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Does your web site benefit your clients? How?

Do we have a good web site? ... You ask me. I ask you: How does your web site benefit your clients? That's all that counts... Think of all the relationships that your business maintains with tenants, owners, borrowers, lenders and service providers. Does the web help you strengthen those relationships? ... Or do you fear that web and Internet connectivity will diminish your value? Are you worried about the Internet upsetting your corporate balance? If so, it will show at your site.

That's why David Siegel of Verso states: "Web site problems are management problems. Different divisions don’t talk to each other. ... [Web sites] are organized according to how a company’s divisions see themselves, and not by the way that customers want to relate to the company." Read Siegel's terrific interview in Harvard Business School's Ideas @ Work.

Here's Siegel's advice: " Try this exercise: Identify all your customers who are on the Web. Then forget about the 80 percent of them who are least important. Just set them aside. Focus heavily on the 20 percent who are most profitable, most web-engaged, most willing to work with you online. Try to satisfy that key group 110 percent and don’t worry about disappointing the others. ... Go through three or four cycles of evolution, to where they really are engaged and coming back. Then go on to your next most desirable customers and make them extremely happy."

Question... How does your web site help your clients transact business with your company? ... Send your ideas to me , and I'll report more in a future Dispatch. Tip -- Read Siegel's books: Secrets of Successful Web Sites and Creating Killer Web Sites.

Dispatch Goal... In the last couple of weeks, circulation of the Dispatch has crossed the 7,000-subscriber threshold. Thank you! ... Next goal: 8,000 by yearend. That's ambitious. So please keep encouraging your colleagues to sign up. Hey, why not "volunteer" your whole office? Here's the pitch: "Investor, owner, broker or tenant ... the PikeNet Dispatch will help you lead your company in the transformed real estate industry." ... Sign up at the PikeNet home page or send e-mail addresses to me.

--Peter