by Kevin Miller, Frost Miller Group, Inc.
The Internet is revolutionizing the way people live and do business. Communication via email, information exchanges via news groups, and research of virtually any item of information is now commonplace on the Net.
Many companies are seeing the vast potential for establishing commerce over the Internet, marketing their services or products, and developing communication channels with clients or prospects. Most are setting up in an area of the Internet known as the World Wide Web. Unlike other areas of the Internet, which are mainly text-based, the Web uses a graphic interface that offers interactive capabilities including animation, sound and full-motion video.
The steps involved in developing a Web site are essentially the same as those needed to develop any other marketing material. The difference, of course, is the medium itself. The Web has advantages and disadvantages that make using it very much different than advertisements, brochures, newsletters and direct mail.
This article is intended to give you a better understanding of the advantages and steps needed to establish a Web presence, or improve the one you already have. It will help you understand why you should have a Web site, and how companies in your industry are using them. You will see that the same marketing rules that apply to the development of any sales material apply equally to developing a Web site. Nevertheless, Web marketing is different from other forms of marketing, and you can make your Web site more successful by taking advantage of these features. Then, you will see a step-by-step guide of what to do, and an idea of what it will cost to get on-line. Finally, you will learn how you can increase the likelihood that people will visit your site once it is posted.
Are Web sites for everybody? Maybe not, but most companies or associations in today's competitive environment would benefit in one way or another.
Communication via the Internet is clearly the trend of the future for individuals and businesses. People who use the Internet surely must see value in it, either for education, research, communication or commerce, or else Internet usage would not be increasing by 60-85% every year.
E-commerce
E-commerce, or shopping via the Internet, is projected to grow at an astronomical rate, with some estimates showing growth from $20 million in 1996 to more than $1 billion in the year 2000.
People in major metropolitan areas like Washington may not as readily see the need with fine shops always a short drive away, but for a person living in Romney, West Virginia, shopping at Bloomingdales or Barnes and Noble on the home computer greatly improves quality-of-life.
Promotion
Even for firms who cannot feasibly sell their products or services online, a Web site offers an opportunity to mix graphics and words in a dynamic fashion to promote their services. When a prospective client wants to learn more about a number of firms competing for his or her business, a well organized Web site can provide a strong first impression.
Recruiting
Finally, and perhaps most importantly for businesses and associations, is recruiting. In a competitive job market, an informative and exciting Web site can be an excellent recruiting tool. One of the highest percentages of people using the Internet are young adults...primarily college students. When they begin searching for a job, they will research firms via the Internet and Web. If you are trying to recruit the top engineers, designers or business students, you can be assured that the first thing an interested young candidate will do is check your Web site. They will want to know everything they can about you before they invest the time pursuing a job opportunity. If your competitors have a Web presence and you do not, you will be a step behind right away, and you will be sending a signal about your willingness to adapt to new trends and technologies. That alone should make it worth your while to develop a Web site.
These reasons just mentioned for establishing a Web presence are general ones that apply to any business or organization. The key question you must also ask that will determine how far you develop a Web site is: will my customers use it? And how? That decision, of course, is unique to your own company and industry. Here is how many industries are using Web sites.
Retail
The most obvious application for Web sites is retail sales. Most of us have conducted some form of research about a product or service via the Internet or Web. Moreover, many have probably purchased something from a retailer's Web site. The only thing holding most of us back are fears of sending your credit card number over the Internet, but security measures enacted by most Web retailers make it safer to send your credit card number on-line than by the phone or at a store. The Web is a logical transit ion from catalogs to online purchases for companies like Lands End.
Associations
Associations are logical candidates for Web sites. After all, the mission of every association is to communicate, either to, among, or on behalf of its members.
A Web site allows for instantaneous communication to members. Secure news groups allow for forums to discuss issues or questions among members...after all, most people join associations to interact with their peers in order to improve their knowledge of their industry.
While the Web presents clear advantages for local and regional associations, imagine its impact on national associations. Members in Topeka can get 'real-time' advice from a half-dozen other members from Tallahassee to Tacoma on subjects that local competitors might be hesitant to discuss.
Residential Real Estate
The Web is perfect for selling homes...if not selling, at least allowing buyers to do some detailed research before they visit communities. Builders with Web sites provide details about their homes, communities, surrounding towns, schools, and more. Their sites include photos of home styles, or, from the more ambitious builders, virtual tours of homes.
