HAMG 1319

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• HAMG 1319
• Computers in Hospitality
• Planning and Developing Web Pages

Virginia Stipp Lawrence, MHM
This PowerPoint presentation is designed as a
tool to assist you in planning your web page.
Read through this presentation prior to class on
Thursday, October 6th
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Objectives

• Determining your Web sites purpose
• The two primary categories of business Web sites
• Brochure, account management, content, and direct
  gain Web sites
• Differences between Web business and traditional
  business
• Advantages and disadvantages of integrating
  traditional businesses and the Web
• Target audiences and their impact on site
  construction

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Getting Started Taking Your Idea Live

• A Web site is not the business itself
• The business runs the Web site
• The business also handles any legal issues,
  marketing issues, investor relations, personnel
  problems, and other daily chores associated with
  running a company

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Getting Started Taking Your Idea Live

• Three primary tasks that need to get done just
  to get the business started
• develop an idea
• develop an objective
• develop a needs assessment

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Honing the Idea

• If the site being developed is for an established
  marketer, the idea is already there the
  companys products and services will be presented
  on the Web
• If the business is not already established, the
  idea for a site comes from information or talents
  that the developer already has
• The site subject should be one that the developer
  not only feels he or she knows better than most
  people, but also that fills a need in the market

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Defining Your Sites Objective

• The purpose of building any type of business site
  is to make money or provide information
• There are other goals to take into consideration
• What do you expect the company and the site to
  achieve in the short term and the long term
• Depending upon what the ultimate goal is, the
  site and the company may be developed to reflect
  that goal

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Needs Assessment

• Most business plans contain the following
  information
• Executive summary Overview of what the company
  and its associated Web site will do and how the
  company anticipates growth
• Market overview A review of market conditions,
  including market size and the life cycle
• Service A description of the Web site, including
  highlights of any specialized sections,
  explanation of how it will serve the market, what
  it will do, and what opportunities there may be
  for growth and future expansion

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General Types of Web Sites

• Although there are seemingly endless ideas and
  products offered on the Web, nearly all sites can
  be grouped into just a few broad categories
• Business sites pure-com or created by an
  established company
• Information/help sites Usually organizations
  with a .org domain name suffix that provide
  relevant information to interested readers
• Vanity/hobby sites For example, people who want
  to display pictures from their family vacation or
  post their resumes for potential employers

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General Types of Web Sites
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Brochure Sites

• Typically static, meaning they do not change on a
  regular basis and do not allow visitors to make
  direct purchases
• Exist primarily to generate interest in products
• Expect to generate an e-mail or a phone call from
  the site visitor so that a sales representative
  can follow up the inquiry
• Maintain the comfort level of existing customers
  through online offerings
• Alleviate some of the time constraints on human
  employees by answering common questions online
• Relies on human interaction to close the sale

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B2C Brochure Sites

• Large retail-oriented companies like BMW, Post,
  Coke, Pepsi, Burger King and many others invest
  heavily in brochure sites
• Many of these sites have nothing to sell, dont
  support outside ads, and even go out of their way
  to develop games and interactivity to keep users
  on the site longer
• For these companies, the Web is an additional
  branding vehicle

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Content Sites

• Content sites try to offer unique information or
  content, with regular updates
• Google, shown in Figure 2-10, is a Web search
  engine that give users information and links to
  other sites on the Web

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How Web Business Differs From Traditional Business

• Web/Computer technology changes rapidly
• Web space is not cheap
• Web businesses incur all of the costs associated
  with maintaining customer support services
• High cost of marketing efforts to drive people to
  the site

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Determining the Target Market

• It is impossible to have universal appeal to
  every potential shopper, instead, each site,
  depending on its offerings, caters to a specific
  group of people that share common traits

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Standard Consumer Demographics

• Age
• Family size
• Education level
• Income (median income and income range)
• Gender
• Occupation
• Nationality
• Race

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Audience Psychographics Variables

