newsletter. Of course for this work you better be creating a damn interesting newsletter.

WORD WRAPPING

Plain text can format incorrectly and one of the most common problems is line breaks. Either lines breaking too early causing your sentences to look
disjointed and
clumsy, or no line breaks at all, causing one of those nasty horizontal scrollbars to appear and your reader to read off the page to finish a sentence. The screen resolution of your subscribers computers can also impact how your text wraps causing these problems.

You can’t control the monitor resolution of your readers or what email client they use, all you can do is try and account for as many variables as possible. To compensate for this problem you have to set a characters-per-line limitation. I’ve researched into newsletter formatting and different people give different suggestions, from 68 characters per line to 63. I’ve decided to recommend to you the round number of 60 characters per line. This will give you nice compact paragraphs made up of nice compact sentences that are likely to avoid most word wrapping (or lack thereof) problems your readers might experience. On extremely high resolutions there will be a lot of white space and your email might look like one big long tower of text but that’s still a lot better than broken sentences or horizontal scrollbars and won’t be too common a problem.

How To Set Characters Per Line Limitations

You didn’t think I would tell you what to do without giving you practical advice on how to do it would I?! Of course not.

Format Text provided by Web-Source.net will handle email newsletter formatting to any character width you specify. Better still it can even undo the current character spacing on any text you have so it’s definitely a tool worth book marking.

Newsletters Are An Important Tool For Your Online Business

Many of the most successful Internet entrepreneurs are wealthy because they have massive (10,000+) lists of highly targeted subscribers that they have been building for years. One well written affiliate product email to a good list can create thousands of dollars of sales and you don’t even supply the product.

Better still once you have a solid list you can contact similar focused online marketers and carefully select the right cross promotional activities that can double your exposure with one email to their list. Of course you have to have your own list to make available for cross promotions before you can expect to work with other people - the smart/persistent/rich help each other to get richer.

Even if you are using your newsletter as a step in the conversion process to generate sales of your own products or services it’s a wise to stay up to date on good newsletter management techniques. By focusing on the numbers you can maximise direct responses that will lead to more sales as visitors become prospects and prospects become clients.

By Yaro Starak
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

Do you want to profit from your own successful home based Internet business?

Learn from Yaro Starak, a young entrepreneur from Australia. He works part time from home on several web based business that generate between $2,000 and $8,000 per month. Get your free articles and audio now - visit his Internet Business Blog.

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