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Is
your website ailing?
It used to be that simply having
a website meant that your organization was ahead of the curve.
Those days are long gone. Today more than ever, organizations
need to fuel business and their bottom lines through savvy Internet
tactics.
What separates the savvy from the
just getting by? If any of the following symptoms are true of
your organization or your website, you may need to rethink your
strategy, or better put, start using a strategy in the first
place.
Symptoms:
1. You
cannot quantify your website’s traffic statistics even
in general terms. This should be as common knowledge
as your last year’s revenues or your mission statement.
How can you make smart decisions about internet marketing
dollars if you don’t know how much traffic you are getting?
2. Your website has not
changed in any way in 6 months. If this is the case,
it probably indicates that your site is not an active part
of your marketing plan. Be careful not to neglect your site
to the point that potential customers will be turned off by
a lack of attention to detail.
3. Your site is not generating
leads of any kind. Does your site provide an easy
way for customers to contact you? Can they submit questions
online? Are you in the habit of asking walk-ins “how
did you hear about us?”
4. Your site is rarely,
if ever, mentioned in meetings and planning sessions.
This one is pretty self-explanatory. Is your site the big
white elephant in the living room that nobody talks about?
If your organization displays any
of the above symptoms, don’t despair. But do commit to
doing something about it. Many times the best way to begin is
to find sites that you do like and incorporate the best qualities
of those sites into your own. Now get surfing!
Internet
Policy
Have you
updated your Internet Policy recently? Statistics show that
most of you don’t even have an Internet Policy, never
mind keeping it up to date. It’s time to write a policy,
discuss it with your employees, have them sign it, and enforce
it as necessary. If you’re wondering what might happen
if you don’t, below is a partial list of possibilities
(read certainties):
1.
Breach of Confidentiality
Confidentiality breaches are caused most frequently by staff
within a company. Confidential information can include the company’s
strategic direction, sensitive product data (e.g. a new product
yet to be released), sales information, prospective and current
contracts, or information about other employees.
Breaches
using Internet-based personal email systems, instant messaging
services, chat rooms, news groups and bulletin boards rather
than the organization’s email system are likely to be
deliberate. These could be caused by a disgruntled employee
or someone about to resign and join a competitor.
2.
Damage to Reputation
There is little question that the content of a message published
to a chat room, news group or bulletin board using a staff member’s
company email address can affect its reputation, especially
if it contains offensive or inappropriate material.
3.
Lost Productivity
As the Internet provides access to a wealth of information and
content on almost any subject imaginable, there is significant
temptation for personal use by staff. Numerous surveys tell
us that a significant proportion of work time is lost to personal
use of the Internet.
30%
to 40% of employees’ Internet activity is not business
related and costs employers millions of dollars in lost productivity.
4.
Legal Liability
Employers have an obligation to protect staff in the workplace
from content of a racist or offensive nature. If Internet usage
is not sufficiently policed, employees who are exposed to such
content by other staff’s use of the Internet may have
recourse to the courts should the matter not be addressed promptly.
Additionally,
the downloading by staff of files via the Internet (e.g. software,
data, music, pictures, video etc.) whether intentionally or
unintentionally, may infringe upon the intellectual property
rights of third parties, exposing the organization to possible
legal action.
27%
of Fortune 500 companies have battled harassment claims stemming
from employee misuse of email and Internet systems.
5.
Damage to IT Systems and Electronic Files
As anyone who has suffered can attest to, the introduction of
a virus to an individual PC or corporate network has the potential
to cause enormous havoc, leaving a trail of destruction in its
wake. If not sufficiently protected, documents may be destroyed
and unrecoverable and significant time may be required to recover
PCs damaged in the virus attack.
6.
Increasing IT Network Traffic
Personal use of the Internet may result in staff downloading
resource intensive web pages or large files (e.g. software,
data, music, pictures, video etc.) which take up unnecessary
network bandwidth which, especially on smaller networks, can
have a detrimental effect on business related network traffic.
70%
of Internet pornography traffic occurs between the hours of
9am and 5pm.
If you haven’t
revised your policy to restrict spyware and music downloads,
now is the time to do so. If you would like assistance formulating
your policy, please call Promethius at 317/733-2388.
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