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Tuesday, January 07, 2003

By Sam Shaaban and Brian Reinhardt

Ah, the Information Superhighway. Remember a decade ago, when that phrase inspired the business world with amazing visions of the future and sent countless entrepreneurs reeling with the possibility of communicating their agendas via the Web?

	(Anita Dufalla, Post-Gazette)

Finally, it seemed, small and midsized businesses could place up-to-the-minute news, promotions and other information on display for the world to see. Companies lacking huge marketing budgets could update customers and attract prospective clients by simply directing them to a Web site. The Internet was going to exponentially improve the way businesses communicated with their customers, investors, employees and the world beyond.

So, more than 10 years later, we ask the inevitable question: Did it work? Well, yes and no.

Screaming Media reports that "the Internet is indeed becoming more important as an information source than newspapers or television." But while the World Wide Web has drastically changed the face of business relations, more and more companies are finding that expressing information through a Web site is easier in theory than in practice.

Over time, sites inevitably need to be updated, and the problem lies therein. Costs for maintaining a Web site often range from the expensive to the utterly ridiculous. Web site owners with a maintenance contract often pay exorbitant retainer fees. Meanwhile, a high-end content management system will run into the hundred-thousand- -- or even million- -- dollar range.

This is all fine and dandy for corporate juggernauts that have millions to blow on IT budgets, but small to mid-sized firms obviously cannot afford these sums. Normally, the makeshift solution for these smaller guys involves paying high hourly rates (which are still fairly expensive) to update their sites. Due to the high cost and the time-consuming "back and forth" process involved, these updates are rarely done often enough to maximize the effectiveness of their Web sites.

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Another option is to train a current nontechnical employee to make the online updates, but this route involves expensive classes (for which a technical aptitude and a steep learning curve are required) and loss of the employee's productivity while he or she takes these classes. Then, what happens if this person quits? The whole process and expense of training must start all over again.

Both methods mentioned above require all online text updates to be funneled through one individual (internal or external), which invariably causes a bottleneck, particularly when this person has many other responsibilities. Research shows that content is the No. 1 reason visitors return to certain Web sites, so it becomes imperative that Web site owners provide the public with the most current information possible. If a Web site owner makes changes at only lengthy intervals, he or she will inexorably suffer through extended periods in which visitors are exposed to stale and outdated content, broken links, missing information or old files.

How, then, with the astronomical prices of first-class Web site maintenance, can a firm with a moderate IT budget manage to keep its content fresh and, in turn, its visitors coming back?

Step 1 is to find affordable online content management software that enables you to make real-time changes with simplicity. More tools are emerging that are geared toward successful small to midsized businesses. A few of these solutions include most of the features offered by their more expensive brethren. The primary difference is their choice to focus on the less crowded midmarket and, as a result of that emphasis, their drastically lower price point. These midmarket content management tools provide plenty of functionality for small to medium-sized companies.

Next, you'll want to use site statistics reports to review click-through and drop-off patterns to determine where you're losing traffic. Work quickly to correct any problems, and appoint one or more people to the maintenance of the various portions of your site. Also, try to get a third party to evaluate the site and give you an objective opinion on its strengths and weaknesses.

The Internet has made unlimited resources available for business communications, yet it's up to each individual Web site owner to take advantage of those opportunities by maintaining innovative, timely site content. The technology to do so has been out there for a while -- it just wasn't affordable.

Now that a number of reasonably priced content management systems are popping up, improving business communication on the Web is becoming a simple matter of devoting oneself to the continual process of site maintenance.

Sam Shaaban of Uniontown is president/CEO of NuRelm E-Business Software, which he also co-founded. Brian Reinhardt of Monongahela is a communications specialist at NuRelm E-Business Software and an undergraduate at Princeton University.