What Makes A World Class Business To Business Web SiteWhite PaperOrganization: Target Marketing of Santa Barbara 1130 Arbolado Road Santa Barbara, CA 93103 805-965-3184 jsterne@targeting.com www.targeting.com 1. INTRODUCTIONStrategic objectives, design guidelines, and persuasion techniques used in creating marketing materials differ from medium to medium. Shaping a magazine ad is different from writing a telemarketing script. Designing a newspaper ad requires divergent skills from producing an infomercial. Yet, as distinct as these media are, they all begin to look alike when compared to the World Wide Web as a marketing tool. The Web ties together the multi-media aspects of a CD-ROM, the layout constraints of a magazine, the immediacy of television and the need to command action of a direct mail piece. All packaged in a trade show, circus atmosphere. The Web is very different and very new. Because it's new, it's exciting. Because it's exciting, it's attracting fresh talent. Fresh talent brings new ideas on a daily basis to a media which is so young, we still don't know what shape its wings will be when it finishes coming out of its cocoon. New ideas are giving form to the Web with every experiment. The dirty little secret about making Web sites is that it's fun. Really. Writing HTML code is gruesomely easy to do. So many people are doing it... gruesomely. The ratio of bad Web sites to good ones is higher than the ratio of bad direct mail pieces to good ones. Newsletters of the '80s turned from professionally designed fonts of wisdom to amateur gazettes encumbered by a wealth of fonts. Why? Because it was possible. If you want to use the Web to turn prospects into customers, you need a lot of technical skill and a good deal of marketing know-how. The technical skill can be gleaned elsewhere. The marketing expertise is required so the builder of a commercial Web site can:
But to begin, it is essential to understand the beginnings of life on the Internet in order to grasp its cultural mores. Just as you would instruct a green salesperson in the fine art of business card exchange and shoe removal before sending him or her on a trip to Japan, you should study the culture of the Internet. You want to be sure you don't insult the very people you're trying to sell to . INTERNET CULTURAL HISTORY - LIFE ON THE FRONTIERWhen the ball got rolling in four university laboratories in the late sixties, its rotations were instigated by a hearty few. They created an instant electronic community. They knew each other by name. They got to know each others' work habits, writing styles and social skills. They were close-knit due to the common goals and common problems they shared. Much like the pioneers of the old West, these engineers were more than willing to help each other in order to preserve and advance the whole. If the wheelwright's shop burned to the ground, the town came out on the weekend to help rebuild it. They needed wheels to survive. In the same vein, if the UCSB mainframe couldn't share files with a Unix machine at UCLA, people all over the country were willing to lend a hand to prove the Internet could work. Over time, as the team grew, there were fewer and fewer personal relationships and more and more professional relationships. In the old West a man's word was his bond. Honor and reputation were important. On the Internet if you made a promise, you stood by your word. That ethic is alive and well today. Internet Gift CultureIn addition to living by a code of honor on the Internet, the very nature of the technology created a gift culture. In order for the whole net to work, each participant must donate a computer to the cause. Transforming a computer system into an Internet node is the equivalent of dedicating some space in your office for postal sorters to shuffle and organize the mail every day. One computer is written off so that your company can have access to millions of others. You allow others to use your hardware. It's a gift. Next came the software. File Transfer Protocol. Gopher, Archie and HTTP were not the result of spontaneous generation. Mosaic was not a get-rich-quick scheme. They were tools created to make the Internet more practicable. They were given away for free in an atmosphere of cooperation. "How do you like it and what can we do to make it better?" The final step was the donation of data. Here, the full archives from the particle physics committee at CERN was made available to all. There, a database of the migratory patterns of spotted owls. Over here, a handful of computer games for whomever was intrigued. Everywhere, people grasped the big picture, and wanted to add their own brushstroke. They wanted to be a part of this wonderfully open, growing electronic world. Today's Internet CultureYou don't have to believe that information wants to be free to build a successful business-to-business Web site. You don't have to agree that Netiquette is the only culturally correct, socially responsible way to comport oneself on the Internet. But you had better comprehend that your competitors do understand and do practice being Roman while in Rome. And they will make more strides and steal your customers if you don't do the same. The playing field has been rolled and the expectations have been set at a higher level of honesty, a higher level of respect, and a higher level of service. Be aware of these ground rules before you start to play the game. Don't build a Web site as a project with a start, a middle and an end. It is an on-going process. It is publishing. As with most publications, a great deal rests on its esthetics. CREATE A VISUALLY APPEALING WEB SITEOn the Internet, the graphic artist is no longer constrained by the cost of color, no longer limited to an eight and a half by eleven inch venue and no longer locked into a number 10 envelope. On the contrary, the limitations are much more severe. Carol Moore, Home Page Editor at IBM, says the real estate a Web builder has to work with is eight inches deep and two seconds long. She is referring to the height of a laptop screen and the attention span of the average surfer. (One study they did showed a link icon moved above the eight-inch mark increased visits to the referenced page by 20%.) There are only three reasons for graphics; decoration, navigation and information. Decoration is important, but it is also the most likely to annoy. People coming to a Web site don't want to