Dateline:  08/03/97

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I'm sure you have heard the old saying, If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.  This is especially true where your firm's web site is concerned.  A web site can be a highly effective marketing communications tool if it is planned and executed with clear objectives in mind.  As with any legal problem or specific accounting solution, there are a lot of possible routes to get to the correct solution for your unique set of circumstances. How can you be sure the solution you have is actually working?

Web sites have many purposes.  The first step is to decide what you want a web site to accomplish.  Knowing that you can then begin to measure whether it's working as well as you hoped it would.

• Advertising? - Measure click-throughs rather than page accesses (hits). 
• Prospect Generation? - Have your professionals and databases capture the source of any new business contacts.  Be sure your web manager reports queries that come in as a result of a form on your web site.
• Direct Sales? - Establish purchasing capability on your web site for individuals.  Package a publication or survey results you can sell for a fee, or tax or accounting services.  Capture the information on sales or new business obtained from the web as a separate new business category .  
• Client/Customer Support? - Use logins and passwords to track actual use. Provide space for feedback and suggestions to be sure it's working like you think it is. Have a ``clients only" area and require them to sign in.
• Education? - Require registrations. Use software that tracks individuals as they roam your site to discover which ``courses" or information they are using most. Create an archive of documents, and require  registration to use it.
• Recruiting? - Count your e-mail requests for firm information or interviews. Capture on your interview form whether the candidate visited the web site.

1.  Build traffic.  Promote, promote, promote!  Put the address on your letterhead and business cards and all brochures and newsletters.  Give it out at speeches your professionals give. Register the site will as many search engines as you can find on the Internet (there are hundreds, and there are services that will do it for you for a nominal fee-- E-mail me for some names).

2.  Make it easy for visitors to explore on their own.  They won't read start to finish.  They will jump around.  Make it easy.  Your entry points must let them know that it's easy and encourage them to stay around.

3.  Encourage them to come back.  Offer enticements, such as updated information, timely news, special events or an online message board, and focus on the benefits they will receive by coming back.  You don't win new customers on the first visit.

4.  Get visitors to respond.  You can get your web site to set ``cookies" and gather limited information about visitors.  If you want to know useful specifics, however, get them to fill out a form with information about themselves, so you will be able to contact them again.  Without feedback you lose your chance to convert them to clients.  Ways to do this include ``membership" into an area of the web site with desireable information, offers to send e-mail information periodically about tax, accounting or legal issues, free subscriptions to industry or other newsletters or publications of your firm, etc. or registrations for live or electronic ``seminars" on hot topics.

Next week's feature:  10 Characteristics of Successful Firms

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Copyright 1997 by Kaye Vivian (kvivian@cloud9.net).  All rights reserved.  Permission to reprint is granted provided this article is not altered and the copyright notice remains attached