Ways to promote your website #18 - The Fundamentals

Once you have clearly defined your online objectives, your target markets, and the products and/or services you want to promote online, you are ready to move on to the next phase of planning your Web site—doing your competitve analysis.

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Ways to promote your website #17 - Products and Services

It is important to define the products and services you want to promote on-line. Sometimes the products and services you offer off-line in your physical store are the same as in your online store, but quite often thereare differences.

Business owners who have a bricks-and-mortar location sometimes assume that their online storefront is an extension of their offline storefront and that they will provide exactly the same products and servicesonline as offline. In some cases, fewer products are offered on-line than in the physical store. This is often the case if you are test marketing, butalso if some of the products you sell in your physical location are not appropriate for online sales because of competitive pricing or shippinglogistics.

In other cases, your online store might offer more products or services than the bricks-and-mortar location. For example, your offline bookstore might not offer shipping or gift wrapping. If your online bookstoredoes not offer these services, you will lose a lot of business to your online competition. When a site’s product offerings include items that are appropriate for gift giving, it is essential to also offer wrapping,customized cards, shipping to multiple addresses, and shipping options.

The consumer is “king” and is very demanding. You have to meet and beat your consumers’ expectations online to garner market share. People shopping for gifts online are looking for convenience, and the site thatprovides the greatest convenience and the greatest products at the lowest prices will be the winner.

Web sites and Internet marketing strategies differ depending on the product or service being sold. A company that markets toys has to develop a fun and interactive Web site that is attractive to children.The Web site should also give children a way to tell their friends about the site as well as a reason to return to the site. The toy company might want to offer an electronic postcard service whereby childrencan send a colorful and musical message to their friends and tell them about the site.

Another idea is to provide a “wish list” service. Children can make a list of the toys they want, and this list is sent to the parents via e-mail. The parents can then make better informed purchasing decisions andmight become loyal to the toy company’s site. Likewise, some toy companies offer reminder services that send an e-mail message to visitors who have registered and completed the appropriate questionnaire toremind them of a child’s birthday and to offer suggestions for gift ideas. Once again, this promotes sales and repeat traffic and increases customer loyalty.

In another example, a software development company might want to provide downloadable demo versions of its software products and allow people to review its products for a specified period of time beforethey make a purchasing decision. When consumers decide to buy the software, a robust e-commerce system needs to be in place to handle the orders.

A travel agency’s Web site might include features such as an opt-in mailing list to send people information on weekly vacation specials or a page on the site detailing the latest specials. The travel agency’s sitemight also want to include downloadable or streaming video tours of vacation resorts to entice visitors to buy resort vacation packages. Another idea is to have a system in place to help customers book vacations,rent cars, and check for available flights. The travel agency might also want to store customer profiles so they can track where particular customers like to sit on the plane, the type of hotel room they usuallybook, and their credit card information to make bookings more efficient for the customer and the agency.

If you are marketing a service online, it is difficult to visually depict what your service is all about. Visitors to your site need some reassurance that the service you are selling them is legitimate and valuable.Therefore, you might wish to include a page on your site that lists testimonials from well-known customers. This gives prospective customers more confidence about purchasing your service.

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Ways to promote your website #16 - Target Markets

It is important to define every one of your target markets. Your Web site is designed for them!

For each and every one of your target markets, you need to determine

• Their needs
• Their wants
• Their expectations.

For each and every one of your target markets, you should also try to
determine an appropriate “WOW” factor.

What can you provide for them on your Web site that will WOW them?

Your objective should beto exceed the target market’s expectations. Your main target market might be your potential customer, but other target markets might include existing customers, or the media, or those who influence the buying decision for your potential customers, associates, or affiliates.

When you look at—really look at—potential customers versus existing customers, you realize that what these two groups want and need from your Web site are probably different.

• Someone who is an existing customer knows your company. Your products, your business practices, and the like are not a priority for them on your site.
• A potential customer needs these things before giving you their first order.

“Customer” is such a huge target market; it needs to be broken down into segments.

Every business is different. If you were a hotel, for example, your customer target market might be broken down further into:

• Business travelers
• Vacation travelers
• Family travelers
• Meeting planners
• Handicapped travelers
• Tour operators
• Groups.

You get the idea. You need to segment your customer target market and then, for each segment, you need to do an analysis of needs, wants, and expectations.

