Have you ever considered developing a private area web site?

Depending upon the type of solo business you operate, and the needs that your business has to communicate with the “outside” world, you may want to consider setting up a private area on your company or business web site.

I’m not talking about creating a forum, chat room, or discussion board as is commonly done among niche community web sites.

Also, I’m not talking about a private membership site. In both these models, your web site is open to the public and you attempt to recruit members (paying or otherwise) that have to identify themselves before entering by submitting a user name and password.

The idea I’m suggesting here is to control access to only those who you specifically target. You want to know information about every one of your clients (members) so that you can target them for niche advertising, specialty products, or services that will generate an income for your business.

A private area web site refers to a site that has a “locked” section or special controlled access area that you limit to special support vendors, partners, and suppliers. The idea is to give these support personnel a way to communicate and transact business with you online, right at your web site; but at the same time, keep customers or the public visitors coming to your site locked out of this area.

The private area can be reserved for anyone you want, but typically would be set up for sharing information with your business partners about your business operation, announcements, policies, financial terms, exact product specs, and anything else you don’t want to share on your public web site but want your business support partners to see and gain access.

Having such a private area is almost like having an “extra” Internet site that is not a part of your main company site. These “extranets” as they are sometimes called, can serve to offer convenience and streamlining to your suppliers allowing them to more easily conduct business with you.

Depending upon the solution chosen, you may be able to offer your partners document sharing, project development sharing, calendaring opportunities, online contracts, sales activity and commission tracking, inventory tracking, and other related management functions.

This strategy doesn’t make sense for every business, so don’t run out and implement this option based solely on the idea that you’ve got to have the latest technologies and comprehensive solutions in your business to be viewed as being real and legitimate.

You may have no reason whatsoever to employ an extranet. Especially if you don’t have a business model that involves work groups, vendors, partners, or suppliers. If you run some type of B2B operation, you would do well to at least consider how such a private area web site could automate and simplify contact with your partners.

Most often this service is offered as an ASP (application service provider) and is hosted on a remote web server rather than on your business server. There are literally hundreds of such applications being advertised online that you might choose from. Most will cost you around $30-60 per month for a small business set-up; however, large companies will pay several thousand dollars a month for a robust hosted solution.

I have also seen a few free applications online if you don’t mind some “in your face” advertising on your net suite.

Realize too that security of your business database and records is of critical importance. Make sure the ASP solution backs up its servers every night to avoid potential catastrophic breakdowns of your business.

Depending upon the type of solo business you operate, and the needs that your business has to communicate with the “outside” world, you may want to consider setting up a private area on your company site.

To your online business,

Steve Browne

www.SteveBrowneDirect.com

Over the years that I have been involved with small business development, I can tell you that there are almost always costs to running a business that the entrepreneur fails to see and take into consideration.  Smart business owners don’t like surprises, especially surprises that cost them money they weren’t planning to spend on those costs.

Two of the areas that solo business owners sometimes don’t consider are the costs of product and marketing support.

Often, when a new businessman enters the market, he forgets or totally ignores the cost of support for his products and services.

Depending upon the type of business he/she operates, that could be a very costly mistake. Why?

Because if you don’t understand fully the expenses of doing business in its entirety, there is a good chance you will have a good portion of your profits consumed by these “hidden costs.”

Obviously, your product and marketing support will vary depending upon the type of business you operate.

In some product lines, the support will be minimal. If you sell digital information in the form of an ebook or a DVD, your ongoing support costs should be fairly insignificant. Most everyone can figure out how to read the ebook or play the DVD on their  machine – without any special knowledge or instruction.

You may need to coach some customers on how to download digital files. But that should be fairly easy and inexpensive.

However, if you choose to sell a product like software, your support costs could severely impact your profit margin. Software products are notorious for customer questions and problems because often the interface and even the very concept of use is new, unique to the product, and sometimes confusing to less experienced computer users.

Many folks feel it’s just as easy to get on the phone and call support for an answer as it is to figure out how to do something by studying the user’s manual or included documentation.

If half (as an example) the customers that purchased your software also called for assistance, you could be spending a great deal of your time (or that of a support person) on the telephone coaching customers on the use of your product.

If fact, you could even end up losing money on individual sales if the buyer repeatedly requires your time to figure out how to make your product work properly.

If you sell an inexpensive product, say at a $29 price point, and a customer requires your assistance for 1/2 hour, you may have just eaten up all the profit there was on that one sale if your time is worth anything.

Now I’m not suggesting that you solve this dilemma by refusing to give customer support. It’s important in today’s online marketplace to treat your customers like gold since you want them to make back end (repeat) purchases from you in the future.

Customers expect to be given personal assistance if they need it with any product.

My point is that you need to make sure you include the cost of support in the expense column of every product and service you sell. If you consistently track such things, you will have a good idea what that average cost per user is over time.

Don’t forget that there may be a support cost for other business activities besides product costs. Customers will ask how to sign up for a service, how to pay for items (credit card or not), when you will be sending goods, how to send goods back, how to remove their name or information from your records, how to get a discount or special price, and even how to get a new password because they forgot the old one.

You can minimize support needs by having excellent FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) and a clear and intuitive navigation structure for your web site. You can also be very clear about your policies and procedures in advance. But there will always be a need for some level of further customer and prospect support. You just need to make sure you have a clear picture of what that need will be in your business and how much you should budget for that expense.

To your online business success,

Steve Browne

www.SteveBrowneDirect.com

What? . . . Do they think I’m stupid or something?”

When you do business online, you have to get a little personal with your prospects, subscribers, and customers. There’s no way around it.

Being personal is fine with most of us, if we like and trust the person that’s moving into our space. But online, being personal is a real challenge and, at times, a very sensitive issue for some business owners.

From the very beginning, you’d like to know how to reach your prospects individually. So, you go after a first name, last name, and an email address at the very least.  You ask for permission to make future contact with that person interested in your business.

You want to open a line of communication with your site visitors and that requires a willingness on their part to give you their name and email. That’s being personal and it takes place on their very first visit.

That’s asking a lot from some people.

Later, on a subsequent visit, you (the business owner) might like to give your followers a gift, a free download, a template, report, or an ebook. So, you ask Mr. Customer for his personal information again.

Even later, you approach your customer about buying one of your products. If he consents, you’ll probably ask again for his personal information; but this time, you need his full name, credit card number, expiration date, security code, address, city, state, zip code, phone number and who knows what else.

After awhile, to certain customers it may begin to seem like all you’re after is my personal and confidential information.

It goes without saying that you need to keep all customer personal information private, secure, and confidential.

Beyond that, I would suggest you build systems into your business and web site that will allow you to gather all this relevant information once and then never bother the customer with another info request.  It can be done with business tools and list segmentation but many business owners don’t feel that asking for contact information over and over again creates any kind of a problem.

Why can’t you ask for, and collect, all the pertinent personal information once and then pre-populate boxes on your site with his information stored digitally so that the customer never has to waste time filling out your request for a name or email again?

There is ample technology available at reasonable cost for you to do this.  I always feel “used” or taken advantage of when I’m continually asked for the same information over and over again at the same site.  Not to mention the fact that my name now appears on the email list of this company six times!

There is no need to do business in this way.

If you’re planning, or already have an online business, make sure you do everything you can to make dealing with your business a snap!

You will be seen as a friend, a business expert, and a business owner that really caters to the needs of his customers.

To your online business success,

Steve Browne

www.SteveBrowneDirect.com