be faced with distress of disagreeable design. You should avoid mucking up your site with award-wining, peer pleasing, graphical accomplishments. Instead, create pages based on information mapping techniques that make your content comprehensible and easy to digest. A Web site cannot eschew the aesthetic, but remember this is business. When a visitor comes to a business-to-business Web site, they are looking for something. They are not (necessarily) there for entertainment. The graphics should help them find what they want by imparting navigational clues. The entire top-down design of your site should be based of a single navigational conceit that assures the visitor they have not left your place of electronic business and journeyed to another by mistake. Your best use of graphics, animation, video and even sound will be to impart valuable information that cannot be quickly communicated in words. People don't come to a Web site to read, they come for product information or for help or for transactions. If the bit-laden extras you've put on your site don't help your users achieve these goals, you have wasted your time and annoyed your customers. There are so many examples of sites overburdened with decorative detritus, I leave it to you. You will find them with ease. To provide a counterpoint, IBM did well by including a large (anywhere from 164K to 827K) video on their site to help describe their TrackWrite keyboard on their ThinkPad laptop. This is a product that is hard to describe. It's a full-sized keyboard in a compact notebook computer. The text describes it as a "full-size expanding 85-key keyboard." A look at the still pictures reveals the keyboard hanging over the edge of the machine. How did they do that? If you view the video just once, you understand the mechanism. This is information. The video isn't there for entertainment of to collect design awards. It's there to help communicate a key product feature. "But we're building a business-to-business site," you say. "All the people who come to our site will be doing so from their desktops," you say. "They have high speed connections!" Not entirely. Getting information from the Web is not fast in the middle of the day for us in North America. The Web is a busy place at lunch. People who are connected to a T1 are sharing that connection with many others in their organization. Sharing the proxy server and the gateway with many others. Some can't be bothered and wait until they get home to look something up faster. At home, on their 14.4 modems. Graphics must be used wisely. They much have a reason for being there. They must load quickly. There are many techniques for making good looking graphics which are Web-friendly. The best resource at the moment is Lynda Weinman's Designing Web Graphics, a full color book with very specific advice an examples.
Goal Selection First, The Rest Will FollowDetermining the purpose of a direct mail campaign or a specific magazine promotion is a process that is carried around in the white blood cells of most marketing people. It's genetic. But curiously, these protectors against infection seem useless in the face of a Web design project. "Let's get the site up right away because everybody else is doing it!" has been the attitude de jour. Keep in mind that form should follow function, not functionality. Just because you _can_ create a video of the CEO welcoming customers to your site does not mean you should. Unless it's the only way to get the project funded. Overall, your properly prioritized goals will drive your site design. You must decide what you want visitors to see, what you want them to learn, what you want them to tell you and what you want them to have accomplished by the time they leave. Only then should you start the creative juices flowing.
SET THE PROPER LEVEL OF EXPECTATIONThere is a standard set of expectations we all have when visiting a corporate office. There will be a parking lot marked "Visitors". There will be an obvious entrance for the guest. There will be a person near the door to inquire as to our needs and aid us in our quest. A Web site comes with very few such expectations. We don't even have gravity to fall back on. The majority of commercial Web sites make use of the usual cast of characters:
But beyond that we might find anything. There might be a comprehensive chronicle of the corporation, a plethora of product particulars, an enumeration of executive excellency or a crudely crafted "under construction" sign. If we're looking for a quick bit of information for a report, trying to make a buying decision, or trying to solve a product problem, the lack of certain knowledge that our prayers will be answered is daunting. Locating a nine-hour battery pack for a Macintosh laptop is can take more than an hour. It can take more than an hour to find out that there is no solution to your software problem on the vendor's Web site. Business people don't have time to spend capriciously anymore. Business people barely have time at all. If the answers aren't readily available, at least tell us what we can and cannot expect at your site. Make it clear up front and we will not waste valuable time that seems stretched ever longer when we're fixated on the ubiquitous "Host contacted. Waiting for replay..." Time in front of a computer is work time. A minute spent in front of the computer is like a minute spent staring at the clock in detention after school. Remember how slow the clock moved? Now imaged the indignation, the outrage, if you discovered that they didn't put your name on the detention sign-up sheet and the time you put in didn't count? That's the feeling a Web site visitor feels when their problem isn't solved. When the specific product spec they were after isn't there. When they finally get to the datasheet for the answers and find it "Under Construction". If your site does not offer a knowledgebase of customer service solutions, then make it clear up front that I can leave e-mail for your support department. If you haven't implemented a product configurator, let me know up front that I can view specification sheets on over 2,000 stock models. Set my expectations appropriately and I won't go looking in places where there are only disappointments and deadends. I'll be prepared. Always tell me what I'll find the next time I visit. That will keep me coming back. That's part of a living Web site that attracts people over and over again.