If the media is part of your target market, make sure you plan to have a media center or if you want to reach potential investors,make sure you have an investor relations page.

If you intend to market children’s products, your Web site should be colorful and the text simple and easy to understand in keeping with what appeals to your target market. Chances are, fun-looking graphics will be used extensively on your site to draw children further into it.

If you market financial services, your Web site requires a more professional approach. Your graphics must convey a clean appearance, and the text should be informative and written in a business like fashion.

As this example demonstrates, the content and tone of your site must be tailored to your target market. After all, this is the best way to attract the attention of the people who are interested in purchasing your product or service.

Another aspect to consider when designing your Web site is your target market’s propensity to utilize the latest technologies and the configuration they are likely to be using. An online business that markets custom, streaming multimedia presentations expects its clientele to be technically inclined.

These clients are more likely to have the latest software, advanced Web browser technologies, and faster machines.

On the other hand, clients of a vendor who sells gardening supplies online might be less likely to have fully embraced the latest technologies.

Most people looking for these products are connecting from home rather than from their workplace.

• They might have a slow dial-up connection to the Internet, slower machines, and older software.
• They might still be using the Web browser that was originally installed on their system, simply because they are uncomfortable downloading the latest version of the browser, are unaware of the more recent version, or are uninterested in downloading a large file.

If your target market includes this demographic, be careful with your use of Java, Flash, and large graphic files.

What does this mean for developing and designing your Web site?

Well, streaming multimedia developers can design their Web sites with more graphics and dynamic multimedia effects because their clients expect to be impressed when they visit the developer’s site.

If vendors of gardening supplies designed their sites similarly, many of their clients might be alienated because the site would be too slow to load. They might take their business elsewhere. The gardening supplies site requires a more basic design with less concentration on large graphics and multimedia effects and more focus on presenting information.

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Ways to promote your website #15 - A Final Word on Objectives

Setting your Web site’s objectives before you begin building your site is essential so that you can convey to your Web developer what you want your Web site to achieve.

You obviously want to create a number of different objectives for your site, but many of the objectives you set can work together to make your Web site complete. Whatever your objectives might be, you must carefully consider how best to incorporate elements in your Web site and your Internet marketing strategy to help you achieve them.

Successful marketing on the Web is not a simple undertaking. Before you begin to brainstorm over the objectives of your Web site, be certain you have read and studied all the information that is pertinent to the market you are attempting to enter.

Read everything you can find, and examine the findings of industry experts.

Your Web site objectives form a critical element in your Web site design and development, as you will see in the next chapter on Web site design and development methodology.

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Ways to promote your website #14 - Including “Stickiness” Elements

To get your visitors to visit your site often and have them visit a number of pages every time they visit, you need to provide interesting , interactive, and relevant content.

You want to have your site visitors feel as if they are part of your online community and to want to make your site one of the sites they visit every day.

You create “stickiness” by including many elements that keep your visitors’ attention. Your site can have a daily advice column, descriptions of your many products, a discussion forum with constantly changing interesting conversations relative to your products, a news section that is updated daily, as well as a weekly contest that site visitors can enter.

The combination of these elements makes a site sticky.

You want your site to be a resource people return to often and not a one-time event.

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Ways to promote your website #13 - Creating Loyalty among Visitors

The way to create loyalty among visitors is to provide them with some incentives for joining your online community and provide them with proof that you really appreciate their business.

You can do this by having a members-only section of your Web site that has special offers for
them as well as discounts or freebies.

When people sign up to join your members-only section, you can ask for their permission and their e-mail address to send them e-mails regarding company or product promotions
and news.

People like to do business with people who appreciate their business. We are seeing a real growth in loyalty programs online.

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Ways to promote your website #12 - Using Permission Marketing

You always want your company to be seen as upholding the highest ethical standards and being in compliance with anti-spam legislation, so it is important not to send out unsolicited e-mail—or spam—promoting your company or its products.

This is why it’s important to develop a mailing list of people who have given you permission to send them messages, including company news and promotions.

When you’re developing your Web site, an objective should be to get as many visitors to your site as possible to give you their e-mail address and permission to be included in your mailings.

You can do this by having numerous ways for your visitors to sign up to receive newsletters, notices of changes to your Web site, coupons, or new giveaways.

Stay tuned, we has many examples of ways to encourage visitors to request to be added to your e-mail list.

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