Affordable Site Promotion That Pays Off

Consider your product or service, is there anything you could offer a potential customer that would prove to be of value to him? How about a piece of software that would help him specify or select your product? Now, tie this software program to your web site and you have a wonderful promotional piece for your company.

For example, let's say that you produce a product that needs to be specified by certain properties such as ambient temperature, fluid exposure, abrasives and whatever else an engineer would need for information. Now, at your web site's server, you place a text file database that contains all of your products and their properties. Also at your web site a visitor can download a piece of software (an .exe file) that will help him to select the proper product for his application. The software stays on his computer and can be freely distributed so that he can pass it along to other engineers at his firm or elsewhere. Your company name is now on all of those computers and it resides there for as long as they keep the program.

In addition, when they start the program a splash screen comes up (like in any other software program) which contains your company contact information. While this splash screen is being viewed by the engineer, the program is connecting to your web site and loading that text database file into the engineer's computer's memory (RAM). This will ensure the most current data is being provided and speed up the searching process.

Now, the engineer completes a form and answers some questions that will help him make the proper selection. Once he submits the completed form, a selection is made or a group is selected, depending on how specific he was in completing the form. Once he has his selection, he can either click on the product number to retrieve specifications from your web site or click on a button to order online, if you choose that as an option.

What are the advantages of such a program?

• First, as we've already mentioned, your company name and logo are now on the engineer's computer and he is likely to use your software frequently if he specifies products like yours on a regular basis.
• By offering free distribution, your software can spread from desk-to-desk and engineer-to-engineer to ensure that it gets into the proper hands - even into the hands of those who may never have visited your web site before.
• In addition, you can distribute your software on a CD-ROM, business card CD-ROM or via E-mail.
• The best advantage, however, is that your competitor cannot easily copy your program. It is written in C++ or Visual Basic or some other programming language that would require a programmer with the proper compiler to reverse engineer it. While reverse engineering is possible, it's not inexpensive and it is illegal if you've copyrighted your program.

  How much should a program like this cost? It depends on many things, the size of your database and number of fields, the complexity of the search and much more. Expect to pay a minimum of $1,000 but, overall, your cost shouldn't exceed $10,000 and the ROI (Return On Investment) is immeasurable. Web-Kare would be happy to quote you on such a project, but be sure that the program you have in mind will actually be of value to your customer or you'll be wasting your money. The ROI only comes when you provide something of value that will be used again and again.