MAKE A LIVING WEB SITEA brochure is a limited project. It has a purpose, an audience, and a lifespan. A television ad, a magazine ad and a trade show booth are the same. But a Web site is much more like a magazine or a newsletter. It must be nurtured. It must be published. Repeatedly. There are two reasons for tending your site. One is to ensure its freshness, and the other is to increase its depth.
Keeping It FreshObservance of the calendar is a sacred duty when managing a Web site. A Web site is the one company organ that can contain the latest and greatest information you have on hand. A price change? A quick conversion. A modification of the product specifications? A slight alteration. A change in seminar schedules? The work of a moment. If it's on a printed page, it is already suspected of being out of date. Not so a Web site. If the trade show listings extol a conference from last month, your Web audience will immediately wonder what other information cannot be trusted. If your What's New button points to a press release that's more than a month old, you should think about retiring it to the archives. If you placed a script on each page that announces when the last changes were made, either update them at least once a month or remove the script. Keeping your site fresh lets you customers know you care about your site. It lets them know you care about them. It also keeps you from being a laughing stock. IBM was publicly ridiculed for having a System/390 "Current Promotions" button that took visitors to a page that said "Sorry, there are currently no product promotions. Check this space regularly for specials." It's bad enough that a few people posted this silliness to their favorite newsgroups. They told the bad news to twenty or thirty thousand others. But the item also showed up in the February 5th issue of Computerworld with a circulation of almost a hundred and fifty thousand. Dead ends and under construction signs are the equivalent of printing an eight page, four color brochure with the last two pages blank. Putting in programming stubs may make sense to a coder. After all, the compiler is going to ignore stubs and the end user will never see them. But a Web site is very public and a deadend is falsehood. You promised there would be something interesting at the click of the mouse, but you lied. This is not swift marketing.
Making It DeepYou'll know your Web site is being all it can be when anybody is able to find what they're looking for. While no company will ever achieve this 'Net Nirvana, it's a great goal to keep in mind. Good search tools will help a great deal. But not if there is nothing to search through. Adding sufficient material to your Web site should be seen as Job One. How much is sufficient? When anybody can find what they're looking for. A Web site's depth can come about in two ways. You can recognize that the world of electronic communications between companies has well and truly arrived and bite the funding bullet. Or, tortoise-like, you can quietly put one foot in front of the other. You can carefully construct a site from this moment on that will grow and grow and grow. Is the hare model better than the tortoise model? Depends on your industry. Sometimes first is more important than best. But best will always win in the long run. We're now beyond the electronic brochure stage on the World Wide Web. We are well into the Web-site-as-resource stage. Your Web site becomes a resource when there is enough information to be useful to your customers, to your vendors and to your business partners. Each are drawn to it on a daily basis to find the data they need to do their jobs. They know your site has the goods.
A Web Site Is An ActivityMaking your site a pleasant experience will also make help it a living site. Web pages are not like books or brochures. Nobody comes to your Web site for a good read (unless you happen to run Pathfinder or Suck). If a visitor's journey through your site prompts them take an active role in navigation, it is more likely to engage them and hold their interest. It will also heighten information retention. There is a give-and-take when navigating a Web site which gets the user involved in the site. Reading a long document is a relatively passive experience. Interacting with a Web site can be more like a dialogue. Set up your pages so that visitors are asked to make choices. This keeps them involved. A twenty-five question survey is tedious. On the other hand, ten individual pages with two or three questions on each page is conversational. Short paragraphs about your products will garner more readership than one, long tirade. When they finally drill down to the dissertation, whitepaper, or user's manual, they'll print it, save it, or bookmark it. But it's not likely that they'll read it on the screen. Your task is to balance two design criteria: Include the visitor in the navigation (don't have one, long page) Provide quick access to information (three clicks to data) Who can you turn to for help? People who have spent years creating CD-ROMs. They understand the human-machine interface issues. Not so your print advertising agency.
The Web Is A Communication MediumTo really keep your Web pages a living site, lure your customers and prospects into the action. Marshall McLuhan said, "The medium is the message." Less well known, however, is his farsighted, "The audience is the content." He couldn't have known how possible this is on the World Wide Web. Ask your Web constituents to add to your site with their own perspectives, experiences, advice and ideas. The Ragu site (www.eat.com) invites visitors to tell dinner-table stories and enumerate their favorite Italian restaurants and hotels. Saturn's Extended Family Database (www.saturncars.com) has around 4,000 people who wanted to be listed and tell a little bit about themselves. Intersolv (www.intersolv.com) offers their ServiceDirect Discussion Database which has replaced Usenet newsgroups as the area to discuss Intersolv software tools. Yes, you should use your Web site to make announcements and publicize your achievements. But you should also recognize that it is a terrific way to build customer loyalty through participation. And remember, your customers know more about using your products and services than you do. As a result, they can create content that will be very valuable to others, making your site (and your products) all the more attractive.
