After the dot com boom
Added: (Fri Jan 30 2004)
Pressbox (Press Release) -
Trainor-Thornton Ltd is owned and managed by two Directors who are steadily building up a reputation as a web company that delivers results.
Director, Dr Nick Trainor said, ‘Both David Green and I started out as young entrepreneurs who were excited about the potential and the power the web has to offer.
‘With the stratospheric rise of a lot of the dot com companies it was hardly surprising that there would be a corresponding slump. But David and I have both steadily built up our businesses. We both started in a spare room, now we are consolidating and finding that we have different strengths and experiences that can help our clients.’
How exactly do they think they are ensuring their clients are succeeding on-line where others have failed?
‘A lot of companies got their fingers burned by piling into the internet revolution and thinking they simply must have a web site. A couple of years on they are writing off the experience as just an expensive bit of advertising that went wrong.
‘People started coming to us saying they thought they should be doing better with their on-line business, but didn’t know how. Rather than giving up, they have asked us to help and we’ve been very pleased to do that for many different companies.
‘I think one difference is that when people come to us, the first question we ask them is “why do you want a web site”. A lot of clients think we should be telling them that. But once you have some definite measurable goals we can work with our clients towards achieving them and it goes from there.’
But isn’t the web just an over-hyped medium that never delivered its promise?
‘In general, most companies want the same thing – lower cost of sales, to reach a larger target audience, loyal clients and a good name for their business. The web can help deliver all that. It is simply a matter of knowing how.’
One of the methods Trainor-Thornton advocates is putting the web at the heart of the business, rather than seeing it as an add-on extra.
‘One of the things we try to do is to change companies slowly to being “web-facing” companies. This means a certain level of training to increase awareness in many key departments. Employees need to understand how the web works and how it can help them. For example, there is no point generating a load of new calls to a company if no department has been set up to deal with them.
‘Our methods have been tried and tested over several years now. Both David and I started, as many people do when trying to build a business, of selling first to family and friends.
‘We successfully managed to get those businesses to take off and become much stronger and more successful, due to sensible, strategic use of the web. This gave us both enormous satisfaction to be able to help people we knew in that way.
‘Now we are just rolling out our ideas for larger companies. The basic success model is the same. If you give your visitors (your potential clients) what they want, they will come back for more.
‘That’s what our clients tell us. We still get excited by their success, especially when they come back to us because a web launch has proved so successful they want more.