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[monsterfx]

Just a thought I had and wondered what others take on it was. How do you see small (or any) businesses under-utilize their web site?

Here are some thoughts I had:

- Not using it to drive traffic to the physical store (through promotions, prtintable coupons, etc.).

- Not collecting customer demographics to tailer marketing style and for potential direct marketing campaigns.

- Not being a "useful" site whether through community building (with site features like forums) or informative articles on their subject of expertise.

Anyone else see ways small businesses could increase the usefulness of their web sites without spending large amounts of cash (which is usually the big sticking point for small businesses)?

<edit>I should mention that I'm brainstorming on a new blog article. If you would prefer I not mention any of your thoughts (giving credit where it is due of course), please let me know.</edit>

-monster.
[Edited by monsterfx on 08-30-2002 at 12:50 PM]

[hurricaneone]

Time and again, I see smaller companies going through the time and expense of launching a site, only to leave it completely unadvertised.

I mean, what was the point of doing the site and then not letting people know it's there? I think that there's still a general misconception that if you build it, they will come, which is just about one of the most naive things you could say about a site.

[rafiki55]

-not updating a site that has time sensitive information.

-not updating in general...what's the point of doing a website that you're not going to update the info on? Would you print ads with info that's 2 years old?

-the addy of a website should be included everywhere the phone # of the business is found....and more places!

-hours of operation; easy as can be, but often forgotten

-no pictures of products; a picture is worth a thousand words.

-prices of products are very useful for quick shopping on the net

[le_saut]

Not utilising the power of Google... it's used by so many other search engines, just not google.
Google tends to be the biggest external referrer for sites I build, 2nd search engine is altavista....way behind.

Check out this search query ..amazing what a few well placed phrases will do..
http://www.google.com/search?q=trans...ayer+detection
I don't mind being #2 espec. seeing who is #1.


Cheers
James

[Gloomycus]

E-commerce sites for the most part are just a waste of time and resources. Companies, both large and small put so much effort into these and they don't even really do anything or gain any revenue for the company. I think a friend of mine, Colin, who owns a local golf shop put it best when he said "internet shopping sites don't do ****."

[serpent star]

underpromotion including search engine promotion is at fault in those cases, It is not the philosiphy of ecommerce that is flawed, rather the implementation.

[jamescover]

E-commerce sites for the most part are just a waste of time and resources. Companies, both large and small put so much effort into these and they don't even really do anything or gain any revenue for the company. I think a friend of mine, Colin, who owns a local golf shop put it best when he said "internet shopping sites don't do

This isn't true across the boards. My former boss has built a very enterprising ecommerce site, grossing over 1/4 million dollars a year in the sale of selected seafood items from the small, rural town of Crisfield, MD.

If you go to Yahoo, HotBot, Lycos, and some other top engines/directories right now, and type in "Hard Crabs" you will see his site (crabplace.com) as the number one, or only "SPONSORED" listing, from which he gets quite a lot of traffic, and quite a lot of sales.

Moreover, you won't find a single meta tag on his entire site. But he is consistently ranked in the top 25 for certain keyword searches, which he buys, in several top search engines, as well as Yahoo, and is also featured, like right now, on a rotating basis, as a "SPONSORED" site.

On the other hand:


Check out this search query ..amazing what a few well placed phrases will do..
http://www.google.com/search?q=trans...ayer+detection
I don't mind being #2 espec. seeing who is #1.

I'm not putting down your site, but if you remove the word "transparent" from your search, your site is not even in the first 5 pages in Google's index. Same goes for removing the word "player." Point being, "transparent flash player detection" is not something for which a whole lot of people will submit a query...it's too specified and too narrow a search string.

Search engine rankings are very fickle--they are in a constant state of flux--changing everytime an engine updates their index. I did a fairly comprehesive study of search engines and [human-compiled] directories about 3 years ago. Of course, the data was at that time already several years old, but it was still an interesting study.

At the time, there were approximately 10 million top-level domains, and an estimated 2 billion pages on the Internet. And NorthernLight then had the largest index on the Web, but it only spidered about 3% of the total Internet. 2 billion pages is a lot of data, and no single engine can compile a database that large, let alone keep it up-to-date.

Here is an informative, ongoing study of engines and directories:

http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/

In the final analysis, I concluded that if you aren't in the top 25 results, usually the first 2-3 pages returned in any query, you aren't going to get many hits from engines. I've never known anyone to bore down to site number 250 in a search, let alone number number 2,500. Moreover, it is a little unrealistic to think that you can actually get listed in the top 25 in any one search engine, let alone several, and then stay there.

Imagine if you are a web developer. How many web development sites do you think there are on the Web? And what are the chances that you are going to be ranked above everyone else, who may or may not be trying equally hard to make the top 25? I think that you have a slim chance.

So, I always recommend buying keywords (if you can afford it) to my clients, which 1). assures you a consistent ranking, and 2). let's you pick your own keywords. I think that this strategy has proven to give the most consistent results and the best ROI, at least where ecommerce is concerned. On the other hand, if you're not making a profit from your site, you'd probably benefit from alternative marketing means.


James
He is risen!!!








[Edited by jamescover on 08-31-2002 at 11:30 PM]

[le_saut]

Point being, "transparent flash player detection" is not something for which a whole lot of people will submit a query...it's too specified and too narrow a search string.

The query is taken from my raw access log files - so I know how many people are using it and other words together. I read the other similar sites around google and restructure my content for queries I'd like to get.


