Is your organization's information instantly accessible to people all across the country, the world? It can be--through the web--making your information, products, and/or services available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with multiple pages of full-color, dynamic, interactive, easily updatable information.

• Promotional Literature. This is one of the simplest forms of website; it is often called "brochureware." While it does not take advantage of much of what the web offers, it is still much better than no web presence at all. When people want information about your products or services, they want it now. If you have a website, they can get your information anytime, day or night.

• Logistical Information. Like a Yellow-Pages ad on steroids. Examples include phone number, e-mail address, a map to your place of business (because a web page reaches non-locals as well as locals), a color photo of you or your facility, business hours (including special promotions and those non-standard holiday schedules), branch offices, and so forth. Have you ever gotten one of those (very expensive) ads in the Yellow Pages, only to realize it was soon out of date because you started to offer a new product or service? The web can be updated much faster and less expensively than a print ad. Once you have a website, you can reduce the size (and cost) of your print ads, because your print ads point people to the website where they can get all the info they want. Many times, the savings in print ad expenditure can pay for the website entirely!

• Product Catalog. When you consider the price of printing a four-color paper catalog, and the time and effort it takes to make changes to it, putting your catalog--or even a subset of it--on the web can look very attractive. Examples include a cabinetmaker showing the available designs and wood finishes, an auto dealership showing special deals, or a real estate agent showing available homes. The ease and speed with which web pages can be updated makes this eminently practical in a fast-moving business where your stock changes from day to day. You can sell your products, process payments, offer shipment tracking, and more--anything you can do to make it more convenient for your customers, will result in more sales for you.

• An FAQ list. If you offer a list of answers to Frequently Asked Questions, customers will consider you more helpful and friendly than the next guy--which can't help but be good for business. Examples include a chiropractor giving common causes of back pain and how to avoid aggravating it, a nursery giving advice on dealing with aphids on plants, or an auto dealership giving car maintenance tips. This way, people will come back to your site over and over even when they don't need to buy something--and your name remains fresh in their minds, so it will be there when they do want to buy something.

• Sale Information: From time to time, most businesses have sales to offer reduced prices and specials on their goods. Examples include grocery stores, flower shops, jewelry stores, photographers, restaurants, clothing stores, pet shops--virtually everybody. The ease of updating a website, and the ability of letting people sign up for email notifications of sales, makes this a good candidate for the web.

But Will It Work?

It has come to the point where unless a business has a website, it is difficult to take that business seriously. The lack of website causes a serious hit to a company's credibility.

But is it worth it to have a website? Take a look at the state of the web: with the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on websites worldwide, it quickly becomes obvious that people wouldn't continue to invest that kind of money in internet communication if there wasn't a good ROI.

Talk to Arns Publishing and Design and find out the myriad ways a web presence can benefit your customers and increase your business.

APD Can Make It Happen

• All the standard website functionality, including but not limited to:
  • Customized graphics and text (see Artwork page)
  • Interactivity via forms
  • Database-driven sites
  • Custom photography, including still images, panoramas, virtual-reality tours, and video
  • Custom software development:
    • Active web pages via PHP
    • CGI programming in Perl or other languages
    • JavaScript programming
  • Secure sites with password protection, SSL, and other data encryption
  • Extremely reliable UNIX servers
• Site setup and administration, including but not limited to:
  • Registering and setting up domain names (www.yourcompany.com)
  • Defining e-mail accounts, aliases, and forwarding
  • FTP sites for file transfer between you and your customers
  • Redundant access to internet backbone for maximized uptime
  • Site backups

See the Web section of the Portfolio page for a sampling of web projects we've done.