Commercial Real Estate
The Web is becoming more a part of everyday life for developers, architects, engineers, contractors, subcontractors and suppliers. Already today, the time to execute shop drawings have been cut in half. Owners are requesting changes to architects via email, who in turn send new drawings to the engineer, who then send details to the contractor, who in turn sends them electronically to the job site.
Owners and leasing firms are posting all of their available properties on Web sites, and some are giving virtual tours.
Design firms are perhaps best suited for showing examples of their work on this visual, dynamic medium. Moreover, they will become increasingly involved in transmitting documents to and from clients, engineers and builders as this medium is better utilized.
Contractors are using their Web sites to conduct business via 'Extranets' with owners and subcontractors, and are marketing their services to prospects by showing examples of their work.
Subcontractors and suppliers will probably be the first to conduct wide-scale e-commerce via the Web. It's already happening. Check the Web addresses for most suppliers and you will see opportunities for purchasing materials via the Web. Recently, one small general contractor saved $500,000 by researching the Internet and finding a lumber supplier in Vancouver. He invested $300 and a day's time to visit the supplier and made the purchase.
Stories like this are only going to be repeated more and more often.
Step away from the medium for a moment and ask yourself the same questions you would ask if you were producing a brochure, a direct mailer, a newsletter or an advertising campaign. What are my competitive advantages? And what are the benefits to my prospective buyers? Who are my target audiences? What are their needs? What do they need to know about me? How can I get them interested in what I have to say? And how can I make them take action? These are the critical marketing questions anyone must ask--whether a retailer, an airline, an attorney or a synagogue--before embarking on a marketing campaign. Web marketing is no different.
Remember, the key to effective marketing is understanding the needs of your target audience, and then communicating about how your goods or services will satisfy their needs.
The Web is different from other media of course, so when you develop a Web site, you should take advantage of its strengths. You probably already evaluated the advantages of other media before deciding to use them for marketing. Advertising, for instance, has a broad reach. Direct mail can be targeted to well defined groups. Press releases have greater credibility and reach a broad audience, but their placement is unpredictable. The Web has similar advantages and disadvantages.
Similarly, the Web has its unique advantages, the greatest of which is its multimedia capabilities. Like television, it combines still pictures with video and sound. But unlike television, it is interactive. It allows an immediate response...in other words, an order. And of course, it is far less expensive than television advertising. Moreover, and most importantly, it is dynamic. It is easy and instantaneous to update. How many times have you agonized over whose picture to include in your company brochure, or which products or services to include, because of the rapid changes taking place in your organization? The Web eliminates that concern. You can update your Web site instantaneously, from your office. Better Web sites showcase new products or services, have current press releases, and always offer something fresh and different for frequent visitors.
The well-known architectural axiom popularized by Frank Lloyd Wright, "form follows function", should be your guide to developing a Web site. People go to Web sites to get answers. Think of the times you have visited Web sites. If the information you want is not easy to find, you will go to another site. A study by User Interface Engineering supports this. The firm assembled 50 people with varied Web experience and put them on a scavenger hunt of nine different Web sites to gather information. The results were revealing. The most expensive site, a virtual community that cost $20 million to develop, was the most difficult in which to find this specific information. While the site was enormously entertaining, it took too much time for people to navigate to get specific answers. The most functional site was a far less expensive one that included a simple index on the home page which made it easy to find information.
Web sites should be graphically appealing, but the graphics should be fast to download. Large and complicated graphics are slow to download, which often prompts people to stop and move on to another site.
Make Web sites easy to navigate and provide information logically. Your attention to detail and logic in the planning stage will pay dividends in the long run.
Take advantage of the Web's capabilities. Use multimedia and interactivity, and update it frequently.
Finally, make it interesting. Do a few fun things to keep people on your site, and entice them to visit often. Like any sales opportunity, the longer you can spend time with someone, the more likely you are to eventually get their business. Provide links to your favorite places...include contests...anything to be a little different and a little fun. But don't forget...stress function over form.
Here is a checklist of things you should do to develop a functional Web site.
Of course, these tools don't necessarily give you the skills you need to make a Web site that has the right mix of marketing savvy and creativity. And, the level of multimedia sophistication and programming needed to develop the better Web sites has increased dramatically in recent years. For these reasons, the business of Web site design and development has grown dramatically, with the better firms investing heavily in training.
