Extra Credit

By now you should have toted up your score, and you've got a pretty good idea of how you've done. But this is only a look at some of the technology that goes into your Website. What are some other things that you can do on your site and elsewhere to be more effective?

Start by using e-mail and the Web together. E-mail is a powerful tool for communication and notification. On the other hand, the Web is great for putting lots of information out and sharing it and linking bits of related information. Use e-mail for notification and newsletters, and use the Web for backup information in depth.

Think about having a gift registry. While it's true that if you're selling lots of instruments, most of it is going to be local, there's another whole group of folks that many stores would find to be wonderful customers if only they had a way to know what to buy and could do that buying easily. Those are distant relatives, especially grandparents. Set up some kind of gift registry program so that students or other folks who buy from you can tell distant relatives what kind of musical gift they would like.

Extra credit, too, if you keep your Web database and your store database linked. That's going to be getting a lot easier as a technology called Extensable Markup Language (XML) comes online over the next couple of years. XML is going to make it a lot easier for you to share information between different programs and between different businesses.

Well, that's it! By now, you should have a pretty good idea of how your site is doing, and what you should do to fix it. If I can help, shoot me an e-mail.

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