If you’ve come to this blog you may be asking yourself, How can a website save time and money? Think about any task you currently perform within your business. If any part of your business involves the internet (there’s a good chance it does), then there is a way to make what your doing online, more time efficient.
When you’re trying to decide on the type of website you want, there are a lot of considerations to keep in mind. Here are few we found that will help you narrow down the type of website that’s going to not only be geared towards your long term goals, but also can save you time and money in the process.
1. Do you want the ability to edit the content? If you answered yes, then a Content Management System is most likely a core component your website should have. A Content Management System will basically allow you to log into a web interface, and edit the content by filling out Forms with text, much like an email. The process is simple, and anytime information about your business changes, you won’t have to interface with a web developer to make the change.
2. Do you currently use an online lead generation system? If not, are leads something you’d like to be able to collect? Developing a customized lead generation tool, or using one that exists on the web might help your business give the boost that it needs. We’ve developed a lead generation tool for the Maid Services Industry Compass Wave (www.compasswave.com). There are also other tools out there such as Sales Force.
3. What if any tasks do you currently perform online that could potentially benefit from an online software? If you currently grab information from websites to conduct reports, or have an off the shelf software solution for say an auction website that provides inefficient reporting, then a custom online software package could benefit your business.
In an ideal world any off the shelf software package for $x would fit your businesses current needs and there would be no need to integrate with a software development company. Unfortunately that’s not a reality when it comes to different businesses and online software.
Let’s take an online auction software for instance. We’ve run into a situation where an off the shelf software solution was purchased for the purpose of conducting online auctions. This software worked perfectly as far as the online auction portion was concerned, until it came to billing. When the auction was completed, an email was sent for each auction item won. This amounted to over 100 emails during a large scale auction. While 100 emails worth of auction items doesn’t seem tedious enough to filter through, imagine having to create custom invoices for each one by copying data from the email to an invoicing template. Add the fact that Shipping and Tax information now needs added as well. This task took over 2 weeks before all invoices and items were shipped out. With our ability to analyze the situation we were able to write a script to make this process more efficient and save the business time and money! This reporting application needed run with the click of a button and now all invoicing with shipping and tax information was split into individual invoices. Not only did this save the business time by having the invoicing done within an hour instead of 2 weeks, but it improved customer satisfaction as well.
The invoicing software we developed for a local auction company is just one example of how you can have an existing software package implemented, but that you might not actually be using it to it’s full potential. A website is a good marketing tool for your business, but don’t forget a website can be more than content on a page.
Your partner in Developing Websites that Save Time and Money,
Mark Lane
President Eco York, LLC