Stop, Look, ListenNo product manager on earth is worth the paper his paycheck is written on if he is not listening to customers. It is not the product manager's job to know what the customer wants. It's the product manager's job to ask what the customer wants. Constantly. A Web site is a wonderful place for just that soft of information. Be forthright about your desire for feedback. A Feedback button at the bottom of each page has the same impact as a "Please Let Us Have Your Opinion Before You Leave" pamphlet in a hotel room-- none. Oh sure, you'll get the occasional rant from the disenfranchised. The surfer who uses Lynx will be just as annoyed at your lack of text navigation as the hotel guest whose remote control has no batteries. But for real feedback, you have to really reach out. Instead of a Feedback button, try asking a intriguing question at the bottom of certain pages. And change that question on a frequent basis. There's so much to learn about your Web visitors and what they think about your products. Ragu Pizza Sauce (www.eat.com) asks more than forty questions to find out what you eat, how often you eat it and how much you pay. They are also very serious about learning what you do and don't like about their sauces. You might also take advantage of new tools popping up every day. One example is Web Crossing from Lundeen & Associates (www.lundeen.com). Web Crossing lets you host a newsgroup on your Web site. Visitors can follow any number of ongoing discussions, and check to see if something new has been added. Organizing conversations by topic, Web Crossing can be used to answer questions about your products and services, run an interactive bulletin-board, or a help desk for technical support. Like most tools showing up these days, this one lets you customize quite a bit. You control who can post, who can update and who can delete. Intersolv (www.intersolv.com) discovered that people are more willing to participate in a newsgroup type discussion on the Intersolv Web site, than on the Usenet newsgroups. Even when the topics were exactly the same. Do these people feel a closer affinity to others at a vendor's Web site? Or is it just easier to use? Either way, Inversolv's customers give their site high marks and plenty of attention.
ATTRACT ATTENTIONNow that you've spent a good deal of time strategizing, planning, and implementing your Web site, how do you get people to show up? You face the same dilemma as a toll-free 800 number. You may have dozens of operators standing by twenty-four hours a day, but if people don't know about it, they won't call. Time was, simply having a Web site was cause for press attention. Today the stakes are higher. There are several ways to promote your Web site on the Internet, but the most productive way for a well built, business-to-business Web site to attract attention is to go straight to your prospective customers. Standard marketing techniques are the best. Unfortunately, this is not possible on-line. If you value your company's good name, you will not violate the two most rigid rules of the Internet:
Thou Shalt Not Spam Wouldn't it be nice
to post an announcement of your new Web site to all of the Usenet newsgroups?
Wouldn't it be nice for millions of people to see your message at an insignificant
cost? Simply put, if you did, you'd be sorry. Harking back to issues of Internet culture, each newsgroup is a social club filled with like-minded people chatting about the subject of their choice. Your barging in to advertise is not welcome... unless it is germane to the topic and allowed by the moderator, by the Welcome Message, by the FAQ, and by the general demeanor of the participants of the group). A man bursts into a room and at the top of his voice bellows, "Magic Johnson is coming back!" If the room in question is Champions Sports Lounge in Los Angeles, he will be greeted as a hero, lifted upon shoulders and will enjoy free beers for the evening. If the room in question is the Deep Blue vs. Kasparov game room, he will be quickly escorted out. If the room is the Northshore Co-op Preschool quilting bee, somebody will call 911. To make matters worse, spamming is the act of posting to multiple newsgroups. That means the moms who have been besieged by our boisterous, improper fellow at the quilting bee, are assailed by him again at the Bothell City Council meeting, the Woodinville Library storytelling hour and at the Washington Software Association dinner dance. That would be enough to drive any sane person to commit bodily harm. On the Internet, rational people turned otherwise can easily exhibit their anger and frustration. Bodily harm takes on new meanings. We won't dwell on their ability to shut your server down with an overload of e-mail. We won't even discuss irrational people's penchant for coming after your firewall. Instead, let's focus on the fine art of not annoying the people you're trying to sell to. While this may be a foreign concept to those who create audience insulting television ads, it's just not good marketing. And people on the Internet, safe on their side of the computer screen, in the comfort of their own cubicles at work or in their dens at home, are quick to express their displeasure. If not to you, to thousands of others. They might choose to nominate you for the Internet Advertiser's Blacklist (math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~ax/blacklist.html"), which "works by describing offenders and their offensive behavior, expecting that people who read it will punish the offenders in one way or another." It then goes on to give more than a dozen things people could do to you. None of them pleasant. Those who are offended could also, and most simply, post your bad manners on a newsgroup about your industry. Nothing like having several thousand people who might have been your customers reading about your Internet ineptitude and change their minds. Thou Shalt Not Sent Unsolicited E-MailToday's typical marketing machine has a social contract with the populace. Marketers create colorful brochures at considerable expense. They rent lists of names at considerable expense. They post their direct mail pieces at considerable expense. The recipients throw them away. That's the deal. So why is e-mail different? Because it costs money to receive it. Being on-line costs the recipient money. Storing information on a computer costs the recipient money. Junk snail mail does not. This has been spelled out in detail in the seminal white paper Postage-Due Marketing, by Robert Raisch of The Internet Company . Aside from Mr. Raisch's astute observations, aside from the pain you may suffer at the hands of those who have taken it upon themselves to be the net.police, you would be guilty of annoying the very people you are trying to sell to. This is not good marketing practice.
