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Contact UsLinkshapeBiz, an integrated platform for online businesses
By Ricky | November 2nd, 2010 | No comments yet
Hello, Linkshape fans! If you follow our blog, Facebook, or Twitter feeds over the last few weeks, you may have noticed we’ve been pretty quiet. However, if you’re on our newsletter mailing list, you’ll have received the very first issue of totally revamped official Linkshape newsletter, What’s Shaping. You can sign up or unsubscribe at any time.
Today, we return and you’ll have the pleasure of being introduced to a new online business article series. You may recall back in June, when we announced our new online business platform, LinkshapeBiz which integrates several key Internet technologies:
- Content management
- eCommerce
- Customer Relationship Management
- Email Marketing
- Analytics
- Search Engine Optimization
- Web Applications
Integrated Internet technologies
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If you’re not already excited about the possibilities of managing virtually all of your online business efforts from a single, central interface – well, consider yourself lucky. The rest of us, who rely on Internet marketing technologies to promote and run our businesses have spent years struggling to keep these various, separate tools in-synch and effective in our efforts.
Then again, some of you may not even know what content management is or at least may not understand the importance it plays in online business. Unless you work in the Internet advertising industry, chances are you fit the bill here and if so, I’m writing directly to you.
Online business
We’ll get to content management in another article. To kick things off, I’m going to start slow and focus on the topic of online business in general, because it’s still quite common for small businesses to be stuck in the outdated mindset of “To be on the Web, we just need a website.”
Before we go on, let’s preface this further discussion by saying there are plenty of small businesses that do better than “just fine” without a website or any other type of online business efforts. There are also plenty of businesses that really don’t see the need to do anything other than keep up a simple website that has their contact information on it somewhere. Some of these are also successful companies.
That’s probably not you, reader, because you’re here learning about how Internet technologies can help your company be more successful. Am I right?
Electronic business and e-business
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. The concept of an online business is less revolutionary than it is evolutionary. Some of you may be familiar with the terms “electronic business” or “e-business” that became popular in the late 90s. Informational sites such as WikiPedia consider these terms synonymous with “online business”, the general idea being that an e-business uses information technologies to support business functions.
Personally, I consider online business to be the next small iteration of electronic business, if a small line can be drawn. Thinking back to the 90s, if your company was making the switch from traditional, paper-based book-keeping to an accounting software – perhaps Quickbooks on the accountant’s desktop computer – it could be said that your company was becoming an e-business. That carried bragging rights.
Online software
The small line for me is the proliferation of online software. For example, there’s now an online version of Quickbooks and eventually I believe all software will be run through an Internet connection instead of residing on your actual computer device. So yes, it’s a very small line that we don’t really need to focus on. Instead, let’s point out some reasons why companies choose to become embrace the concept of an e-business or an online business.
Advantages of online business
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- Reach – Thanks to Internet technologies, your business can have a global presence available to stakeholders all along the value chain, all around the clock.
- Time and cost savings – Ditching the traditional brick-and-mortar setup allows that capital to be invested into a comparitavely larger footprint online. Significant savings can also be realized thanks to a reduced workforce and equipment requirements.
- Potential competitive advantage – Being on the cutting edge often gives a significant advantage over the competition, across all functional business areas.
- Improved customer service management – Tied closely to the first advantage, even if traditional customer service cannot be completely replaced, it can usually be enhanced by Internet technology, resulting in higher levels of customer satisfaction.
The main disadvantage of going online business
I’m not going into as much detail as other articles out there on the topic, but I do want to quickly address the main disadvantage of moving towards an effective online business model: Mainly, a lack of resources to successfully implement the transition to online business. The emphasis should be placed on “successful” and “effective”. I feel I need to make that distinction because as a fellow small business owner, I can understand the desire (and need, for some) to focus completely on cost savings. However, I don’t think any savings-minded small business owner wants to spend a single penny on a something that isn’t going to improve their business.
Unfortunately, the bane of all small businesses is limited resources, and most small businesses don’t have the luxury of an in-house Internet marketing team who can steer the company in the direction towards the right technologies and strategies. This brings me to my plug.
Online business consulting
This lack of resources creates the demand for online business consulting services, such as Linkshape. We like to think of ourselves as an outsourced, on-demand Internet marketing team for our clients. So when an amazing technology comes around, such as LinkshapeBiz, I can easily picture myself heading up the elevator to your office and saying: “Boss, you’ve got to see this. I’ve got a way to really improve our business.”
I hope you’ll join me next week as I begin to break out the many technologies integrated into LinkshapeBiz and explain how they can benefit your company. Until then, happy Linkshaping!
