Attributes That Attract Businesses To The Web
The Internet has become one of the most powerful means for one-to-one communications in the world. Just think of the last time you went into a brick and mortar, and had a wonderful experience shopping for the very thing you needed. What were the characteristics that made the store such great place to shop?
If you think about it, your experience started long before you entered the store’s premises. Imagine you’re watching your favorite reality show on television, and the “ultimate cell phone” commercial comes on touting the virtues of the “do-everything/be everything” cell phone called the “Magic Phone”. This device is so appealing that you just have to have one now. Your quest begins.
How do you find a retail store that sells the “Magic Phone”? There was a time when the Yellow Pages were the starting point of your search, but now you will probably jump on the Internet and type a phrase into a search engine. Let the Internet do the walking. If you’re like most people, you check the first three links of your search results page, and hopefully find what you’re looking for.
You pull up the company’s web site that sells your “Magic Phone”, and go to their online store. There you find out how many phones are available, the price, and if there are any available coupons. You register to download the coupons, and print them out so you can take them to the store. Since you’ve create your personal online account, you can return to the site, log on, and receive your very own personalized shopping experience.
How do you get to the store? It’s easy. Get direction from Mapquest. Then, off to the store you go.
When you arrive, you can’t miss the store, because it’s name is predominately displayed to be immediately visible to all who pay by it. It even has colors beautifully match the decor of their showroom.
Inside the store, signs are conveniently posted in strategic places to get you exactly where you need to go. The courteous sales person greets you, and answers all of your questions. You make your purchase, and are persuaded to return with compelling offers for a free gift, if you sign their mailing list. You got exactly what you were looking for. And the whole process was quick and easy. What a pleasant experience. Will you come back? Maybe. Probably. Most Definitely!
“Turning Websites into Money Machines ” can be done by emulating the best practices from the brick and mortars, but also, using the additional capabilities that the Internet has to offer. Let’s examine some of those features and learn which ones are essential for achieving our purpose.
The Web is Information Rich
People initially go to your web site for one purpose: To Get Information. People need information to feel comfortable about making buying decisions. No matter how may eye-popping animations you have on your site, or how slick your web site design is, sooner or later, visitors want valuable information.
Give visitors the information they need about your product, until they feel comfortable enough to purchase. The web offers the ability to use Hyperlinks within your text, to direct your visitors into deeper levels of information, without disenfranchising those who don’t need as much. Use Hyperlinks to create a logical path to the various levels of product detail, but always make it easy for the visitor to get back to where they started.
For companies that have complicated products, the web is the perfect place to store as much detail about your products as possible. Conversely, you don’t want to bury your audience in an endless sea of text, either. Sometimes, a well positioned graphic can convey what a thousand words can’t. So, break up the text with some meaningful graphics to convey your message.
Make sure you read Secret 3 “You Need a Great Web Site”, for more information on using multimedia on your site.
The Web Gives Personalized Experiences
Today some retailers have embraced the concept of personalization by hiring greeters that welcome customers entering their store. And if you’re a frequent customer, the greeter may even call you by name. Conversely, the web makes creating a customer-centric experience easy.
Web marketing leaders provide quick and easy user registration processes that personalizes your experience as soon as you login. But more that just displaying a “Hi Customer” message, some sites are using software that is able to analyses the users’ browsing habits to present content based on previously visited links by that customer.
Most web site marketers don’t understand personalization. Instead, they use technology to create interactions that users perceive as annoying and obtrusive. And example, using unwanted animated pop-ups to advertise your product can be annoying when you are researching totally unrelated topic. Sites that automatically pay video clips as soon as you log on is another example of annoying personalization.
Visitors want personalization, but they also want to feel like they have some control over the personalization. So marketers are opting to use methods to allow their visitors to customize the site by selecting only the content they want to see. Or at least arrange the content on the pages to their liking.
The Web Brings Interactivity
Today’s web site visitors don’t want to visit a static brochure site with product photos, lists of products, services, or locations. These sites neglect to take advantage of the web’s most valuable feature; Interactivity. Interactivity is about engaging the customer in a two way exchange of information. Then, listening and monitoring customer feedback helps you improve your products and services.
Site visitors now have the “Let me do it myself” attitude, and want to be able to use the features of your site to get the information they’re looking for. Online database lookups, user polls, and email interactions are just a few tools web site owners can use to solicit user interaction. The more you can design your transactions around the customer’s ability to respond to product offerings, the sooner you embrace the use of interactivity. Great web marketers quickly realize the amazing marketing potential that interactivity offers.
Immediacy Is Inherent on the Web
Of the many advantages that the Web offers, immediacy carries great dividends. The speed at which information travels over the Web makes it one of the most important means of communication in the world. No longer is it necessary to wait for the latest news program to get the scoop on the events around the world. As soon as you log onto the home page of a news site, you can click on any link you want to get any information you’re interested in. Information from one part of the world can travel instantaneously to the other side of the world in a matter of minutes.