When Would Emily Post?Lest this seem like a hopeless endeavor, read the FAQ, lurk on the newsgroup and participate in the discussion. Add value to the list or the newsgroup by answering questions clearly and helping others. Eventually they'll come to think of you as a voice of reason and a font of knowledge. When you occasionally add, "and there's even more information at our Web site", they'll consider it a service that you're pointing it out to them. That's because it will be. It is also acceptable to promote your Web site in the signature block of your messages. Provided the discussion in the body of the message is meaningful and the signature is properly short (4 -5 lines at the most). Your claim of having the "Best Mouse Pads on the Planet" and a pointer to your site are accepted the same way these statements are expected on business cards.
Web Site Announcement SitesThere are also Web sites that were created for announcing new sites. In fact, there are so many, there are now Meta-Web site announcement sites. One example Postmaster which lets "you fill out one form, click on one button and -- presto! -- your announcement is automatically posted to apx 100 of the most popular Web sites and publications on the Internet." There are so many of these auto-services, that there is a special category in Yahoo for them: Computers and Internet: Internet:World Wide Web: Announcement Services, as well as Business and Economy: Companies: Internet Services: Web Presence Providers: Announcement Services. Is the Internet really that easy? No. Not all directories and search engines were made alike. As a result, the site description that looks just fine in one may get truncated in the next. And the submission criteria change on a daily basis. There are times when the brute-force method is not as successful as a little finesse. For Web declaration dexterity, you might want to assign the task to one of your own, or farm it out to somebody who will do it by hand like Netpost. Eric Ward of Netpost knows how the different engines respond to different stimuli. He will also get personally involved in the search for topic-specific Web sites that could bring more traffic to your home page. While others try automating the task or teaming with bulk e-mail companies (shudder), Eric understands that this is a PR process and treats it accordingly. You should too.
Help Those Who Are Helping ThemselvesYou can draw attention to your site by recognizing the work of others. Many well known products are being idolize on the Web by customers. Out of sheer joy or desperation. Powersoft, the makers of PowerSoft programming tools, have a pretty good Web site. But their customers have a terrific Web site. PowerBuilder Interactiveis a very well organized, very rich compendium of facts, advice and experience in the use of the PowerSoft products. These are people who created their own resource, their own place for swapping tips and telling stories. They do such a good job, Powersoft points to it as a resource. By keeping this relationship friendly, cross-linking becomes a matter of course instead of cost. Lego Systems is aware of the Lego site created by fan David Koblas. In fact, they're aware of several unofficial Web sites. Their attitude? "It's very nice to have that many enthusiasts sharing ideas, but there can be some confusion with people thinking we own it because the enthusiasts use our logo" This, from a Lego Systems spokesman as quoted in Computerworld. We should all be so lucky. But, as Constant Vigilance Is the Price of Copyright, it behooves all of us to make use of the search tools upon occasion to see who might be taking our logo in vain. Somebody like Rod Fournier, that's who. Fournier was the webmaster at Kmart. Fournier decided to sign his homepage work with a link to his own page. This probably would have been removed without incident had his personal page not contained some pointers to some material of an adult nature. Fournier was fired. In a written statement, Kmart said its employee conduct policy "includes specific do's and don'ts, several of which forbid personal use of the Internet and any sexual innuendo." No, the story does not end there. Bent on vengeance, Fournier created the Kmart Sucks page. Horrified, appalled and dismayed, the Kmart lawyers circled the wagons and brought out the big guns. As a result, the Kmart Sucks page now sports a non-trademark-infringing blue K, rather than the familiar red version. The first amendment stands. When was the last time you check to see who was taking cybershots at your company?
