Business-to-Business Website Success

by unkown reporter, 21 July 1997.

The media today is just full of great success stories from organisations using the Internet, especially the World Wide Web, to do business. Yet in all of this hoopla it's rare to hear a business-to-business success story.

Well one Melbourne based company, Expert Software Services, has gone from strength to strength in the last twelve months. This pure services company has grown from twelve (12) people in April '96 to thirty-four (34) people in July '97 and is still growing strongly. Yet their only marketing efforts to date have been via a seemingly simple, yet highly effective website at http://www.expert.nf. So just what has been the key to the success of this website?

"Business-to-business marketing is quite different to most other forms of marketing," says Lloyd Borrett, Marketing Manager at Expert Software Services. "It's the quality of leads generated that counts, not the quantity. We are being constantly amazed at the quality of leads generated by our website. Large and medium sized corporate and government organisations, our target audience, are finding our website, liking what they see, and contacting us."

Since it's launch in September '96 the Expert Software Services website has only received some 5,000 hits. That number of hits is quite insignificant when you consider that the most popular websites like http://www.microsoft.com receive over one million hits per day! But as Borrett puts it, "Our website has probably been just as effective for our business as Microsoft's has been for their business. And that's what counts."

Certainly, Expert Software Services has the knowledge and experience to produce a website equal in all respects to any of the leading websites in the world. After all, their website did make it into the 'Winners Circle' of Microsoft's worldwide 'Activate the Internet Contest' for 1996, one of only two Australian companies to do so. Proof indeed that they know what they're doing. Still, while their website looks attractive, it's very plain and simple.

"Looks can be deceptive," says Borrett. "Business people are looking for information when they visit a website, not 'the glitz and glamour' that mass market websites try to provide. We have focused on providing lots of information (over 200 pages), whilst making that information easy to read and navigate."

Indeed, there is plenty of information about this full-service software company on their website. Details about the history, values and style of the company; examples of multi-platform, client/server software solutions custom built for clients; full coverage of the market sectors in which the company operates; and descriptions of the client/server, internet/intranet and workgroup software services available. It's obvious that this company is successfully applying many leading edge software technologies for the benefit of its clients.

"We have been early adopters of some Web technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets," says Borrett, "but only where the technology is an improvement for users whose web browsers support it and not a penalty for others. We've done a lot to ensure broad accessibility to our website."

Borrett wanted to ensure that people using browsers that don't support frames would be able to view the site. Building in navigation bars into a faux frame style gives the organisational benefits of frame-based navigation, but eliminates the need to create a frames and non-frames version of the website. "Business-to-business websites are about information," says Borrett, "and with information this important, anything you can do to increase accessibility and improve navigation is the best way to go."

Still, Expert Software Services have a few selected pages on their website where they have let loose and demonstrated some of the latest Internet technology available. These pages implement an intellectual challenge known as 'Petals Around the Rose'. One page features an interactive, animated 'genie' which guides the user through the challenge.

The genie actually talks if the users system supports a sound card. If the users system also supports a microphone, the genie can actually respond to voice commands. However, as always, there is a down side. The genie only works if you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer v3 or better, and the ActiveX control for the genie is a 4.5 Mb file that has to be downloaded.

Part of the success of the Expert Software Services website has been that it is fully integrated into all of the company's communications. All stationery, company communications and advertising promote the website.

To date Expert Software Services has only run employment advertising. It's part of their constant effort to find more quality people to undertake new business software development projects for the company's clients. All employment adverts refer candidates to the website. In turn, the website has a comprehensive 'Careers' section where much more information is provided on the positions available. Plus candidates have access to all of the other information on the website.

"Again, our website has been an effective tool in our recruitment strategy," says Borrett. "We can run smaller, cheaper adverts less often. Candidates use our website to decide if the position and our company are right for them. They can also download our recruitment forms, and email their applications to us, which greatly streamlines the whole process."

Another area where the Expert Software Services website seems to be well ahead of the pack is in its use of web search engines and directories. "It takes time to ensure your website is properly listed but it does pay off," says Borrett. "If people can't find our site, we may as well not bother to have it." The website has been designed to fully support the web robots standard. It receives over 20 hits per week from the web robots of various search engines.

The goal of the Expert Software Services website is to propagate the company's message as widely as possible to its target audience. "It's no good having people with slow modems being frustrated by large images downloading slowly," says Borrett. "We monitor our image sizes and colour palette carefully, and use images very selectively." Once you have visited two pages on this site, the visitor's web browser has cached most key images. The result is fast loading web pages.

Once a web page is loaded it's also important to think about how it's used. "We've found that many people print web pages for later use," say Borrett. "Thus it's important to have the company's contact information on every web page printed. Then when people pick up the print out days later there is still something in the document to quickly link it back to our company."

It's often said that the Internet is tailor made for specialist boutique companies. Well Expert Software Services have certainly been proving that and have seized the opportunity while many of the larger players in their market have blinked. But the most important lesson is that Expert Software Services have designed their website to properly target their market.

Too many companies, often driven by their advertising agencies, are simply paying extraordinary amounts of money for appallingly designed websites that simply don't produce results. "It's just not enough to be able to create fancy 'artistic' web pages," says Borrett. "You have to understand the medium and the target audience. What is important is that visitors don't lose the experience because of the design."

People are really enthusiastic when they see something that works well. "It's not uncommon for us to spend the first ten minutes of a meeting with potential new clients listening to them praising our website," explains Borrett. "Many have asked us to build similar websites for them, but it's just not our core business. We only get involved if clients want a website or Intranet that fully integrates with their core business systems to deliver online access to data and electronic commerce solutions. That is, the tuff stuff that requires our software design and development skills."

Borrett predicts strong growth in business-to-business use of the Internet. "The rate of change is changing, and nowhere is it changing faster than on the Internet," he says. "Our success in the use of the Internet to date causes us to be constantly looking for what's next. So we'll continue to carefully monitor changes in Internet technology and usage. Then we'll respond accordingly. Hopefully, we'll get it right more often than most and stay ahead in the use of the Internet for business-to-business marketing."

See also, Lloyd's page about building the Expert Software Services website.