• Reduce support costs. It is often cheaper, easier, and more effective to support customers over the Internet than through more traditional methods such as telephone support. In addition, corporations can support employees and business partners over their corporate intranets, keeping them informed and soliciting their feedback.
• Reduce sales costs. Sales over the Internet typically require less overhead and less sales support than traditional sales channels. A Web site can reduce dependence on more expensive sales channels, including retail.
• Reduce inventory costs. A Web site can help you reduce inventory costs by shortening sales cycles. In addition, the Web can help you reduce inventory costs by shortening supply cycles from your vendors.
• Reduce materials costs. Save paper production, printing, and distribution costs by disseminating information electronically over the Internet or intranet. For example, you can publish annual reports, distribute marketing materials, and present customer support tips on your Internet Web site. An intranet Web site can lower the cost of delivering internal manuals and forms.

Establishing a Web site for yourself can be one of the most important business moves you make. Because of the enormous potential and significant investment involved, it is essential that you make this move carefully, and it is essential to grasp what all is involved.

Web sites, with their nearly universal reach and highly interactive nature, present opportunities that are not available through other means. Through Web sites, organizations can increase revenues, decrease costs and build tighter relationships with their customers, employees, and business partners. There are almost 1 billion sites on the Internet.

But Web sites can require substantial investments to create and maintain. In the international arena, web site spending by companies ranges from $15,000 for small companies to more than $1 million for large companies. In India too, costs range from as paltry as Rs. 5,000 to as exorbitant as Rs. 50,00,000. Whether you are considering a Web site for the Internet or your Intranet, it's important that you plan and implement it carefully. Only in this way will you realize the full potential of your site and gain a handsome return on your investment.

Planning and building a Web site requires expertise in a wide variety of new areas, including Web technologies, the unique aspects of the Web as a medium and the cyber world resources available, such as Web search engines and Web advertising, to help you generate traffic to your site. To get on the Web quickly, without sacrificing the effectiveness or quality of your Web site, you may want to seek assistance from outside organizations that specialize in Web planning, deployment, and refinement.

Web technology makes possible exciting new business models for marketing, communications, commerce, publishing, advertising, client/server applications, telephony, business-process optimization, entertainment, and eventually broadcasting. With a Web site, an organization can reach a worldwide audience of literally millions of people, quickly and effectively. Because the Web is interactive, it can custom-tailor the information it delivers to each person for maximum impact. That's why organizations and individuals are implementing Web sites at an astonishing rate.

A Business Oriented Approach to Effective Web Sites -

Because of the attractive potential of Web technology - such as its worldwide reach and ability to interact with users, and the apparent ease of building sites, many organizations are rushing headlong to establish Internet and intranet Web sites. But many are taking a haphazard approach, resulting in wasted money and, more significantly, lost opportunity. Forrester Research found that one of the most common mistakes companies make when implementing Web sites is not having a clear vision or purpose for the sites.

The following sections present a business-oriented approach to planning, deploying, and refining your Web site. By addressing the factors identified in this process, you can take full advantage of the power of Web sites to maintain a competitive edge.