Buying LinksOne of the best ways of drawing people to your site is being found all over the Web in the form of banner links. Banner links are designed to dissuade people from their original intent and side-track them to your site. If you thought getting human beings to open direct mail was hard, try this! You have a very small space and a very focused individual to coerce. You can also spend a good deal of money. The Interactive Publishing Alert's Online Advertising Index lists 21 sites which will be happy to charge you $10,000 or more per month for the privilege of sporting your banner on their site. If your goal is the general populace, and the foot traffic on those site is sufficient, it might be worth your while. But if your goal is to attract just the right audience, you could do better by narrowing you focus to topic-specific Web sites. If the world of agribiz is your market, you could take out a banner on Ag-Links which contains news and web links of interest to the agriculture industry. That's a pretty well targeted group for only $300 a month. If you're in the travel industry, you have to decide whether to sponsor Yahoo at $20,000 per month, or 200 sites like the Estonian Travel Guide for $100 each . Be The ReasonThe most compelling way of getting the people you want to come to your Web site is to be the reason they get on the Internet in the first place. First, create a Web site that has added value and personalization (see below). Not just some added value, but a lot of added value. A site so valuable, that it will actually help people get their jobs done easier and faster. If you have such an application on your site, your customers and prospects will be so pleased with the convenience you offer, you will be the reason they get on the Internet. Send them a diskette with the software they need to log on. Add in 30 days of free Internet access. (Play your cards right and these won't cost you anything but postage. The Internet access companies are continuing to fight it out and if you're willing to shoot their materials with a focused message out to a targeted group, they're happy to provide the cannon fodder.) Don't hold out promises of the fabulous Information Superhighway. Don't get embroiled in conversations about privacy and pornography. Don't try to convince them that this wonderful mechanism will change the world. Just tell them that this diskette will let them connect to your site. Then tell them all of the wonderful things they can find and do when they get there. Tell them how it will make their jobs easier. People are lazy. They don't want to put the America Online diskette they get every month into their computers and have to learn a whole new way of communicating. Especially for nebulous reasons. On the other hand, people are so lazy, if you show them how the use of that disk will take a load off of their work, they'll be delighted. You'll have made a new customer and a very loyal one at that.
Promoting Off-LinePerhaps the most important part of Web site promotion is not on the Web at all. Your URL (Universal Resource Locator) or Web address is just as important as your fax number. Why isn't it on your business cards yet? On your stationery? On your packaging? On the side of your company vehicles? In all of your display, print, television and radio advertising? Anywhere you would put your fax number or 800 number is the right place for your URL. Underclothing manufacturer Joe Boxer started off almost two years ago with billboards that simply said "joeboxer@joeboxer.com". They've since taken to printing it on the waist band of their products. Zima beer bottles sport their URL. You'll find "http://www.pepsi.com" on soft drink cans. One firm in Chicago has placards on busses roaming the city that say, "www.rubloff.com". Then, in very small letters, "If you have trouble reaching our Web site, you can call us at (312) 368-5300." Are they sufficiently well known in Chicago to garner instant name recognition? Or are they counting on overpowering curiosity to drive folks to their Web site? Doesn't matter. What matters is you have all the usual means of marketing at your disposal. Use them. The time has passed when putting "http://" on your business cards or marketing materials was suspect. The days of, "It looks like a typo! Nobody will know what it is!" are passed. Today you don't even need the http:// anymore. A simple "www.company.com" is quite recognizable thanks to the abundant attention heaped on the Internet. In time that attention will draw everybody to the World Wide Web. In the meantime, you have to prove to the boss that your Web site was worth the effort (read; money).
MEASURE A WEB SITE'S SUCCESSFor a very complete look at the measurability of your on-line success, take a look at another CommerceNet Whitepaper called Understanding the Effectiveness Your WWW Site: Measurement Methods and Technology. Written by Tom Masotto in December 1995, this paper provides excellent detail on what to measure. The only thing worth adding to the fine work done in that paper, is the quality of sales leads that come in through the Web compared to other sources. Many sales people have learned that the people coming into the sales process through the Web are more qualified, more educated and more likely to buy than those from direct mail, trade shows, magazine ads, and even corporate seminars. If you're in the market for a widget, you have a choice. You can call Widgets R Us, receive a package of brochures within a couple of weeks. You'll also get a follow up phone call from an under-educated sales rep, interrupting your personnel review meeting with your boss, and wondering if he could nip over to pick up a purchase order. Or, you could check out the Widgets R Us Web site. As a Web site visitor, you have access to everything you need. You can find the right product for the job. You can check into color options. You can look at comments made by other customers. You can look at the cost of the item by configuration. And you can do it all from the comfort and safety of your own desk, in your own time. No boring presentations from pushy product managers or calls from inquisitive account reps. When you have a question that's not answered on the Web site, it's probably about delivery and quantity discounts. In other words, you have taught yourself about the product. You have educated yourself about its wonders, and the money it will save you, and the top ten reasons to buy it now instead of after the first of the month. You have turned into the kind of prospect sales people love to talk to. You don't need a dog and pony show. You don't need wine and dinner. Most of all, you don't need to be dragged through a long education process. You are self-taught. You are asking buying questions. So when you're looking at hits, sessions, visits, pages, revenues and customer feedback, don't forget to talk to the sales department and find out how they feel about your Web site. Find out if they're walking prospects through it over the phone to give virtual presentations. If they're not-- find out why. The changes they recommend will be well worth implementing. It could just be that the folks you want to attract aren't finding enough value.
