RM Online - Is a Web site the missing piece in your puzzle?

Roughing it is a way of life in Alaska, and the state attracts a lot of adventure-seeking tourists. Some come to hunt and fish, others to trek the pristine wild-erness or to brave the wild waterways for which the Land of the Midnight Sun is known.

To survive Alaska's mean streams, one needs a heavy-duty inflatable river raft and all the right accessories - cargo nets, rowing frames and life jackets. But where does the traveler from the Lower 48 and elsewhere around the world find such things? And how? Let's try the Internet!

There we find Independent Rental of Fairbanks, which makes a good living providing such items.

The company's Web site* is focused on rafts and raft accessories.

Customers are strongly encouraged to call, since phone contact affords the company the opportunity to sell instead of passively waiting for an order to arrive by e-mail. [See the Competitive Management piece on selling phone-in customers on your company's capabilities and strong points instead of just quoting your rates - Rental Management, September 1999, page 70.]

"We built the site two years ago, and because of it we now enjoy a steady trickle of e-mail inquiries all year, along with the deluge we get in the springtime when most people want to come here," says Manager Penny Stuart.

"Independent Rental is not exclusively involved in the recreation business. We also rent tools and equipment to contractors here in Fairbanks. Our contractors work in a locally based market and don't really need to use a Web site to find things. That's why our site is aimed more at the recreational side of the rental business than the construction side. The site has done wonders for our raft rentals, and pretty soon we're going to list more items on it such as lake and riverboats."

Web sites often fail because they're too passive, too flashy or too irrelevant to achieve their mission. While fancy graphics and other distractions may be interesting to look at, they do little to meet the site's prime directive, which should be to provide useful information that helps build business. Showbiz Web sites are like movies with lots of special effects and no plot, amusing for awhile but soon forgotten. The best Web sites are proactive, entertaining and unforgettable - and customers are on them all the time.

Independent Rental's unpretentious Web site is exactly what the doctor ordered: it's tightly focused on a single marketplace - travelers with a yen to get up close and personal with the Alaskan wilderness - and it gives interested parties a number to call, not just a Web site, so the company has the opportunity to personally field inquiries and take orders. Independent's Web site is not just another stop in cyberspace, it's a sales tool.

Celebration Rentals in Flemington, N.J., an event and party company, also runs a proactive Web site.* President Megan Jones-Holt first became aware of the commercial potential of Web sites in 1996 and launched her own soon after. In just three years, she has become an expert in the do's and don'ts of Web site management, at least as they apply to the party rental business.

Do hire a consultant, designer or manager, she says, until you learn all there is to know about properly running a Web site. Web-making has come of age in recent years and the majority of Web site designers know enough about the business to tell you why some Web sites fly and others never get off the ground. Also, Web site insiders are familiar with the geography of the Internet; they can link your site with browsers and related categories that could bring a tidal wave of Web surfers to your door.

Do list a telephone number by all means because doing so may result in an important inquiry or even a sale. Do fill the site with plenty of pictures and just enough text to inspire a prospect to call. Don't list prices - however reasonable they may be, published prices scare off prospects.

"The biggest mistake you can make is to put your prices on the Web," Jones-Holt says. "People won't call if you do, which defeats the purpose of having a site in the first place. It's also not a good idea to load the Web with too much information. You need enough to carry the site, of course, but you don't want to overwhelm the customer with reams of text. He won't read it. The idea, bottom line, is to entice but not oversell. The selling should be done when the customer calls."

Another early convert to Web sites is party rental owner and computer guru Steve Kohn, Miller's Rentals & Sales* in Edison, N.J., who launched his site in 1997. [Kohn is the moderator of the Rental Management Technology Forum, covering various Internet questions, in this annual technology issue.

Internet technology was still quite primitive back in those days - just two years ago - says Kohn. To build a site one had to be fluent in HTML, a very tough computer language. For Web site designers it was a seller's market, and the handful of experts in the field could afford to work at their own pace and charge big bucks for their services.

"We found our designer through word of mouth," Kohn remembers. "Things did not go well at first. Time is of the essence in the party business where you're only as good as your most recent information. The only way to manage a Web site in this business is to change it regularly. Prospects should be updated about the work you've done for other clients, your current promotions, and the products and services you can bring to the table. Everything has to be done in a hurry, but when we tried to make this point with our designer we didn't get very far. The guy had lots of clients, all of them as desperate for his services as we were. Basically, he could call the shots."

Frustrated by this situation, Kohn and his staff searched the marketplace for a Web site software package. The effort paid off in spades. Today the site has the look and feel of an upscale product catalog. Browsers first encounter a home page complete with company bio and contact information, followed by a menu of choices that includes product and service listings, a client list and testimonials from happy customers.

The site is loaded with photos and descriptive text, and more of the same is added when customers inquire about products that are not already listed. According to Kohn, the site already consumes more than 27 megabytes. There are 462 files, 355 pictures and 1,252 links, 115 of which are internal, the rest external.

Currently the site averages 700 to 1,000 hits per week from prospects all over the world. Its impact on business has been enormous, Kohn says. In the past, the firm enjoyed a steady growth rate of 5 to 6 percent per year. Since implementing the site, the growth rate has doubled.

"The site has opened a whole new world of opportunity for us," Kohn says. "In fact, it recently opened the door to a market we didn't even know existed. Though there's nothing on the site to indicate that we sell used equipment, we've had so many inquiries about it that we now offer used products as a sideline.

"This might not have happened had we not built so many feedback options into the site. Feedback is a vital component of Web management. You have to tell your customers how to contact you because if you've done a good job setting your site up, they will definitely want to."

But do Web sites work for everybody? Mountain Rental Center* in Nederland, Colo., specializes in industrial tools and equipment, portable toilets for construction sites and party goods. When CEO Ken Adler set up the Web site in 1996, he had grave doubts about its usefulness. Three years later, he is still less than enthusiastic about Web sites, at least as they apply to the tool and equipment rental business.

"As it turns out, my negative expectations were 100 percent correct," he says. "I can say without exaggeration that the site hasn't done a damned thing to improve my rental business. There are lots of pictures on the site, plenty of descriptive text, and more than enough contact information, but in spite of all of that, I can remember receiving only two e-mail inquiries about tools and equipment over the course of the past three years.

"Web sites work great if you're renting party supplies, but fall flat if your products are tools. There is urgency in the tool business that is not served by the Internet. Contractors need this stuff in a hurry. For them it's faster and easier to use the Yellow Pages than to boot up the Net."

Randy Apted, systems administrator for Acme Construction Supply Co.* in Portland, Ore., takes a very different view. The company sells and rents tools such as cordless and pneumatic drills and generators to the commercial and residential construction trade. Acme's Web site went live about 15 months ago and is still evolving, but already it includes an interactive catalog through which customers may purchase tools. Rental products are not available to customers online, but this will soon change.

"We will soon have an interactive catalog for rentals," he says. "We expect to do well with it but we also have realistic expectations. The primary beneficiaries are likely to be our existing rental customers. Unlike buyers, who might contact you from anywhere, rental customers are almost always local.

"For them the catalog will be a great convenience. The Internet is open 24 hours a day, which gives our rental customers the option of booting up our Web site whenever they want. For contractors with little or no free time, the site will be very valuable."

*Web sites:

<akpub.com/akbbrv/indep>

<celebrationpartyrental.com>

<millers-rentals.com>

<mountainrentalcenter.com>

<acmetool.com>