What do I mean by this

Very simply, bring the business on board to the power of the web. Not just that the MD can see a pretty web site, or that sales get additional people buying product but that the web has gone beyond just another part of media and has become the pre-eminent means of diseminating the message.

example: An online shop. what is the output - sales of course, we can tell what people are buying and of course what to re-stock. What we can also tell is what people are looking at, how they navigate the site! Perhaps a particular product gets all the views but none of the sales?

We can't tell that from a catalogue we can from a web site!

We're about to market a new product, we must consider the web. More than that, what about letting the web help name the product or even the company?I want people to find my company or product whenever they do a search that most approximates to the name of the product or company - so I apply a selection of proposed names to teh search term suggestion tool and see which one scores highest.

See www.drinking-water.co.uk the business wanted to call the company WaterCare - how many people do a search for "watercare"? hardly any. But tens of thousands do a search for "drinking water" - we let the web choose the name of the company!

Then there is the ongoing us of web site statistics and monitoring! I do not believe that there is a correct way of laying out a web page in a format that invites contact or sales - the first time. However an iterative process whereby the look and feel of the site is modified over a period, the manner in which web site users navigate the site is recorded, considered and fed back into the design - what changes work and which don't in getting people to stay longer on a page or navigate to an associated page.

Basically its not good enought to design a web site and treat it as a static finished product!

Equally, change for the sake of change is just as bad - it must be based on feedback!

example: Do a google search on 'water audit'. That page has changed 3 times in the last three months. Not just to get the right place on Google but a combination of the title and description on Google that suits the message I want to initially give the user of the site. Then I want them to stay on that page and navigate to the associated pages - then they might contact us!

Ther are many other instances where the use of the web comes full circle and we can apply BPI - Business Process Improvement! this benefits both teh web manager and the customer - the customer gets ever better web site sthat increasingly do the job they were designed to do.

The web manager is able to build a valid and valuable relationship with the customer.