ADD VALUE TO THE MESSAGEMake it Fun, Interesting & UsefulThe first web sites were intrinsically fascinating. "Look, Mildred-- a Web site!" After about six months, when we passed the stage of the first bank, first dentist, first plastics company on the Internet, when it was no longer newsworthy to simply be on the Web, webmasters realized they had to compete for attention. They went for the techno-gizmo. Even today, webmasters continue to slug it out with showmanship; the first to use server push, the first to use frames, the first to have Java applets singing, dancing, and scrolling across their home pages. These exaggerated displays of affection for technology did a great deal to grab the attention of the technically inclined. But they don't sell more product and they do nothing for customer loyalty. Back in 1994 when Sun Microsystems showed off the Stateless Interactive Demo, and Carlos A Pero gave us Carlos' Coloring Book, the Web community realized that static electronic brochures were obsolete. There are now many, many sites which "add value" with games, sweepstakes and give-aways. If your goal is to drive up foot traffic, and if that is your only goal, then games are an excellent approach. If your product is eyeballs and you're selling those eyeballs to advertisers, then offer cash prizes. It's the one prize that fits all and it's always the right color. But if your goal is to sell more product, your task is more difficult. It quickly became apparent that Web surfers want content. They want information. When it comes to products and services, they want to get enough information to make a buying decision. Black Box asked their visitors what was more important, detailed product information or encrypted on-line order processing? The answer was resounding. People already had ways of buying, they lacked ways of getting up to date, meaningful, detailed information in a hurry. More product data, please! Companies realized their sites had to be newsletters, information storehouses and the answer-man all rolled into one. The challenge was turning a marketing department used to creating one-off brochures and ads into a periodical producing machine. Learn the lessons of generations of newspaper reporters and editors and publish, publish, publish. Or perish.
Make It FunBut a few have discovered a way to add fun to their sites that ties directly to their product. One such ideal of Internet entertainment is Cognos Corporation. Cognos makes PowerPlay, a multidimensional, business analysis software package which will create analyzable data sets from 10 million records. These are number crunchers. Glorified spreadsheets. PowerPlay does not qualify as fun. So how did they add a touch of whimsy to their Web site? During the World Series and again during the SuperBowl, Cognos offered a free, downloadable PC version of their software package along with a database packed full of game and player statistics for slicing and dicing. This combination of tying a popular event in with their software made for a smashing marketing success. In a few months time they had electronically shipped over 25,000 copies of their software. Many of these turned into sales. Maybe there's a way to make your product fun as well. The process of structured brainstorming to dream up invaluable features for a Web site is one of my favorite consulting assignments. Chances are there are fantastic offerings your company could provide just waiting for you to implement. Of course, you could just leave it to your competitor...
Provide Computer Access To Your CompanyIt wasn't that long ago that larger companies bought remote terminals and modems for their larger customers. Those companies would even pay for a dedicated line between the customer and the datacenter. Why? Because it made ordering easy. So easy in fact, that follow-on business was a lock and competitors would have an even higher barrier to entry than ever before. Many of those arrangements are still in place and the equipment still in use. Called EDI (electronic data interchange), it required some sophisticated programming and some serious money, but it paid for itself many times over in the form of customer loyalty. Today, anybody with a browser and an Internet connection can perform EDI. The question is no longer, "Can I connect?" It has become, "What's the value of connecting to you in particular?" The barrier to entry is now very low. In fact, the winners of this game will not necessarily be those who use newer and newer technology, but those who allow more and more access. Federal Express is probably the most often cited business Web site today and the reason is obvious. FedEx offers real utility that anybody can understand. Absolutely, positively has to be there overnight? You can check it out for yourself-- in real time. This level of usefulness was more than enough to drive loyal UPS customers to FedEx. UPS quickly countered with Web site package tracking. But it only told you about packages which were already delivered, not enroute. Such a small difference, but a major misunderstanding of the customer psyche. Are you Type-A enough to check your packages on the Internet? Then you certainly want real-time tracking. Anything less just doesn't scratch that itch. GTSI sells computers to the government on the GSA schedule. Can they provide better equipment than anybody else? No. Can they provide better delivery than anybody else? No. Can they provide lower prices? Maybe. But one thing they do provide is a helping hand with the paperwork:
As a government purchase agent, I might just do my GSA buying through GTSI so I don't have to prepare reams of paper. Expectations of service suffers from inflation just as surely as paper currency. If I can get a burger and fries in the time it takes to drive from the clown head to the pick-up window, why should it take me twenty minutes to place an order with your comapny? If you knock it down to ten minutes, I'm delighted... once. After that I expect it. If I can check my bank balance at Wells Fargo, why can't I use Eathan Allen's nifty software they have in their store to see what this fabric would look like on this sofa? If I can track a package at FedEx, why can't I enter "vacation," "Maui", and "scuba" at any of a hundred travel sites and kick off an on-line interview that results in a pre-booked trip? If I can go to FinanCenter and calculate how much I can borrow on a loan, why can't I review my dentist's calendar and set an appointment convenient for me? If I can go to LithoQuoter and have my printing needs faxed to database-selected printers for quotes, why can't I go to Sherman Williams and estimate how much paint I need to cover the earth (or at least my little corner of it)? Your company can add value. You just have to look for it. Want a cheap way of finding it fast? Ask the people who visit your site. After all, it's their site, not yours.
