Financial Times

Climbing the eLadder:
Give due respect to your website!
By Nilooka Dissanayake
Imagine opening a new outlet for your business. You find a location, hire an architect, make changes in design and handover construction to a contractor. When it is built, you plan interior decoration, layout and facilities, recruit or train staff to man the new outlet. For a smooth operation, you need new forms, business cards and stationery.

When everything is ready, you have an opening ceremony and invite important people and prospective customers. You also inform existing customers about the new location. All this can be done through general advertising, including the address and contact details for the new branch in your corporate stationary, business cards, advertisements, brochures and promotional materials. This much you will do, would you not?

Now think of your website. Whether your outlet will provide the full range of services your business has to offer, a limited range or just a help desk, is up to you. It is the same for your website. You can sell online, provide a complete online list of your products or a limited range. You can also provide only general information to help customers and prospects to contact you for more details. Your web can be anything that you want it to be.

However, compared to an outlet, your web will be online all the time; open all day, everyday. It is not just a new outlet; it is an entirely new marketing and PR channel for your business. So, make sure you give it the due respect.

During the design process, make sure the correct information goes into the web. Often the web design community is hampered because the client –that is you—does not allocate enough time to compile, tabulate and provide information. You might be called upon to provide photographs and images. All this takes time, so plan for it.

A few months back, in a Sri Lankan corporate website engaged in international business, I saw a Negro businessman in formal wear shown as the CEO, together with a Sinhala name. The web had been online for some time. When I mentioned this to a friend, the matter was promptly sorted out. Neither the client not the web developer had remembered to check out that the correct photo was inserted. Do you want this sort of thing happening in your web?

By the time the web goes online make sure that you are ready to handle the enquiries that you receive through it. Checking online status and email on a regular basis should be assigned to a specific person. Just like at an outlet, it is your responsibility to make sure the service is good at your web. You don’t open outlets just to ignore it later, do you?
If you say “NO!” to this, you will be different from most of the people who are having webs online! No, I am not exaggerating. Webs are a neglected species in Sri Lanka, like children fed grudgingly by a wicked stepmother.

To make the most of your website, and the large volumes of money you invested to get it into an operational level, you need to start out right.
You can have a press conference to launch it. Even if not, you can still get some PR exposure through issuing a well drafted press release. Call and find out the name of the news editor, speak to him if possible and then send the press release. Then, have the courtesy to enquire if it was received and whether it would be published.

Are the web address and email address given correctly on your business stationery? Will they appear in all your future advertisements?
Does your staff know your email and web address? I have encountered so many instances of even large businesses where telephone operators not knowing the business web address.

These are just a few things to make sure that your web gets the respect it deserves. You are the parent of your website. If you are going to treat your web as a stepchild, why have it in the first place? Let us know your point of view. Tell us your questions and concerns on this topic so that we can share these with our readers and seek solutions together. You can contact us on ft@sundaytimes.wnl.lk.

Back to Business