• Types of hobbies
• Vacations
• Recreational sports played
• Luxury items owned
• Number of general-use items (cars, sneakers,
  etc.) purchased last year or over the last 3
  years
• Minutes per day spent on the Web

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Gathering Information

• Researchers employ various methods to collect
  audience data and some of the more popular
  methods include
• Personal Interviews
• Mail, Web, or telephone surveys
• Focus groups

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Setting up a Survey

• The general steps taken for survey development
  include the following
• Determine the objective
• Develop the question
• Find survey respondents
• Analyze the data
• Another part of the survey is asking the right
  question in such a way that allows the respondent
  to give unbiased and relevant information

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How Audience Profile Affects a Web Site

• Knowing your audience from both a demographic and
  psychographics standpoint gives you insight into
  the types of layouts, colors, images, and content
  to which your visitors would best respond
• Understanding your audience will help shape the
  core message and personality of the brand for
  long-term market penetration

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• Web site users want and expect the following
  elements from Web sites
• Valid, up-to-date content
• Sound navigation features
• Quick downloads
• Entertainment
• Personalization
• Security
• Improved customer service

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Valid, Up-To-Date Content

• No set schedule of updates has been established
  for Web sites
• Unpredictable and delayed updates cause users to
  become skeptical about a site
• With so many Web sites to choose from, users may
  leave a Web site that does not regularly update
  its content for a Web site that does

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Valid, Up-To-Date Content

• General news sites and broad category e-tailers,
  such as MSN, CNN, or Amazon.com, need to update
  content on a daily basis
• Less-traveled content sites that offer unique
  information can update content on a weekly basis
  (or even less often)
• Brochure-style sites for smaller companies can do
  quarterly updates

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Provide Valuable Content

• Site developers need to determine what kind of
  information to include on the site
• This may be a difficult decision because most Web
  sites are not created on a topic that has clearly
  defined boundaries

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Sound Navigation Features

• Web sites, especially retail and content sites,
  can have layout problems, making the sites
  cumbersome and overwhelming for visitors
• Links appear as blue underlined text or graphics,
  and can be placed practically anywhere on a Web
  page
• Even small sites usually have many links on every
  page

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Sound Navigation Features

• The value of buttons and button placement as
  navigation tools should not be overlooked due to
  the commercialization of the Web or artistic
  concerns
• A visitor comes for a specific purpose, and wants
  to achieve that purpose quickly and efficiently
• The links within a site should help, not hinder,
  that goal

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Avoid Long Downloads

• A surfer must wait for all the images on the Web
  site to download, which can be frustrating with a
  slow connection
• Bored surfers can move on to another site that
  downloads more quickly
• There is a bandwidth discrepancy between Internet
  connections in peoples homes and in their
  offices
• This discrepancy translates into huge differences
  in the time it takes to download Web pages

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Avoid Long Downloads

• Many developers have started to worry a little
  less about the file size of their sites because
• More people report that their major use of the
  Internet is from work
• More Web commerce is conducted for business, not
  consumer purposes
• Design trends have become more subdued
• Most developers still try to keep cumulative page
  weights to less than 150 K

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Entertain Your Visitors

• The Web has proven to be a haven for instant
  entertainment, with online games and short movies
  acting as growing sources for traffic retention
• Flash, Shockwave, and 3-D development are the
  leading technologies used for game playing and
  online shows

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Entertain Your Visitors

• Shockwave.com, a popular entertainment site,
  allows users to play games and see serialized
  Flash movies

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Entertain Your Visitors

• Sites offering entertainment retain traffic
  longer and have better rates of returning
  visitors than sites that do not
• Both of these facts are important features for
  online brand building

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Maximize Brand Value

• Corporate sites also use games to keep traffic on
  their sites
• The site should work the product into the game
  and keep the company name and logo in front of
  the user

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Maximize Brand Value

• The Coca-Cola store site has a game of darts
• But there is no connection between darts and the
  Coca-Cola name or product