Designing for the Web is different also. Whereas design for ads and direct mail requires a graphic approach that grabs attention, design elements on a Web serve to aid the visitor on their journey to get information. Design is critical because it helps convey your competitive strengths and creates an important first impression, but it should not slow down information exchange.
The cost to develop a Web site varies dramatically depending on your needs. Following are some of the items you will budget:
Establishing a domain name and signing up with an ISP is the first step. Most domain names include the company name or something descriptive about the company. It costs only $100 to register a domain name for two years, and $50 for each year thereafter. Most ISPs add a nominal surcharge to handle this essential step. You can research the availability of domain names by contacting InterNIC and searching their database.
The amounts charged by ISPs vary, but with the exception of larger providers with expanded capabilities, most ISPs usually charge a small set-up fee, a monthly charge for unlimited access, a fee of about $50 for each business email account, and a charge of a few hundred dollars to host the Web site. A company with 10-15 email addresses and a Web site should expect to pay about $100-$200 a month for this service.
Creative costs for a basic, but functional, original, and engaging beginning Web site ranges from about $5,000 to $15,000. A recent study of Fortune 1,000 companies by Forrester Research showed average costs of $304,000 for promotional sites-- on-line brochures; $1.3 million for content sites-- sites that offer information or entertainment content; to $3.4 million for fully transactional sites-- secure commerce sites with on-line ordering, on-line database, and multimedia graphics.
Another cost to consider is updates and maintenance. Larger firms hire webmasters to manage their sites, where small and mid-sized firms should budget anywhere from the hundreds to thousands monthly or quarterly, depending on the frequency of updates.
By now, we all know that simply having a Web site does not mean anybody will see it. Getting prospects to a Web site is not easy in this self-directed medium.
Most Web users start an information quest by searching one of hundreds of Web directories or search engines. A directory, like Yahoo is a true directory. The sites it catalogs have been sorted by Yahoo's staff into subject categories, subcategories, and sub subcategories. So if you are looking for an architect, go to Yahoo and search the word 'architect,' and you will get lists of architectural firms.
Search engines, on the other hand, like Excite, Altavista and WebCrawler, index individual words or groups of words found in the pages at Web sites. Think of a catalog that would index every word found in all the books of a library's collection. If you go to a search engine and search 'architect,' you will get a list of every Web site that has the word 'architect' in it, which woul d include every article that includes the word 'architect' in it...obviously a different result that the directory would yield.
To be successful in search engines, you must design Web page headers that encourage more hits from them, and by listing in secondary as well as primary search engines.
In addition, you should place keywords or phrases into the top of your source code. These "meta codes" should be any and all words that people conducting a search might use, even if they show up in the early part of the actual text of your site. Search engines search for both hidden meta codes as well as text within the Web site. By placing these keywords into your Web site's code, you will be making the search engines' work easier.
Another way to get found is to link with as many complementary sites as possible. Also, banner advertising is a strategy used to get users to an organization's Web site. Many popular Web sites, including the major directories and search engines, offer paid advertising that hot links back to the advertiser's own home page. It is estimated that companies spent $10 million in on-line advertising in 1996, and will spend $2.2 billion by the year 2000. For more information on banner advertising visit Double Click and Net Gravity.
In addition, common sense would dictate that you would promote your Web site whenever possible...on your stationery, brochures, newsletter, and so on.
With rising Web costs, measurement of results has taken on even greater importance. While few organizations have a clear sense of what their return on investment will be, they can begin the process of measurement by counting the number of 'hits' per pa ge. This method is somewhat flawed because it doesn't qualify the visitors. The most foolproof tracking method is to ask the users to 'subscribe' to the site before allowing them access. Users must fill out a brief survey which includes name, email address, and other demographic information. Upon submitting the information, subscribers lock into a password, which allows their activity to be tracked. This reduces overall traffic, but it allows for much better qualification and tracking.
The Web has proven itself a valuable source of information as well as an excellent method for building relationships and generating leads. As the culture of the Net evolves, it is starting to prove itself as a successful means of selling products direct as more secure ordering systems become available. Many experts predict that the Web will be supporting billions and billions of dollars in commerce by the year 2000, and it is certainly a communication medium you should begin taking advantage of.
Kevin Miller is president of Frost Miller Group, Inc. of Bethesda, Maryland, a graphic design and Web development firm. For more information visit www.frostmiller.com.
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