Computer terminology calls this real-time processing. Web marketers can take advantage of Immediacy by providing its customers real time updates of information; inventory balances, up-to-the-minute customer account information, and news as soon as it occurs. Use immediacy of the Web to supply real-time information though web casting, real-time web chats with customers, and web conferencing. All of the services are possible through the Web because of Immediacy. Take full advantage of them to keep your customers informed with up-to-the-minute information.
The Web is Built for Quantification
Many web site owners have turned to the power of the computer to do what it does best; compute. The computer has the ability to gather statistics and present those statistics to consumers in meaningful way. Numbers can help improve decision making which can lead to greater sales. For example, displaying how many items are available to purchase can help customers determine whether there is time to purchase now or later. When quantities are limited, shoppers have a tendency to buy quickly.
Some sites have already taken advantage of the numbers game by displaying the number of visitors that have come to their site. Sites can give the number of registered users that are currently online, the size of a file that you are attempting to download, and even the number of downloads a particular song has received since its release.
With software tools that are readily available, web site owners have the unique ability to measure just about everything they do. To make money on the Internet, measure your marketing efforts, determine who your visitor are, and understand what your visitors want. Marketing without measurement is like having a laptop without a power cord. You’ll seem fine in the short term, but soon the power will run out.
Pull out those web site statistics, and learn to make sense of them. Learning to use statistical information like web hits, unique visits, page views, page requests, impressions, and active sessions are just a few that can give you valuable information about your marketing effectiveness.
Although performance measurement may not be an exact science, it gives you a distinct advantage over other sites that don’t master it. Improving performance is constantly becoming more refined as time goes on. The learning curve may be steep, but you’ll find that you’ll get better results from your marketing efforts.
Mobility: The Freedom to Surf
Is the homepage of your site really the a starting place where visitors will always begin their journey? What about the visitors who bookmark the page they frequently visit? That may be the point of entry into the information on your site. In other words, the Internet gives your visitors the freedom to decide what they believe is import, and what they want to see first.
When designing your site keep this in mind, each page could potentially be the homepage for any of your visitors. They can literally jump from page to page, from topic to topic, and from one site to the next. It is our responsibility to use this freedom of movement to our advantage. Now we can guide visitors to greater levels of detail, or divert them to an entirely new subject altogether. The Web has the flexibility to direct its users literally everywhere and anywhere. Where do you think the word “Surfing” came from?
Selling from the web requires us to think from the standpoint of the customer. We can determine what their thought process is for navigating your site. Using this approach, we can entertain many different ways a visitor can find the information they want from our site. To get more accurate information, try soliciting input directly from a cross section of your visitor community. This information will reveal volumes. Most of all, just be sure your pages are arranged so that your visitors are only a few clicks away from what they are looking for.
Relativity: Spinning the Web
On the web, no site should ever become an island. The very nature of the Internet is driven by the ability to link from one source of information to the other. In this respect people from all over the world can connect to me, or anyone else for that matter. This is the spider web effect that we hear about in reference to the Web. Visitors can land on your site literally from anywhere on the web, and can leave your site to go anywhere on the Web.
To harness the power of relativity, web site owners are beginning to direct their visitors to other sites only if there is a potential to capture business through the new destination. Let’s say your visitors has just purchased one of your products, and you realize that there is a related product that your customers want, but you don’t sell it. You simply become an affiliate for the product offered on a completely different site, and direct your customers to the affiliate site. That way you still offer your customers a great selection of products, while reaping some additional revenue in the process. Most companies offer affiliate programs that are free to join, and you can earn great commissions.
Today, sites are spreading their reach by doing link exchanges. This is where you agree to post a link to someone else’s site, if they will post your link on their site. Link exchanges are referred to as the mutual back-scratching process. The more links leading back to your site, the more traffic you can generate. And we all know that the key to web site profitability is traffic. Investing in link building can help us create more value to the customer, while generating additional revenue for ourselves. The value of linking should not be overlooked, because links improve your ranking with the search engines.
Cost Effectiveness
Lastly, we cannot fail to mention the extreme cost effectives that the Internet affords. The Web still remains one of the most cost effective mediums in existence for marketing your company. Unlike other forms of marketing, for the low cost of web hosting, and the ability to put up a web site, you can be on your way to making money from your site very quickly. Although, costs vary based on how elaborate you want your site to be, a savvy web site marketer can keep his cost to a minimum.
Your web site is an excellent way to develop strong customer relationships and to develop a strong online community. But web merchants that have learned to use the inherent features that the Web has to offer will excel at capturing the ever growing online market. Learn to be a master at creating uniquely individualized sales experiences for your visitors, and you will reap huge dividends in loyal customer support.
If you have made the decision to master the online marketing arena, also make the decision to find out how the Internet game works.