-there's another point - underuse of access logs can lead to problems.

Cheers
James

[TheOriginalFlashDavo]

I'm just trying to work out, who would search for "transparent flash player detection"??

[jamescover]

The query is taken from my raw access log files - so I know how many people are using it and other words together. I read the other similar sites around google and restructure my content for queries I'd like to get.

-there's another point - underuse of access logs can lead to problems.

Hi James:

I apologize, if I seemed to be critical of your post. That wasn't my intention. I just thought that it was a good illustration of the difficulty involved in being ranked in any search indice, under any given set of circumstances. Also, please understand that none of the comments were directed toward you personally, but I was only speaking in general terms as a developer amongst developers.

If I had any point, it is that getting a high ranking in just a single index is an arduous task, and a never ending one too, due to their continuous state of flux. So, taking everything into consideration, especially the time [is money] involved in such a chore, my [personal] conclusion has been that you get a higher ROI (Return On Investment) by paying for keywords/rankings. At least, if you have the capital, and you are involved in ecommerce.

However, you also make a very good point about a developer using all of the data available to him/herself on a daily basis.



James
He is risen!!!

[TheOriginalFlashDavo]

Hmmm... I still wonder who types in "transparent flash player detection" apart from a developer. I would be more interested in all the more relevant search strings that I wasn't getting.

Unless you have a developer's resource site, then go with it...

[le_saut]

Yep, strings like that are probably web developer only. But it's just one of the strings I found in my log files.. there are plenty of other "relevant" ones in there that probably come from non web developers (future clients hopefully).

This one was just an example of how to use search engines
without shelling out cash.

Who's to say a web developer wouldn't search for that and then tell a non-web mate about the site they found.. that's the human variable at work.

cheers
James

[monsterfx]

Thanks for all the input, everyone.

As far as the search engine discussion goes (optimization and/or paid placement), I would take it one step further. I think that small businesses tend to under-market (or not market at all) their web sites. There seems to be a lot of "build it and they will come" attitude. To me, search engine placement is one tool of site marketing, but other tools include virtual community involvement (such as me being in this forum), real world advertising (putting the web address on business cards, letterhead, shop windows, etc.), public relations, etc. Anything that will get the site noticed by people interested in the business (even if they don't know it yet).

In the end, I think it comes down to using the web site as one part of an integrated business and marketing strategy. Too often, it seems web sites are not directly linked to the rest of a company's strategy.

Again, thanks everyone for the discussion. I think some valid points are being raised.

-monster.

PS - sorry for not posting back in sooner, but I've been sick the last few days. Feeling much better now.

[sbhikes]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned using the web site for database marketing. The web is a tremendous marketing opportuntiy because you can capture so much data from visitors who come to your site, and more than just looking at web log files.

The company I work for has started a program to require an exchange of contact information in order to get certain kinds of information from the web site, such as whitepapers. So if Mr. A wants to download a whitepaper he has to fill out a form that gives his name, company, address etc. He gets the whitepaper and we get information to direct other marketing materials in a more targeted and personalized way. The data goes into a database that the sales and marketing dept can use. They will already know what Mr. A is interested in because we can see what he downloaded. In the process, we also make it just a little more difficult for competitors to get certain kinds of information.

When we got a new director in marketing he was surprised that we were underutilizing the web for database marketing, and he's made it a goal for the web team. I think that it's a common thing to overlook, probably because it requires so much technical resources.

[le_saut]

And what makes you think that Mr A will give the correct information in order to obtain the whitepaper.

For instance, according to Yahoo - I'm a 104 year old car salesman from Greenland, and according to Hotmail I'm an engineer from Madagascar. And I still get to access all their services.
I'd never give accurate information to this mob.

rgds
James

[enemem]

Originally posted by le_saut
And what makes you think that Mr A will give the correct information in order to obtain the whitepaper.

For instance, according to Yahoo - I'm a 104 year old car salesman from Greenland, and according to Hotmail I'm an engineer from Madagascar. And I still get to access all their services.
I'd never give accurate information to this mob.

rgds
James

I agree with you - and do the same - but I think it applies in lesser degree to small companies. You wouldn't even bother to sign up unless you are interested in the information, in which case you would probably be more likely to provide correct details.

-----
In general, I think it all comes back to integrating the website into your existing business, in which case you would also use it as a marketing tool. This is a really difficult step though, since small companies usually don't have the required skills in order to accomplish this - which is also why sites are just built and left to gather dust. There needs to be someone in the business who 'owns' the site, runs it and makes sure that it is incorporated into overall strategy.

(People are usually very excited about the possibilities if you talk to them about it - but they would never have such ideas on their own, since their world doesn't revolve round the internet )

- n.

[monsterfx]

sbhikes - Good point about dbase marketing. I think one addition to that is it is very important (IMHO) to have a checkbox on that form that gives you permission to send them further materials. If you want to make it required, that's fine, but I think it should be very clear that they are about to give up their contact information to someone who will use it to send them additional materials in the future.

enemem - I think that's valid. Most people wouldn't be on a small business web site unless they really wanted the information, and by allowing someone to "opt out" of being marketed to, I think you would generally get valid contact information for those who want more information.

-monster.

[monsterfx]

Just wanted to give one more thank you to everyone who participated in this discussion. If you'd like to read my extended thoughts on it, you can check my latest blog at http://www.c2idesign.com/weblog/2002/09/091202.htm .

Thanks again,
-monster.