In this day and age of seemingly ubiquitous E-commerce, many massage practitioners feel like the dinosaurs of old. They ponder whether they should start the process and expense of setting up a Web site. Is it worth it? What is easy for Amazon.com to sell over the Internet (e.g., books, CDs, toys) has little relevance in professions that focus on intangible services for which you need human bodies. Or has it?

Your Digital Business Card
Let’s consider the core factors. First and foremost, every practice, no matter how small, needs to have a presence on the Web—for the same reason no one questions the necessity of having a business card available at all times. As access to the Web and use of its many riches increases, more and more people come to realize that they can find answers to almost all their questions by typing a few URLs,* including data pertaining to local resources. 
Scenarios

Example 1: A resident in a small town needs to find a massage therapist. The options are to ask around, peruse the Yellow Pages, or look it up on the Web. A quick Web search lists the local practitioners who have made the effort to have at least a one-page site: leaving out all the others who, from the Web point of view, do not exist!

Example 2: A client traveling in a foreign country needs to call his therapist but doesn’t remember the phone number or the E-mail address. The solution is to find a local Cyber-Cafe, call up the therapist’s site, and either send an E-mail or retrieve the phone number and call.

Example 3: A person going on vacation in an unknown locale is anxious to know if there are local therapists who can help with a chronic back problem or other discomfort. The response is to get on the Web and scout the resources listed for that particular location (which reassures our visitor and brings business to the local community).

In all three examples above, there is no talk of E-commerce or of selling anything online. The purpose of the Web sites are just to be there and provide basic information about the business. Many therapists do not need to go beyond that—yet it should be the very minimum. 

Keeping Clients Informed
The second argument in favor of having a Web site is the extraordinary flexibility of the medium. Information can be changed, added or eliminated literally in minutes. People expect a business’s Web site to always offer the most current information because it is so easy to update. No more excuses. Anyone can start with a simple site that gives basic contact information. If you offer additional information that is useful to Web surfers (or just your clients among the surfing population), they will come back to your site. The information can be related to health, to your practice, to free advice, and to pages of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions). The more successful sites are those that offer new information on a regular basis (not too much at a time and not too often, yet consistently). 

Business owners who do not adapt to this new reality will lose customers: They should be obsessed with their site and as a rule always think of it as the first place to post new information, policies, plans, addresses, phone numbers, or whatever else could have an impact on customers or clients. If your information is well-organized, easy to locate, and pleasant to look at and read, clients will remember it and keep coming back.

Value Added Services
The third reason for a Web site is that despite what most people think, even a site selling services can add lines of tangible products for sale. It is another consequence of the flexibility of the medium. After the initial information-based design stage (or in parallel with it), any practice can add lines of products to sell on its Web site. These can be of great value for their regular clients if they need repeat purchases of supplies or gift certificates. Carrying product lines can also dramatically increase one’s customer/client base. The products can be anything that relates to the practice or it may have nothing to do with it (although the latter can be a turn-off for some visitors, so use it carefully).

Affiliates
During the past two years, the Web has ushered an interesting update to the old sales and commissions game, and is now called the Affiliates game. Amazon was the first one to launch the system, and it has served the company well. It works like this: Your Web site lists on one page a collection of books related (or not) to your practice. Each book is linked to Amazon.com, allowing people who want it to purchase it directly from Amazon. When you sign up as an Amazon affiliate, you are given an identity code that is added to the link for every book you list on your pages. When the order comes to Amazon, they have your ID number and automatically credit your account (on average 7 percent of the price of the book), which means you do not need to do anything. This formula has been wildly successful, and is now utilized by scores of well-known companies from pet supplies to garden furniture to tapes to nutritional supplements to beauty products. Setting up such a system requires a fair amount of up-front work. The income figures resulting from it do not become really significant unless there are lots of titles (or products) and a high volume of traffic through your site. Once it is set up, you can focus on marketing your site while keeping the maintenance of its contents to a manageable minimum.

The Future Is Now
To conclude, even though not every therapist will find it worthwhile to develop an extensive Web site, let’s just say that as more and more people expect all business owners to have at least a presence on the Web, therapists will keep losing clients if they stay out of it. Reflect on the number of times you have heard either one of these questions: “Do you have a Web site?” or “What is your Web page address?” or more likely “What’s your URL?” If the number is high, take it as a sign to get moving on your site development. If you have not heard many of these questions, you will soon. Remember this article then. 
Do yourself a favor and set up, at the very least, one page on the Web now. You can think about whether to add anything later. You probably will realize quickly that it was a really good decision, and you will bask in your wisdom.

Resources
Graphics for free, free with usage restrictions, or for purchase:

Barry’s Clipart Server 
www.barrysclipart.com
The Clip Art Collection www.ist.net/clipart/index/html
The Clip Art Universe www.nzwwa.com/mirror/clipart
University of Miami, Richter Library Web Development Resource
www.library.miami.edu/GRAPHICS/browser.html

J. J. Surbeck is an independent Webmaster and president of International Perspectives in San Diego. He can be reached at: 760-753-2121, or at jjsurbeck@interspecs.com.
 

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