Is the money being invested in your Web site offering you a true return on your marketing investment? To obtain a marketing ROI from your Web site, you need to be able to prove to yourself and to your manage-ment that it is achieving measurable results. This means your Web site must be structured to capture and qualify leads, and potentially to ac-cept online orders from prospects and customers.
Many books are available that cover how to build and improve Web sites. Such books go into the necessary detail you will need to execute a Web site project. Our focus here is not on the design and technical ele-ments of building Web sites but instead on how to use your Web site in the context of direct marketing—to generate and qualify leads, get re-sponse, and achieve measurable results.
Seize the Opportunity to Set Your Web Site Apart
For a Web site to be used as a lead generation and qualification tool, it must follow the basic principles of good direct marketing: You must appeal to your target audience, make audience-appropriate offers, and execute the creative aspects of the site in keeping with the audience’s needs. You must also include a strong call to action.
Begin with the design of your Web site and its home page. In Chap-ter 1, we discussed the nonlinear nature of the Web. You saw how a site visitor could jump from place to place, freely and randomly. This is true, but it is also true that a Web site can be designed to highlight or emphasize certain areas so that the visitor is drawn to them. The design of a page can assist the visitor in locating offers and finding a Web response form.
One possible way to influence the visitor’s navigational path is to make the most prominent part of your home page a special offer, high-lighted by an animated graphic. If it stands out from the rest of the page and leads to a Web response form, the offer could potentially draw a majority of visitors to that area. Another way is to feature a promo-tional area that makes the same offer to visitors as a current direct mail or direct response advertising campaign. Leveraging the direct market-ing offer could potentially enhance response.
The Web provides the distinct marketing advantage of speed. An offer could easily be posted on a Web site in time to coordinate with any direct marketing campaign—before the campaign even appears in print.
If the offer is prominently featured on the home page, perhaps through an on-site banner ad that ties in creatively with the direct mail or adver-tising, you would gain from the power of integrated media.
Good direct marketing copywriting can also improve the effective-ness of a Web site. Direct marketing copy tends to be written in a friendly, me-to-you style with a heavy emphasis on benefits. It uses short sen-tences and an informal structure that makes it easier to read and follow.
It makes liberal use of “graphic signals” and eye rests, such as indented paragraphs and bulleted lists.
As you explore Web sites, read the words carefully and evaluate the structure and quality of the writing. Notice how tedious it is reading lengthy copy on a computer screen? A good site will take that into account by keeping sentences and paragraphs short; using frequent subheads in bold or in color; breaking copy into sections; using bulleted lists, tables, and indents; and boldfacing or italicizing appropriate words and phrases.
Incorporate Direct Marketing Techniques into Your Web Site Here are a few ways you can use direct marketing to improve the effi-ciency of your Web site in generating and qualifying leads:
1. Make it easy for a prospect to locate and gain access to a Web response area. Many Web sites either bury the response area or do not even have one. A prominent response area on a Web site, even a simple Web response form, will encourage prospects to identify and potentially qualify themselves. Reinforcing that re-sponse area throughout the Web site by providing links across many of your site’s pages will remind prospects of the offer and give them multiple opportunities to respond.
2. Create a promotional area with special offers. Turn your response area into a promotional area featuring special offers that change from time to time. Tie these offers in with direct marketing cam-paigns by leveraging the copy and graphics used in other media and “Web-izing” the creative for use on your site.
3. Place an on-site banner ad. A banner ad is a promotional tech-nique most often used as advertising on other Web sites to draw people to your Web site, but you can also create and place a self-promotional banner ad on your own site—to draw attention to a response area on your site. The banner ad could reinforce a cam-paign in other media or promote a free offer independently and could link to an on-site Web response form.
4. Offer a free subscription to an e-mail newsletter on your site. An e-mail newsletter is really an electronic continuity program that gives you the ability to communicate periodically with prospects and customers. You can offer an e-mail newsletter to prospects who provide you with contact information and answer questions on a Web subscriber form. Then build a list of subscribers and send them an e-mail newsletter regularly. Use the e-mail newslet-ter to convey valuable information as well as to make offers and further qualify prospects.
5. Drive traffic to your Web site via traditional media. After you invest in a Web site, be sure to capitalize on its existence. Pro-mote the Web site aggressively, especially if it has informational or educational value. Include your Web site address in all promo-tions and on business cards. Drive traffic to your Web site using other media. For example, business-to-business marketers are achieving significant success generating Web site traffic by simply mailing an oversized postcard promoting the site to prospects and customers. If you have a special offer of any kind, make that offer on your Web site and promote it in order to drive individuals to the site.
Characteristics of Effective Marketing Web Sites
Use the following as a checklist to determine if your own Web site includes some of the more common characteristics of effective mar-keting sites.
