By: James Walsh
The World Wide Web or the Internet, as it is otherwise called, is a global, interconnected network of interconnected computers. Today, it touches the lives of virtually the entire human race directly or indirectly. One of the arenas where the internet has brought about substantial changes is the arena of business. Electronic Commerce or e-commerce has become the buzzword of the day.
In order to conduct a viable amount of business via the internet, one ought to have an internet site of his or her own. Having a website is not a fad, but has become a necessity for those who do not wish to be left out of the race.
A website of a company has all the relevant information regarding the various operations of the same, stored on a computer system and available to the common man on the World Wide Web. It can be viewed both locally and internationally.
Having one’s own website can prove to be very advantageous for any company. It can be an invaluable tool for the conducting of business not only for the company but its clients or consumers also. The website can provide all relevant information to the consumers at the click of a mouse.
The website can provide information regarding the products and services being provided by the company. The images of the products can be showcased along with the prices of the same, as well as any special offers that it might wish to offer to its consumers or clients.
The website can provide information regarding the company’s business locale, its contact numbers, fax, email id etc. All this can help the consumer or client to decide upon a given product from the comfort of his or her own home or office and place the order for the products accordingly.
All this translates into more contacts, more customers, more orders, more profit for the company. At the same time, the customers get access to modern up to date marketing and greater satisfaction. Simultaneously, the company gets more customers and a bigger share of its market segment.
All this can be easily achieved simply by way of having one’s own website as it puts the company online with its customers for twenty four hours a day and seven days a week. It is also less hassle as it does not mean employing a large workforce and it also decreases the revenue spent on advertising of the company and its products.
Besides all this, the company need not print a large number of catalogues to showcase its products. A simple electronic version will be able to do a better job. In it, all the products can be described in greater detail as compared to the printed version.
Any changes intended in the catalogue can be easily implemented without the need to go in for a fresh printing job. It will also be less expensive. The mailing of the catalogue will also be easier and less expensive as it will be via an email instead of the regular route of mail.
Along with other features, one automatically gets to have a target audience. This is so because the people visiting the internet website are there owing to their interest in the company and its products. Thus one does not need to invest in large scale advertising for the same.
However, the websites of any company can crash and go out of service. This can be on account of several reasons such as a server failure that might destroy the files on the website. Or else it can be owing to a hacker attack or an attack from a virus. An abrupt closure of the web hosting company or the loss of domain name owing to negligence can also be causes for the loss of the website.
If there is an unexpected and massive surge in the traffic to the website, then too it can crash, being unable to handle the excessive traffic surge. Along with everything else, there is always an accidental deletion of the website files which can bring about the same effect.
In order to safeguard oneself from this, one should go in for website recovery planning. This entails a regular back up of the website. This will need to be done on a regular basis so that the company may go online to resume operations even after a website crash.