PERSONALIZE YOUR WEB SITEThe Netscape Magic Cookie is a quiet little file on your hard drive into which a server can write a user identification number. The next time you go to that site, the server reads the Cookie file and recognizes you. What it knows about you is limited to what you have been willing to tell it. The Cookie is interesting, yet fallible. If you switch from your laptop to your desktop, the server thinks you're two different people. If two different people use the same machine, it thinks they are the same. Microsoft puts the Cookie to good use on the Microsoft Network home page. Microsoft lets you pick your favorite links, search tools, stock quotes, sports scores, news feeds, TV listings, comic strips, weather maps, ski reports, Web picks, movie listings, music clips, connection speed and background color. As a result, every time you visit their site, you see your page. It's enough to make people set their browser preferences to hit the MSN home page on start-up.
Asking For A PasswordThe most successful strategy is making people log in with a name and a password. This is the only way to be sure you have the right person. Unfortunately, this is a very tricky proposition. Think about the Web sites you've been to that ask you to register. There must be some compelling reward to get people to identify themselves. Just make sure your offering is in keeping with good taste. One of the more successful attempts to get people to register at a Web site was implemented by c|net, the new TV show. In exchange for some information about who you are and what you're interested in, the c|net: Online Web site let you download a computer animation of how Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman might have been murdered by a single African-American. Not in the best of taste. Wildly successful, but not in the best of taste. You have to decide if you really want people in your database who would wait forty minutes for such an thing. Another hazard you face is asking for too much information in the registration in exchange for too little. Bank of America is willing to show you daily money saving tips for your particular goal, be it buying a new home, saving for college or retirement. However, in order to log in to the Bank of Your Name Here, B of A wants to know things about you that you might not be comfortable telling them. The want to know if you rent or own. They want to know what you do for a living. They want to know how much money you make. One starts to wonder if this isn't just a tad nosy. One excellent example of a proper exposure/risk ratio is the Amazon.com Bookstore. These people want to know what you like to read. Their motives are clear: they want to sell you books. Fair enough. But they do it by offering a service. If you tell them you like reading Kurt Vonnegut, they'll send you an e-mail when a new one comes in. From their perspective, you're willing to raise your hand as a potential buyer. From your perspective, they're offering a free service. That's a fair trade. But personalization goes further than these mere parlor tricks. It goes all the way to relationship marketing. Don Rogers and Martha Rogers (authors of The One To One Future: Building Relationships One Customer At Time) put it this way, "The ability to remember a customer, from one even to the next, is the primary requirement for sustaining an ongoing relationship, and will soon become the main reason why a customer will remain loyal to a new product, rather than start over with a competitors." (Forbes ASAP 2/26/96).To really make a success of your Web site, turn it into a customer self-service machine.
Customer Service Is KingWe're now past the Web-site-as-electronic-brochure phase, we are well into the Web-site-as-business-tool phase. As described above, if you make it easier for people to do business with you, they will come to your site. But more important, it will become a competitive edge. If doing business with you is inherently, fundamentally easier that doing business with your competitor, people will flock to you. And, as every 7-11 store that sells milk for $2 can tell you, people are willing to pay for convenience. The Microsoft KnowlegeBase contains thousands of pages of tips and tricks. Sun Microsystems SunSolve Online has more than 275,000 documents in the bug database alone. Intersolv offers their password-protected ServiceDirect Online to paid customers. Customers can look up software questions and answers, problem reports, and enhancement requests by number and track their progress. Getting technical help from these companies is getting easier and easier. The Company With The Biggest Database WinsTomorrow's Web competitive sites will tie together the database and the personalization. The result will feel like each customer is involved in a personal relationship with the Web server. If your Web site is going to keep pace, plan on providing that personal touch. When a customer comes to your site, greet them by name. Make a comment on their previous visit. Advise them of new items that would interest them. Make them feel at home. Act like a receptionist does when an honored customer walks through the front door. As your database grows and gets to know your customers, you can treat them like individuals, just like in the old days. Back when the store manager was on a first name basis with each of his customers. Back when the driver knew that he could get some help unloading the truck from the crew if he brought a six pack of soda pop. Back when you did business with people you knew personally. In the long run, your customers are your business partners. If you make life easier for them, treat them with respect and take an interest in their needs-- even if the relationship is all electronic-- you will beat your competitors at every turn.
CONCLUSIONPeter Coreless, Content Engineer at Cisco Systems says that customers who use their Web site are better informed now. As a result, they are asking questions which are more sophisticated.
The Web is a new marketing medium and it requires a different perspective. It demands more focus on communicating with each customer as an individual and not as a market. Intel learned that lesson with their Pentium debacle. Stanley Marcus of Nieman Marcus said it best, "Consumers are statistics, customers are people." The Web gives us a chance to use computers to treat people as individuals. In the near future, the competitive race on the Internet will go to the company with the biggest database and an eye on individual customers. BIBLIOGRAPHY - On The Web
BIBLIOGRAPHY - In Print
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