Format of session

1
Format of session

• Introduction
• Promotion issues
• Problems
• Solutions
• Gathering visitor information
• Analysing visitor information
• Debating point

2
Introduction

• The following are our viewpoints of the mechanics
  of promotion as E-Developers not as marketeers
• What exactly is E-Commerce promotion? The skill
  of identifying, anticipating and satisfying your
  customers needs and setting out to meet them
  profitably - but using E-Commerce techniques
• The web represents a new/different way to get a
  message across and represents a new challenge
• Now need a traditional Marketing plan which
  includes the E-Commerce channel considerations

3
Promotion Issues

• What is happening out in the commercial world?
• Site-centric models shifting to user-centric
  models
• the growth of customisation - one to one service
  being adopted by site designers
• A continual review of the different ways of
  giving service to the customer

4
Case Study example

• Silverdale(Staffordshire) Post Office!
• UKVillages
• Coverage in The Advertiser 2/11/00 Silverdale
  Post Office is one the first in the UK to be
  linked up to this new web site
• Have a look - it is for rural communities

5
Whats different about EC channel?

• Customer controls the relationship - he/she
  actively chooses to visit your web site - not the
  other way round!
• More formally it is known as a pull medium
  (customer pulls the information to him/her)
• Opposite of push medium from more conventional
  mediums such as the press or TV advertising

6
Whats different about EC channel?

• Customer has free choice to visit your site
• may look at one page or many
• may never visit again!
• you provide the information - customer decides
  whether to pull that information or even read it!
• The major goals and problems are
• Getting visitors by the site being found!
  Statistics show this is a problem/disappointing
  firms
• Visitor doing something e.g. commit to a purchase

7
Solutions to the problems

• Are there any solutions we can consider to
  improve our sites chances? And if so what are
  they and what are the mechanics?
• Two directions
• Outsource the solution
• DIY mechanics on the site
• site Promotion/Marketing in traditional media
  (e.g. LetsBuyIt.com - TV, magazine and newspaper
  coverage)

8
Outsource

• Firms providing specialist promotion services
• Local firms
• Espere
• Netmarketeers
• Smeinternetmarketing
• International firms
• Webpromote

9
DIY solutions

• Site promotion - Let them eat Beenz! Reward them
  for visiting
• Web currency - beenz (NB what is money?)
• Consumers can earn beenz for visiting website -
  update May 2001 - site in financial difficulty
• Beenz.com November 2002 Site defunct
• Example site using beenz

10
DIY solutions

• Award points! Mypoints
• a kind of Green Shield Stamps on the net
• You have to first register in order to receive
  reward points on certain web pages

11
DIY solutions

• Site promotion - discount. Let it be known that
  discounts are available from your site
• Waterstones have hot books at up to 50
  discount
• Go offers a n discount for ordering online
• Train tickets - n discount if order online

12
DIY solutions

• Banners
• Contests users enter competition
• Chatrooms

13
DIY solutions

• Search engines used to find information on the
  web - it would help if your business can be
  found!
• Site needs to be registered with the best
  search engines. Some understanding of the
  differences between the search engines is useful
  to gather
• Try and promote a good rank with the engines -
  users more likely to find your site

14
Search engines - JCW tips

• Some 2,500 exist - some are good - some are
  rubbish
• It is like a game - they all work in different
  ways and change the rules frequently - great fun
  but maintenance intensive - need continual
  massaging
• Concentrate on the top 20 - rankings always in
  the Internet mags
• Work on the premise however that search engines
  cannot cope - they are constipated! - example
  some 2 billion pages exist on the web 7 million
  pages added per day google.com a good search
  engine only indexes 1 billion pages!

15
Search engine - JCW tips

• Search engine search is based on content/keywords
  not the url(domain) name
• have tags(title tags and meta description and
  keyword tags) and keep them up to date
• it may be necessary to resubmit your home page to
  the engines every so often(bi-monthly) - monitor
  them to see if they have dropped you - you can
  fall off the edge
• Work your way up the search engine tree by
  tuning into what the engines search for - this
  takes time
• get other sites to have a link to your site - it
  seems that the relevance of ranking is partly
  based on the traffic the site creates - affiliate
  programmes can help with this - Example

16
Good example of the use of meta tags - this
Virgin.com site
17
Another good example - firm based locally in
Eccleshall
18
!!!
19
Blogs

• Web Logs or Blogs! See article in November .net
  magazine about Web logs as an alternative to
  using Search engines
• example web log sites
• http//blog.org
• http//www.rebeccablood.net
• http//www.metafilter.com

20
Other general solutions

• After sales service!
• Customer Relationship Management(CRM)
• Response to emails / the use of email - manage it
  and action it! If you dont goodwill will suffer
• need an infrastructure to support enquiries -
  look after customer relations
• Call centres are being using to deal with volume
  after sales service by some sites

21
Other promotional solutions

• Develop trade links with other sites with related
  interests/collaboration
• Regional/trade/interest group - spine or feeding
  chain approach
• newsgroups - take care however as they are not
  meant for promotion
• use of portals - see notes on E-Procurement in
  week 10 for about portals
• hot links (agreed and mutual) - switch to your
  site from another site/vice versa

22
Gathering visitor information

• Using the web to gather valuable customer/user
  information
• How to do it - overtly or anonymously?
• Three main ways-
• Mypoints mentioned earlier was an example of
  collecting customer information by insisting a
  form is filled in - overt

23
Case Study example

• Lorna Bailey of Burslem
• Collectors Club on the site
• Coverage in The Advertiser dated 2/11/00 - twice
  yearly members-only day. Members from across the
  UK could cast their own wares etc
• Event made 22,000 in sales!

24
Gathering visitor information

• The use of cookies - not usually overt
• These are files that sit on your computer and
  allow web sites to record your preferences and
  for example how many times you have visited a
  particular site
• Advice is that they should be helpful to the
  consumer and add value. There are problems with
  cookies however so beware - click on this link
• Beware being intrusive - remember that they can
  be switched off as a browser preference!
• For more information see click on this link

25
Example of a cookie file
26
Gathering visitor information

• Analyse your web server log files (Microsoft IIS
  Apache CERN NCSA LotusDomino Oracle Open
  Market Netware) - non-overt method
• Who has been using your site?Statistics of which
  parts of the sites were visited most
• You can look at your log files manually if you
  wish but this is time consuming - best to use one
  of the packages on the market for doing this type
  of analysis.
• One JCW recommends is from WebTrends called Log
  Analyzer version 5.0, at 300

27
Gathering visitor information

• By tracking web habits so as to target adverts
  -called customer led advertising
• Doubleclick.com track your web habits and aim
  advertising at you
• portals - such as local purchasing consortia
• the rswww.com rs components online engineering
  catalogue, which uses broadvision software to
  learn about users' buying habits and then aims
  bought-in news feeds and advice content at them
  to maintain their loyalty

28
Analysing the information

• Having diligently collected visitor information
  what do you with it?
• What actions do you think you should take
• How do you assess the value added of visitor
  information?
• Metrics to measure actions taken what do you
  suggest?

29
Debating point the cost of promotion!!

• Rate of return or the payback of promotion? How
  to assess this is debatable tangible or
  intangible?
• Some local companies feel they have had little
  benefit from the web presence - why?
• Some dot.com failures are partly due to the spend
  on promotion
• Perhaps one answer is that they have not promoted
  their site sufficiently due to ignorance
• Scary statistic - the initial and ongoing cost of
  promoting a site may exceed the cost of
  developing maintaining the site!