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Description
the Internet is bringing about the greatest change in business since the Industrial Revolution, according to a number of published articles and conference presentations. The Internet and the World Wide Web enable small firms to have a large-company image in cyberspace and enable those offering products and services to market and distribute them regardless of geographic location. In this way, it has given rise to new businesses, like Amazon.com, while severely curtailing others, like small travel agencies.
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Thus, appraisers need to be able to use the Internet and the Web to leverage their businesses, with some marketing, online delivery of documents and communications with clients. Additionally, they need to design a strategic approach to cyberspace to ensure that it helps rather than detracts from business by avoiding time- and energy-sapping traps.
Types of Web Sites
A Web site gives an appraiser a way to legitimize his business with clients, while also providing a way to promote that business via the site itself and increasingly important additional applications like blogs and Wikis, according to Peter Koeppel, president of Koeppel Direct, a Dallas-based company that helps firms plan and buy advertising in various media.
There are two basic types of Web sites, a brochure site and an interactive site, says Chris Kivlehan, vice president of marketing for INetU, a managed Web hosting company. Brochure sites tend to include much of the same information as would a print brochure, though links and additional pages enable the user to include such information as testimonials that may be more limited in a print publication due to space considerations. Among the important elements of a good site of this type are contact information, including phone number and e-mail address and the URL (i.e., www.sitename.xyz). Too many sites don't have the phone number in an easy-to-find location. Including the URL on the page helps make it easier for the user to remember it so he or she doesn't have to go back through a pages-viewed history to find it again, Kivlehan says. Any important information should be included "above the fold," so the user doesn't have to scroll down or go to a subsequent page to find it, Kivlehan recommends.
Brochure sites will often be hosted by a third party, the Internet service provider, for the cost of about $10 a month. However, these sites tend to... |
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