Traditional businesses on
InternetHave you ever thought of putting your business on Internet, but simply not known where to start or you’re not sure whether Internet is really meant for your business?
Most of time we see big Internet businesses like Google, Amazon and Yahoo or big corporations like Microsoft, Airlines companies and banks being successful on Net. On other hand you find someone with a brilliant idea who slaps a website together and makes a huge success with very little effort simply because they had right idea and acted on that idea. Of course, there are also those who recognizes a good idea, jumps on bandwagon and shares in that success.
Bu what if your company does not fall into any of those categories? What if you have a traditional business where you manufacture a product or offer a service to your local community?
Does your business still belong on Internet? Most definitely!! Other than a place to share information, Internet is intended to be a marketplace where we can find things that add value to our lives. If your local community finds value in your service or product, then rest of world should also. And even if your product or service cannot be made available to rest of world, which is hard to believe, Internet could be used simply to make your product more attractive to your local community.
Can your business still be successful on Internet? Again, answer is most definitely!! It simply depends on how you choose to use Internet.
Let me give you two examples of local, South African businesses that successfully use Internet to advance their business.
The first is Sizanani.com, an Internet logistics company that is tremendously successful in South Africa. They do not rely on their website to bring in new customers and yet website is core of their business. To my knowledge, Sizanani is largest logistics trading zone in Southern hemisphere. They have more than 200 customers and more than 400 transporters (who are actually also customers of Sizanani) doing huge amounts of business on Sizanani.com website every day. Yet, when you look at their homepage, you would not believe that there are hundreds or probably thousands of transactions processed on that site every day. In my opinion, secret of Sizanani’s success is not in their brilliant Internet marketing skills, but rather lies in a concept often forgotten on Internet – Human Interaction. Every customer, including transporters, has physically met a representative of Sizanani. When a customer needs help with Sizanani system, they do not send an email to some faceless email address or fill in a meaningless form on website. Instead, they pick up phone and talk directly to someone they know at company. In other words, this is a real-life, old fashioned company doing traditional business as we knew it before Internet. The only difference is that they are using Internet as a viable and convenient medium for delivering their service to their customers. The second example is Qushum.co.za. This is a fairly new website and is not nearly in same category as Sizanani. However, it is again an example of a business successfully using Internet to deliver their service to their customers. Qushum is a consulting company that helps their customers to obtain ISO 9000 accreditation and maintain that status. By placing their service on Internet, they are not offering some incredible solution to their customers which has never been possible before, but Internet is simply making service more accessible to their customers and therefore making customer’s day-to-day life more convenient. Also, by putting their business on Internet, they have taken a lot of mundane tasks out of their own hands, which allows them to spend their time more effectively on growing their business.