Compelling, Well-Designed Home Page
An effective marketing Web site starts with a well-designed home page.
The home page is not unlike the cover of a magazine. It should be
inter-esting, attractive, and intriguing to your target audience. Key content areas should be highlighted so that visitors can find what they need quickly and easily. The home page itself serves as a gateway into the entire site. From a marketing perspective, it should embody the person-ality of your company and immediately convey a distinct message. It is generally a good idea for the home page to have a look and feel that complements your corporate or promotional identity.
Here’s something to consider in page design. In May 2000, a re-search study conducted by Stanford University and the Poynter Insti-tute tracked eye movements of individuals reading an online news site.
The most interesting finding was that the majority of readers were at-tracted to the article text first, not the graphics or photographs. During the entire reading sessions, 92% of article text was looked at, compared with 64% of photographs and 22% of graphics. Banner ads, however, did better than expected, with a 45% showing.
You don’t want to overreact to such a study, especially since the sample was small, but the researchers concluded that a Web site’s “first chance to engage the reader is through text.” You can find the study at http://www.poynter.org/eyetrack2000/index.htm.
Timely Updating
The Web is a dynamic medium that demands freshness. Some marketers take advantage of this by prominently posting the date each day on their Web sites. Others include daily updates to give the impression of immediacy. Although daily updating may be too ambitious a goal for some, you should at least set a periodic update schedule, perhaps monthly, and adhere to it.
Consider establishing a prominent What’s New area so that you can localize the information that needs frequent updating. Change this area on a periodic basis. Review the remainder of your site at least quarterly for possible updating. Consider refreshing the look of the home page at least every year.
Frequent updating is becoming one of the differentiators of a Web site. More sites now post “today’s date” on the page and include news that is updated frequently. Some sites make use of streamed content from other sources to keep their sites current. Others use content man-agement systems to automatically update pages.
One clever technique for keeping your home page fresh is to employ rotating images or copy that changes within the page. You can set up your home page so that it actually has several different versions, or
specified areas, that continuously change as visitors hit the page. In this way, each hit generates a page with a different image, providing the impression of a new page with every visit.
Intuitive Navigational Flow
The nonlinear nature of the Web requires a navigational system that is structured to offer visitors maximum flexibility and freedom to move around. Most navigational systems use several buttons, icons, or im-ages, accompanied with words or phrases, to identify major areas of a Web site. Often these buttons run across the top or down the left side of the home page, sometimes in frames that remain visible on subse-quent pages. Once inside a particular section, additional navigational buttons or text links may be necessary to help the visitor move from page to page.
Continuously improving Web technology is making navigational systems more useful. It is becoming increasingly common for the navi-gation buttons to respond or appear highlighted when visitors roll over them with the mouse. Some buttons or icons respond when clicked on by moving or changing color, or even producing a sound (although that generally requires a plug-in). These techniques bring enhanced CD gamelike interactivity to the Web and help visitors feel like they are making something happen when they roll around the site or click on their mouse.
The increasing use of “dynamic HTML,” JavaScript, and Java applets will make navigational systems even better, as long as a visitor’s browser supports these technologies. With dynamic HTML, for example, visi-tors can see subtopics in drop-down menus when they roll over naviga-tional buttons on the home page. This is especially useful for sites with a lot of depth beneath the home page.
Regardless of the technologies employed, the key point is to make navigating a Web site easy, intuitive, and idiot-proof. As more people become Web-adept, they will move through Web sites and pages skill-fully and quickly. Web sites with well-founded navigational structures will assure that visitors have a good experience—and stay awhile.
High-Value Information Content
An effective marketing Web site offers visitors reasons for spending time at the site and coming back. Snappy graphics and technological tricks attract attention, but they soon lose their impact if there is no substance to the site. Most Web experts agree that content is king. Good sites go
beyond simply providing product details—they also include product benefits and, more than that, offer high-value information that visitors can use, whether or not they purchase the product. The rationale for this is simple: If prospects or customers learn something from a Web site, they will come back for more. Many times, they will also “pledge allegiance” to the site’s sponsor by considering that company’s product for purchase when the need arises. You lose nothing by posting high-value information that relates to your products or services on your Web site—by doing so, you help to position your company as a knowledge-able leader in your field and gain the respect and potential buying inter-est of visitors to your site.
It is content that keeps your site “sticky”—which means visitors come back frequently. Your goal should be to have a visitor bookmark your site and use it as a primary informational resource.
Fast Response Time
Do not underestimate the “hang time” problem with the Internet. The Web has not so jokingly been referred to in the industry as the World Wide Wait because the continuous growth of Internet traffic, combined with increasingly sophisticated technology, can sometimes make getting onto the Web—and navigating Web sites—a painfully slow experience.
