We have created this page as we found that most business-managing people have a misconception about the Internet. They seem to confuse the Internet with Newspaper, Telephone book and Magazine advertising.

Conventional Advertising

Conventional advertising consists only of Multimedia, meaning images, movies sound and fonts, to promote your business and to let your client know that you and your services exist. Their main thrust is to pursue potential customers to buy from your business. These are “ONE-WAY-COMMUNICATIONS” as your potential client cannot use this medium to re-query back to your business.

If for example you asked a phone book, to only show you dentists, and only those that are in a particular local area, and accept the MBF-private health insurance card as payment, your phone book will not shrink to two pages and only show you what you requested. It will simply not do the work for you. It has no intelligence.

At the same token, you can not use your television set to ask an advertising business as to what the performance of their equipment are and more details about their products. Television again is “ONE-WAY-COMMUNICATION” just like the Newspaper, Magazines and phone book advertisement.

One can say however, that these kinds of media are very powerful ways of your business getting found. Potential clients can find that you initially exist and that you have a product that is worthy and attractive to interest them.

This is where the Internet is somehow different.

Internet

The Internet differs from that in some ways. Its main strength comes less in your business and its services being discovered, but in the power of your prospective clients being able to communicate with your business, without you having to hire and pay extra staff. And this is the very core purpose of the Information Technology:

THE MAIN PURPOSE OF THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IS TO ENHANCE YOUR BUSINESS BY IMPROVING COMMUNICATIONS AND AT THE SAME TIME TO REDUCE YOUR COST. TO RUN YOUR BUSINESS MORE EFFECTIVELY AND EFFICIENTLY.

The difference between conventional advertising and the Internet is that a web site is sitting on a computer and consequently has artificial intelligence. It literally can act like a person. The client on the other end can ask your business questions (these are queries run on your database on your web server) and communicate with your business without you having to hire and pay anyone to do that. And as your products, categories and so on change, the data in your database changes accordingly, which your client or prospective client can query. And of course you only reveal the data that you want your prospective customer to see. They can query if you have sufficient quantities (or hotel room or what ever it may be) in stock and place an order and so on, without having to come to your business and without you having to hire any extra staff. And this is the strength of the Internet.

Business managers that order a web site for their business are often wasting their money. Most of the smaller and medium businesses managers act as if web sites were conventional ways of advertising. So the web sites don’t hit the nail on the head as to what the Internet is about – Information technology – the power of retrieving information and communications (meaning two ways).

The problem stems from:

• The business manager’s unawareness of the power of Information technology and its intelligence and hence its consequent use for it. They think that it is all about multimedia alone, which has no artificial intelligence just fonts, images and sound.
• Many web developers are only skilled in multimedia. Potential clients do not know that the Internet is not just made up of one component namely multimedia (presentation) but two, namely the power of intelligence in communications as well. This consists of: 1) Multimedia – pictures, movies sound to promote the messages (presentation) 2) Your database with your products 3) Artificial engineering intelligence for the purpose of communication between your potential client and your business
  However most web developers lack the engineering skill (programming and database skills). To build intelligent and effective web applications three skills are required:

• Multimedia
• Database skills
• Programming skills

As you can see, there is a lot more involved than what meets the eye.

In our experience web sites work the best when your prospective client already knows you exist and then become a very powerful tool. And this is one of the major differences between the conventional way of advertising and the Internet. The Internet works best if your client knows you exist and he wishes to “GET INFORMATION”. When people come to lets say Microsoft’s web site, they already know that Microsoft exists. But they are querying something in particular. And that is the key strength of Internet applications, which most small and medium business managers don’t seem to realize.

Obviously one wants to promote his products on the Internet in an attractive way, but remember, a person who is querying a hotel room, no more than 3 km from the city center, with a data connection in the room for less than 200 Dollars per night does not come to your site to be dazzled with sparking images and noise. That misses the target and purpose of Information Technology.We advice that if you ever need a web application ensure that it is dynamic and database driven and that you have control of this database and that is works with the database that you use in your office.

Make sure of following before you get a web application for your business:

• The web-developing firm has Multimedia skills (they will most likely have that).
• The web-developing firm has database skills and skills in Structures Query Language and Stored Procedures.
• Skills in a programming language for the software they use to write the dynamic web contents on your web site.
• Make sure that your site is in fact database driven and dynamic.
• Do not take a “This kind of sites are corporate sites and they cost thousands of Dollars”, as this is no longer true. Technology has advanced where these sites are not any more costly that the simple and useless multimedia stuff they produce. They simply have not bothered to re-educate themselves.
• Test them out by asking what kind of database they use and what kind of language they use to write the software on the server. They should they something like:
  We use a MySQL, ACCESS or SQL2000 database. We use a language such as PHP, JSP, JAVA, ASP.NET, C Sharp.Net, VB.Net, CGI, Perl and so on. Even if you do not understand, you should hear some of these words. If you don’t hear them, walk away and deal with a professional firm instead.

Of course you can ask them if they use Flash, gif animation and sound for multimedia but in my opinion most of them are artistic, but because the Internet is a different medium as it uses artificial intelligence, the points on top are important. Also you should be able to expand your site to use web services.

I hope by providing you with this additional page, you have gained some insight. If you ever wish your business to be on the Internet, then you will be better prepared and don’t fall into trap of gaining what I call a “wishy washy web site”.

 

Werner Sandner
Supremweb