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Maximize Brand Value

• NabiscoWorld.com has brand value
• It keeps the Nabisco name and products in the
  mind of consumers
• It helps create an association between Nabisco,
  fun, and entertainment

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Maximize Game Value

• Besides providing brand value, entertainment can
  also help increase online sales
• An online game, offering product discounts, free
  shipping, etc. for the points accumulated,
  encourages visitors to buy merchandise from the
  company

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Simpler Web Entertainment

• The scenarios described above are expensive to
  implement
• Entertainment can still be added to a site
  without spending a lot of money
• Some examples of doing this are
• Adding a funny quote that is regularly updated
• Providing a survey

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Personalization

• MSN.com offers a lot of personalization
• Visitors can choose what information they want to
  see, and rearrange the order of the information

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Using Personalization Properly

• Amazon.com uses personalization to increase the
  amount of revenue it generates from existing
  customers

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Using Personalization Properly

• Although users respond favorably to
  personalization, they are also concerned about
  their privacy
• Web marketers need to walk a fine line between
  individualizing and prying

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Keep Visitor Information Private

• Web users are getting used to the idea of sharing
  certain sensitive information with retail Web
  sites
• Shoppers are concerned about viruses, system
  breaches, and e-tailers distributing private
  information among themselves
• For a Web site to succeed, it must constantly
  assure customers that more and better privacy
  controls are being put in place

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Improve Customer Service

• Customer service plays an important role in the
  success of a Web site
• Site developers are beginning to attract
  customers with the promise of better service
• The concerns of customers can only be addressed
  by quality customer features that are obvious and
  easy to use

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Planning With Time Lines

• A time line is a projected schedule that helps to
  organize the many facets of work that go into
  creating a site
• Many issues, such as time-sensitive content and
  press releases, will be affected by the timely
  development of a Web site
• The first step in creating a Web site is to
  develop a schematic for the site, which consists
  of a rough sketch that approximates the sites
  various pages and navigation structure

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Planning with Time Lines

• The schematic helps the developers understand how
  difficult and large the site will be
• The schematic gives you a blueprint for
  construction, from which the time line can be
  created
• You should have a team of people dedicated to
  site development, and all team members should
  have input on the time line
• Sites are often delayed due to poor planning or
  overly optimistic deadlines

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Style Guides

• A style guide is a set of rules that all external
  marketers, print developers, Web developers, and
  others must follow
• A style guide ensures that the company brand
  identity elements remain the same across various
  media
• The use of style guides provides consistency,
  which is an important part of brand development
• The style guide helps the developers in making
  changes later, and prevents confusion

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Brand Integrity

• Nothing is more important to the long-term
  success of a company than its brand
• Not every company spends the time to care for its
  brand image the way that it should
• Brand issues take time and money to develop
• Consistency between media makes a company look
  more organized and professional, qualities that
  are important to potential customers

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The Technical Perspective

• As time passes, more and better options and
  alternatives become available to make the Web
  more useful, but also more complicated
• The Web looks and acts differently depending on
  the users equipment and settings
• Developers need to ensure that the widest
  possible audience can see and use the site

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The Technical Perspective

• Programming languages have grown in number
• Languages and applications need to be chosen and
  tempered by developers based not only on what the
  site needs to do, but also on how many potential
  users will be able to see the site properly
• Developers also need to consider which language
  will likely remain popular in the future so that
  changes and upgrades can be made

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Establishing a Lowest Common Denominator

• Huge connectivity variations exist among visitors
  
• This problem is dealt with by developing the
  sites lowest common denominator (LCD), or the
  minimum set of variables that need to be
  programmed so that the largest audience possible
  can see the Web site
• LCD is a means of establishing some general
  boundaries for design, such as the size limit for
  each page

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Programs and Languages

• Today, tools and options available for Web
  creation have gotten so vast that even small
  sites typically require a team of people, or at
  least a division of responsibilities between
  graphic designers and programmers
• Each sites uses a different combination of
  languages and programs, depending on the desired
  result