The good news is that Internet delivery is being improved all the time at the user’s end via DSL, broadband, and other technologies. Still, you can do a lot on your end to help ease the problem by designing your Web site for the fastest response time so that pages load quickly. In general, that means containing graphic images to small files, being wary of full-page background graphics, and assuring that any advanced tech-nologies, such as integrated databases, multimedia, Internet telephony, or live chat, are supported by adequate Web servers.
Response Orientation
A good lead generation and qualification Web site should provide pros-pects and customers with opportunities to interact and respond. Re-sponse paths should stand out and be clearly defined on the home page and referenced throughout the site. Offers should be prominent and lead directly to qualifying Web response forms. Downloads should be easy to execute. Customer service areas should include e-mail links, online forms, and, if possible, 24-hour autoresponders. Games and contests can help to draw attention to response areas, but they can also generate a large number of unqualified responses—so use them with caution.
Make your Web site active, not passive. Make calls to action promi-nent, and make it easy for visitors to find response areas by instructing them where to go and what to do.
Respect for Privacy
This is listed as a characteristic for effective Web sites because it is be-coming increasingly important as the Internet grows more influential as a business-to-business medium. It is recommended that you post a pri-vacy policy on your Web site. You can create your own pripri-vacy policy simply by filling in the blanks of a free form provided by the Direct Marketing Association at www.the-dma.org. The form leads you through a series of questions to help you determine what to tell your site visitors about how the information they provide will be protected and used.
The Internet privacy issue looms as states, the federal government, and other countries increasingly scrutinize cyberspace. It is far too easy to abuse someone’s right to privacy electronically, and good b-to-b mar-keting use of the Web should include ethical practices. Post a privacy policy on your Web site, refuse to use unsolicited e-mail unless you are certain it is acceptable to the recipient, and protect the privacy of any e-mail marketing lists you have in your possession.
Use of Personalization
It may seem odd to add personalization to the list after the preceding warning about privacy. Despite privacy issues, however, Web site us-ers are becoming more accustomed to and, in many cases, responding better to personalized sites. A March 2001 study conducted by CyberDialogue (www.cyberdialogue.com) for the Personalization Con-sortium supports this notion. Although 82% of the consumers surveyed said privacy was a key factor in their decision to purchase online, 63%
of them reported they are more likely to register at a personalized Web site with customized content. Nearly half of the adult users with two years or more of online experience said they use customization. Addi-tionally, 53% of those surveyed said they would be more likely to pur-chase from a personalized Web site. This seeming paradox actually makes sense. If your Web site is serving the individual needs of a visitor via personalized and customized content, the benefit the visitor derives from this could actually reduce the concern about privacy. On the other hand, if you use personalization, you need to be even more cautious about protecting the information associated with a visitor to your site.
What You’ll Get When You Follow the Rules
Follow some of the rules listed earlier and you’ll get more visitors, as well as visitors who come more often and stay longer. A study released in early 2001 by Booz-Allen & Hamilton and Nielsen/NetRatings (www.netratings.com) found that online users behave differently based on their informational needs. The study provides some insight into dif-ferent levels of interactivity and interest. Of the seven categories de-scribed in the study, a few have special relevance to the b-to-b marketer.
One category, titled “Do It Again,” consists of users who engage in sessions of about 14 minutes in length, with page views of as much as 2 minutes in length. Users in this category spend 95% of their time at sites visited at least four times before. Another category, called “Loitering,”
consists of users similar to those in the “Do It Again” category, but who spend 33 minutes in a session, again with 2-minute page views. Loiter-ers spend a substantial amount of time at sites that are familiar to them, and they come back for more. If you can attract users in one of these two categories, you are achieving success with your Web site.
How Do You Get Repeat Visitors to Your Web Site?
If a prospect visits your Web site and does not complete and send a Web response form, you do not necessarily lose the lead, as long as you de-sign your Web site for repeat visits. As indicated in the Booz-Allen/
Nielsen study just referenced, it is important to encourage the prospect to check in periodically.
The most successful Web sites enjoy heavy repeat traffic because there is something new for the prospect to experience each time he or she visits. The key is to find ways to encourage a dialog and build a relationship with visitors so that your site will be tops on their list of bookmarks. A frequent browser today could be a buyer tomorrow. Here are a few technology-driven techniques you can use to engage visitors and turn a Web site monologue into a dialog.
Automated E-mail Response
It is easy to build in a “mail to” e-mail link so that visitors can instantly inquire about your products or services, but it is just as important to
It is easy to build in a “mail to” e-mail link so that visitors can instantly inquire about your products or services, but it is just as important to