We can distinguish 5 major goals for a small business web site:

• increase sales
• increase revenues
• reduce costs
• increase customer satisfaction
• establish market dominance

The first 3 (increase sales, increase revenues, reduce costs) are all ways to directly impact profitability.
The next 2 are longer term approaches to even greater profitability.

Type A. Increasing Sales

The major goal of most small business internet marketing plans is to increase sales. But this goal is not uni-dimensional. There are a great many ways to increase sales. Here are a few ways to increase sales...

• Generate new customers 
• Get repeat business from existing customers 
• Get existing customers to upgrade 
• Get existing customers to refer new customers 
• Cross sell related products

Depending upon which of these strategies is most appropriate for you, the nature of the web site and the Internet marketing channels will differ, in some cases, dramatically.

Type B. Increasing Revenues

Many small businesses mistake a revenue oriented web site for a sales oriented website. They are different. Here are some ways in which revenues can be increased without necessarily impacting sales...

• Sell advertising space 
• Sell banner space 
• Rent/sell your mailing list 
• Drive traffic to your 1800 number 
• Drive traffic to your retail outlet
• Drive traffic to your mail order business 
• Use \"live help\" to engage your site visitors

And if you develop an e-newsletter or online newsletter, here are some additional ways to increase revenues.

• Sell subscriptions to your e-newsletter 
• Sell advertising in your e-newsletter 
• Sell sponsorships in your e-newsletter

Type C. Decrease Costs

At this point in the development of the Internet, one of the most powerful and easily achieved goals for small businesses to achieve is to decrease costs, independent of whether or not any other goals are selected.  Costs can be decreased in a variety of ways...

• Mailing 
• Direct mailing campaigns 
• Sales literature 
• Customer Care

Here are some examples of each of these points:

Mailing
Companies spend a fortune each year mailing information to shareholders, prospective and existing customers.

Direct Mail Campaigns
Below is a chart of the difference between direct and Internet mail campaigns.

It can be seen that e-mail campaigns are a great cost saver.

Sales Literature
Companies that have distributors typically spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each year sending out the latest versions of their sales literature. By placing this material on the web (usually in a protected area), distributors can download the material at a considerable savings to the company. Not only are the savings related to the cost of the material, they are also in the cost of mailing the material.

Customer Care
One major cost savings technique involves the use of an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page on websites where people can go to have their questions answered. Without such a page, phone calls and letters to the company require attention; hence staff time, and hence high costs to deliver equivalent services.
Types A, B, and C are 3 different ways to directly impact profitability. Types D and E do not immediately impact profitability, but have longer term potential to generate even greater rewards.

Type D. Increase Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a major contributor to small business bottom line and to repeat business, and repeat business is the key to low cost high profitability web sites. Some ways in which web sites can increase customer satisfaction include...

• increased responsiveness
• feeling of community or common interest
• feelings of personalized service or attention
• 24/7 communication

The web site elements which contribute to increased customer satisfaction include...

• FAQs
• Call back features
• VoIP
• On line chat
• Video chat
• Chat rooms
• Newsletters

 

Type E. Establish Market Dominance