Posts filed under 'Web Strategy'
A must read for anyone working on the Internet who is looking to understand the big picture around new world economies is Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat.” The book describes how politics, economics, business and the free market are changing around the world due to the increased levels of communication provided by the Internet and other technologies. The book provides a foundation for how and why the Internet is changing the world. Friedman makes the case that the world is now flat, rather than hierarchical. Countries and companies around the globe now have the ability to compete like never before on a level playing field thanks to technology and the Internet.
When you read the book you will understand the importance of a Web presence for businesses and why Websites need to perform at high levels. There are too many options and low performing Websites will be quickly left behind. Spend time on our blog, podcasts and Website to understand the principles of an intuitive Website and be a leader in today’s flat earth. Otherwise, you might just fall off the edge!
Tom
May 3rd, 2006
Key managers within an organization can often become the greatest proponents of a strong Web marketing strategy. They can also get in the way by being too involved or not involved enough. This happens because the Web is a unique challenge for the business leader.
The CEO, or business leader, is drawn to the Website or avoids it for the following reasons:
• It is a doorway to the world
• There is a lack of expertise in Web strategy on staff
• The CEO is too close to the business
• The CEO may not understand the technology of the Web and its impact onthe business
How does one deal with the CEO who is either not interested enough in the Web or too involved?
When the CEO is too involved in the Website the first step is to understand their role in the company. Their job is to lead and provide the vision for the company, and a good CEO will provide a vision that relates to the company’s stakeholders. Here is a summary:
• Their role is to provide direction, leadership and focus
• Not to micro-manage
• Delegate to the right people
• Build a team and build momentum
• Avoid sample size of one conflicts and a dis-association from the needs of the Web user from an over involved CEO.
Another problem is the CEO who is not involved or doesn’t think the Web is viable for marketing. The challenge here is to get them interested. How? Well education, strategy, ROI and stats are the key. When working with a business leader that does not get the Web do the following:
• Develop a strategic Internet plan
• Educate your CEO on this plan
• Show simple and clear ROI data
• Present regular Web stats to the CEO or manager such as:
- Visitors
- Pages Viewed
- Entry and exit pages
- Search engine key words
- Referrers
- Conversion and ROI data
By the way, this will work with an over involved CEO as well.
These are a few ideas to help in working with the CEO or other business leader who generally has budget control and therefore control over your Website.
March 15th, 2006
Fast Company magazine did an interesting spread of technology statistics in their March 2006 issue. According to Forrester Research, by 2010, 85% of US households will have a cell phone, 53% will own a laptop, 37% will use a digital recorder and 35% an MP3 player.
And, comScore Media Metrix (November 2005) found that Americans spend 80 minutes online each day with the following activities:
-25.5 minutes on portals
-24.5 minutes on email
-13.6 minutes on retail
-9.8 minutes on community
-9.6 minutes on entertainment
-8.0 minutes on finance
-6.1 minutes on directories
-6.0 minutes on news
-4.8 minutes on technology
-3.5 minutes on search
So, what does this mean for your Website and Internet Marketing? How can you offer content that can be downloaded to cells and iPods? Can you better reach your customers via email or through portals? What opportunities do you have for retail on your Website? Keep watching online trends and don’t be afraid to adjust your Web strategy based on the new frontier!
Personally, I think the community stats will increase with the Echo/Gen Y generation coming on strong. Sites like MySpace are seeing huge traffic from the younger set. How will this impact your online marketing efforts? Likely, online PR and viral marketing will grow as mediums to reach into these online communities.
Lisa
March 6th, 2006
Here are a few questions to ask yourself about your Web strategy:
- Have you researched users and competitors?
- Does the Website have a clear strategy and purpose?
- Does the home page describe the company adequately?
- Is navigation intuitive? (The user does not have to think about navigation).
- Is the content really of value and scannable?
- Is the design pleasing to look at including nice photography?
- Is there contact information on every page?
- Are interactive forms and carts easy to use?
- Is the Website being marketed adequately?
- Are the stats being reviewed from the Website?
If you want to keep it simple, just write down this list and start getting to work on making your Website more effective for you and your business.
November 28th, 2005
It seems that every week some company comes out with a new software tool to magically make your site climb the search engine listings. Of course they all say they’re the best, and only THEY have "what it takes" to get the job done. None of actually believe all of the claims - it’s marketing after all - but are they even worth your time?
I own TrendMX and I’ve been happy with it in general. However, it’s now officially pointless to submit to Google, and you do have to be very careful or you’ll get banned. A tool like TrendMX is helpful and useful for analysis and checking rankings (with anyone but Google, since, as they state, it’s against their rules to do ANY automated queries) - but the key is to NOT do it more than once a month - and to be safe, once every other month. It doesn’t change often enough to warrant checking that often anyway. Yahoo has fewer restrictions, but the results are different - I once had a site at #15 on Google and #3 on Yahoo.
Overall - if you get TrendMX or any tool (don’t bother with Web Position Gold, it’s really not worth the money in any way) just don’t OVERuse it, or your site is toast.
By the way - submitting still does help on the lesser search engines, but one could argue that it’s a waste of time to submit to those as well, since nobody uses them and they require an email to submit a site (which they put on every SPAM list in the universe - that’s where 95% of my spam comes from).
And - I hate to say this - the more Google gets "better" (thereby placing more restrictions on a site and it’s rankings), the less SEO is even worth your time or your money. Google is fast making being an actual GOOD website the ONLY way to get ranked - no more shortcuts.
Spend time on increasing inbound links from reputable sites (no link buying or sharing), writing good interesting content, and increasing usability so people will want to come back. Basically, just build a better site.
No more shortcuts.
October 17th, 2005
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