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Article by Sam Martin, PE, CVS, President of OfficeOnWeb, Technologies. 7/30/1999

The Internet is a great place for us all to find information and resources. Businesses, organizations, governments, and societies place a lot of up-to-date information about their products and activities on the Internet. Probably, the younger you are, the more familiar you are with it and its benefits. One of our high school employees knows more about computers than some of our people that have a Masters in Computer Science. But age is not a barrier; our oldest customers has a very successful web site, answers e-mail daily, gets paged on her cell phone through the net, and is nearly 80.

One of the biggest concerns for many families is that their children will be exposed to inappropriate materials or contacts through accessing the Internet. It's a very valid concern. Every day I get e-mail that I did not ask for or want. Some of this contains questionable material. There are a variety of programs available to help you monitor and remove much of this risk. CyberSitter, CyberPatrol.com, and NetNanny.com are the most popular. They monitor words and use a special tag which providers, such as ourselves, voluntarily place on our servers so that the program knows what kind of content is present on the site (1. for children, 2. general visitors, and 3. contains questionable material for some). It is not fool proof, but it is fairly effective.

Other options include getting online with a provider that filters the actual access. One that some of my family uses is familyconnect.net. It slows down the connection speed and I personally don't like to have my access restricted in any form, but they seem to like it that way. It will also turn away legitimate requests for business contact that are, in reality, not questionable. Thus, as a business provider, we don't attempt to filter individual access.

Turning to business, for many businesses in Colorado, summer is one of the great profit generators. People are traveling, enjoying the warm weather, and going shopping. During this time, Internet activity decreases. Who wants to spend their day in the house "surfing" when they can be out enjoying recreation; having a picnic, meeting friends, or otherwise enjoying themselves?

This is why many of the search engines close down their new site registration services during summer. They must reprogram sometime, so they wisely pick their slowest season to do it. This allows them to take advantage of the September through December rush on the Internet.

For many of these same Colorado businesses, winter is their slow time. Restaurants, gift stores, and other Lookout Mountain, Evergreen and Genesee area businesses often note that their winter traffic is far below that of their summer. Now is the time to use the summer Internet slow period to create increased business in the winter physical business slow period. By generating new information and registering it now, business owners can ensure that their web site is completed and ready for the fall Internet rush. This technique allows business proprietors to add new business during otherwise slow periods.

Some interesting tidbits: Did you know that as of May 1999, 58% of all magazine advertisements contain an Internet address, many advertisements on TV are now showing only a web site address, AutoBytel.com saw a 78% increase in purchase request traffic in the days immediately following their Super Bowl ad, and 54% of online sales are from new customers?

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Did you know that in 1998 more than 95% of OfficeOnWeb's new customers made a profit from their web site within their first year of operation? Sad, but it is true. This compares to less than 20% industry wide ever even breaking even. Why? Professional and directed expertise. This industry average for people leaving their current web service provider is 4% per month! That's nearly 50% over a year! Ours is less than 1% per year. That is because we endeavor to make our clients money and don't just offer a "pat solution" that we know has a low probability of ever making our client a profit. Some of the features that make up the level of success that our clients enjoy are:

 Five redundant backbone connections

 99.999% up time on UNIX servers

 Redundant OC-3 connect to all five backbones

 Full data center services

RAID 5 system with weekly backup of critical systems

 True Web Developer Services

 Large support site for clients and visitors

 Four level or higherencryption on all e-commerce solutions designed by Office On Web (this is the government standard required if Government people are to use a site)

 We NEVER host a commercial site on an access server (that is really bad, but common in dial up providers)

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