The response to Aspen's posting suggests that the Web can be an especially powerful tool for reaching customers, even compared with ordinary E-mail. After including its E-mail address in a postal mailing that went out to 200,000 visitors, Aspen received only 300 electronic communications requesting further information. In contrast, Web users interact with the company's Web page more than 5,000 times a day. Although it's too early to tell what percentage of those browsers are potential customers rather than just joyriding college kids, Boone considers that hit rate a success in itself.
Among New Yorkers, Zaro's is a household name. A bakery chain with annual revenues of $20 million and 12 retail outlets in places as conspicuous as Grand Central Station, Zaro's is so popular that it rarely bothers to advertise. But owner Joseph Zaro makes an exception for the World Wide Web because it offers his company an opportunity to do something at a reasonable cost that ordinary advertising can't do: reach customers across the country and perhaps even around the world.
After reading about the Web in news items, Zaro called the Pipeline Network, a Web access provider in Manhattan. He took the initiative, he says, because the Web seemed like a low-risk way to tap a potentially vast national market. "Our initial investment will not exceed $15,000 the first year," says Zaro, a self-proclaimed techie.
Getting on the Web is attractive to Zaro because of the economics. "I'm pretending this is another store," he says. "But I don't have the capital expenditures of building a store" -- about $500,000. "It's a no-brainer," he adds. "I think it will be really big for us."
When his Web page becomes available in the summer of 1995, Zaro plans to advertise only 5 to 10 of the thousands of baked goods and other foods his company produces. After six months he will look at the results and decide if the effort was worth it. If the cost of maintaining a Web presence is less than 10% of the sales that it generates, Zaro says, he will put more money into the page.
An oil-and-gas-exploration company may not seem like a prime candidate for the latest trend in marketing. But don't tell that to Prospector Petroleum, in the Woodlands, Tex.
Prospector, which is projecting revenues of $8 million in 1995, up from $5 million in 1994, is on the Web for one purpose: finding investors. The task is a little like looking for a needle in a haystack. Surveys show that the company's ideal target groups -- professionals such as physicians and attorneys, and well-off retirees -- are not using the Web in large numbers. A Georgia Institute of Technology survey reported that the typical Web user is a 30-year-old, educated, North American male who works with computers; technical professionals and university students together make up 53% of the user population.
But David H. Mangum, a consultant for Prospector who helps match potential investors with exploration companies, was convinced that the chances of picking up the right kind of Web user were great enough to justify Prospector's investment in the Web. Mangum spearheaded the effort, putting up a Web page that, like many early offerings on the Web, consisted largely of information pulled from the company's brochure. Interspersed with graphics of oil rigs, the page describes some of the company's past successes and suggests inducements to invest.
But after two months on the Web, Mangum had received no inquiries. "If you don't have flashing lights, people will just drive by you, and they won't know you're there," he says. He tried posting notes about the page elsewhere on the Internet -- to no avail. Finally, Mangum guessed that his Internet provider wasn't doing enough to attract people to its Web sites. So he switched to a provider with more Web experience. During the first weekend, Magnum received 41 inquiries.
Despite that encouraging sign, Prospector's president, Warren Evans, remains somewhat skeptical of the Web's likely payoff. "The users are just tire kickers. They're not there to invest." Still, Evans says he is willing to sink $10,000 into the Web in the first year. After that, he will pull the plug if his advertising has not shown results.
Like many dabblers on the Internet, Arnold Kling has been convinced for several years that the Net offers an ideal medium for commerce. But unlike the dabblers, Kling was willing to stake his career on his convictions. He left a secure job to start a one-person real estate and mortgage-matching service on the World Wide Web.
Kling's business takes advantage of some of the Web's chief assets, like its accessibility from any geographic location and its ability to generate large amounts of information organized into manageable pieces. For $25,000, Kling put together all the hardware and software he needed to set up Homebuyer's Fair, a Web site that seeks to match up home buyers, real estate agents, and mortgage lenders. "I want to give people the same experience they would have at a county fair," says Kling. "They can see booths from lenders, from home builders, and eventually from title-insurance companies and others, and also get a lot of general information."
Kling's home page is one of the more sophisticated infomercials on the Web. Potential buyers who call it up can get details about homes available in select metropolitan areas in the United States. They also have access to more than 100 pages of timely information on home buying, including what to look for in a home and areas in the United States with the best mortgage rates.
Kling contends that providing such information is what distinguishes his business from traditional brokerage houses. The information "gives prospective buyers a reason for using the service," he says. "It's not just the market information. It's the answers to questions like, How do I buy a house? How do I apply for a mortgage? Where do I write for important publications?"
More important, Kling adds, that kind of information is what keeps people coming back. If a company can't put up a Web page that captures and holds users' interest, he observes, potential buyers will take their business elsewhere. "It's not like people get on the Web all psyched to shop," he notes. Instead, he says, they have to see an advantage to doing business with a company on the Web.
