Look For Opportunities In New Places

Look For Opportunities In New Places
Why aren't more businesses online?
August 1996

It’s 1996 in Howard County, Maryland...one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced counties in the United States. There are 38 active member websites listed by the local chamber of commerce. There are 163 Internet domains registered to organizations in Columbia, the county’s largest town. These are companies who have chosen to make the Internet, to some degree, a part of their business operations.

What strikes me is that less than 4% of the local chamber’s membership lists a website, and of the thousands of commercial and nonprofit corporations in the area, only 163 have registered a domain.

After participating in the commercial growth of the Internet for the past two years, I’m surprised that the vast majority of businesses haven’t opened their operations to the opportunities of the Internet.

For example, direct marketing pieces generally cost between one and three dollars each to produce and distribute. A mid-sized mailing can easily cost $10,000 or more. This same information can be posted to an Internet website for a few hundred dollars where it will remain active and readable indefinitely.

Most product merchants, and many service providers, can sell to customers who are not from the same area. One small business owner is expanding his laser and inkjet toner refilling service to a nationwide mail order house practically overnight.

A local screen printing shop is paying $1,000 and $50/month to advertise its sporting apparel on an 4-page, color Internet site just to capture the young, affluent, athletic market. The fees include all website design and hosting services. For $130/month the first year, this entrepreneur will reach the entire world...for about a quarter of the cost of running a much smaller ad once a month in a newspaper.

What’s nagging me is why more businesses don’t use the Internet to grow their bottom lines. Alright, if advertising your products on a website isn’t for you, have you considered using the Internet to get information?

For instance, we recently helped a customer who called for advice before purchasing a printer. We weren’t familiar with the specifications of the models he was considering, but after visiting the Hewlett-Packard website and downloading the specs we helped our customer perfectly match a printer to his needs. He then went online to find the best price.

I encourage every businessowner to learn more about the Internet. Decide for yourself if you can grow your business using this technology. Maybe you can increase sales, lower distribution costs, or develop new markets. Maybe you’ll just learn something new.

Even if it’s not for you today, don’t be left behind. This medium is so easy to use that we’ll all be doing business digitally in the next year, like it or not.

David Stephen Murphy is President and CEO of Damar Group, Ltd. which presents computer training classes, publishes computer learning guides, and helps organizations do business on the Internet. The website is http://dgl.com, and Mr. Murphy may be reached at dave@dgl.com or 410.567.5366.

updated November 2, 1996
http://dgl.com/tbm/tbm9608.html