Marketers, to borrow a phrase, you’ve been had; you’ve been hoodwinked.
The Internet has been hijacked. The propeller-heads stole it and we marketers let them right in the front door. We are the communications specialists, but there are a bunch of tekkies out there calling the shots in what is a very powerful communications tool: our Web sites.
I’m not talking about what makes your Web site work: the HTML code, Java, DHTML, Cold Fusion, ASP and all those other wonderful acronyms that make the Web walk and talk. I’m referring to optimizing your Web site using a marketing mind.
Optimizing your Web site is the result of more than just technology, in fact, technology is nothing more than a support function.
Optimization comes from researching and knowing your audiences, then giving them what they want exactly how they want to receive it.
Crafting your company’s or client’s message and presenting it in a usable and useful way. Communicating with target audiences and creating long-term relationships between them and your organization. Branding your organization in a new and dynamic communication form. All of the above belong to people like us , marketers.
– Time For Technical Myopians To Catch Up
Unfortunately, most of us spent the latter part of the 1990s with the world wide wool pulled over our eyes. Wowed by new Internet technologies, we became technical myopians, unable to see the marketing forest amid the digital trees.
Fine. Now the dust has settled and it’s time to return this communications hot rod to where it belongs, securely parked in the marketing garage.
There’s an old saying, when two people ride a horse, only one can be in front. When it comes to optimizing an organization’s Web site, the marketers belong in the front. The problem has been that many marketers, unfamiliar with the ins and outs of “Internet-ese,” were somewhat intimidated about grabbing the reigns early on.
There are four areas that the marketer must take control of and/or responsibility for when it comes to optimizing a company’s Web presence: content, design, promotion and knowledge management.
More than any other factor, content is what drives Web site stickiness , user return and re-use. Despite what your Web vendors might say, stickiness is never about technology, it’s always about content.
– Personalizing Web Content For Users
More than that, it’s about content that talks directly to the user , personalized, customized, “just about me and no one else” kind of content. Content is king because, like no other media, the Web encourages the user to ask, “What’s in it for me?”
As marketers, it is our responsibility to create content that answers that question, content that brings the user back. Whether it’s information, a service or a set of products, your content is the one and only thing that will grab users and compel them to return.
As marketers, it is our job to understand the delicate dance between the front end of our Web site , what the user sees and how it navigates , with the back end , how the information returns, how the links work, how data is captured.
Too many companies think only with one end. Their site features eye-popping graphics but doesn’t collect any data, navigate well for the user or load quickly enough. Or, it runs smoothly behind the scenes but is a dud to look at, with no interaction. Find the balance between front-end excitement and a back-end workhorse.
Remember, in your design don’t talk over the heads of your audience. XML, DHTML and other technologies are wonderful, and certainly the future of the Internet, but many older browsers don’t support them. Know who you’re talking to and how they are accessing the Internet.
– Driving Traffic, Keeping Tallies
Promotion and reporting. Getting people to your site and finding out when, where and why they came. Driving traffic to your site and creating the ability to report on who is using your site, and how, is the cornerstone of your successful Web strategy.
First, let’s talk about promotion. For many firms, the promotion of your site and measuring its success are afterthoughts. In fact, many Web designers do not offer promotion services. If you learn it yourself or if you hire a vendor, make sure your site is promoted online.
Warning: Your success will radically depend on how your site was designed in the first place. Comprehensive search engine registration is vital, but won’t be as effective if your site is not designed to optimize how the various search engines recognize and rank you.
Now to reporting. This is a real mess. There are many reporting programs on the market, none of which will offer a completely accurate picture of who is visiting your site and when. Web servers are very good at recording some information: date and time of the hit, visitor’s IP address, bytes transferred, path of the file served, cookies, etc.
However, as a result of the quirky design of the entire Internet itself, much of this information is inaccurate.
The inaccuracies of Web reporting could fill a whole other article, but just briefly, let’s talk about what is probably the best example of inaccuracy and one of the most popular bits of information recorded , the hit.
– Hit Defined As Request For File
Hits don’t mean people, hits don’t mean page views, and hits don’t mean computers that have hit your server. A hit is a request for a file your server received. That includes images, sound files, and anything else that may appear on a page. So, one page viewed by one person might represent 10, 15, 25 or more hits.
In speaking with a client about optimizing their old site, they told us how pleased they were with how many hits the old site was receiving. That was until we found out that everyone in that organization had the site as the default page in their browser, meaning that possibly hundreds or even thousands of their hits were meaningless.
Don’t despair. The information you get about your site can still be incredibly useful, but it takes a fair amount of expertise to do the detective work.
This is where the Web can really earn its paycheck. Remember, the Web is a two-way street, you can give information and you can receive it. Unfortunately, this is one of the most underused strategies on most Web sites.
At every juncture of your site, endeavor to create a “capture point,” a part of the page designed to prompt the user to give us some information about themselves.
Hold the phone, I can hear you saying, hold that phone just one minute. People don’t like to give their information, you say. They will leave any site that asks them for information, you say.
True enough, sites that are pushy and demand information will find their servers feeling very lonely. No doubt your Web users will be very sophisticated. However, our personal experience and all the Web research agrees: People will trade value for value.
In other words, give them a good reason to give their information and they’ll give it. They understand that giving up this information allows you to give them information they are interested in. This information is automatically loaded into your user databases.
This is how you take your Web site to the next level. No longer is it a one-way communication. You are now building a relationship with your key audiences.
Your Web site will allow you to collect powerful information from motivated users. Data, interests and affinities are collected and tabbed for future marketing efforts. Basic relationship marketing.
The cornerstone of this strategy, however, is giving people something they value. It goes back to our content. Don’t expect to get their information unless you are providing something they need or want.
There are many challenges to the marketing professional, and managing a Web project might be one of the most challenging of them all.
Hilliard is a senior marketing communications consultant with Stock/Alper & Associates of San Diego.
