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What are the problems with Web site promotion ?
Promotional costs -
Perhaps the biggest question companies ask themselves is how much money they should spend on advertising and marketing the site. This question is perhaps too
difficult to answer because it will depend on the size of the company, their own marketing strategy and the audience they wish to target.
However, as a very
general rule, you should try to spend at least the same amount on promoting your Web site as you did to actually build and develop the site. This is not a hard and
fast rule, but it does give a rough idea of the size of budget required to promote your online presence.
Search engine coverage - It has been suggested
that search engines cannot keep pace with the growth of the Internet, and that even the best search engine can only catalogue 20% or so of the Internet.
Whether
or not these claims are true, it should still not deter companies from utilising and benefiting from the services provided by the search engines, as they can offer, if
handled wisely, a very powerful mechanism to raise your company profile to a global market.
You can keep up-to-date with search engine developments and news by
visiting (and/or subscribing) to the very useful "Search Engine Watch" Web site at http://www.searchenginewatch.com. It provides hints on submitting your site to
the search engines, as well as tips on searching the Internet effectively. There are also regular features and articles on getting the most from search engines.
Part of wider strategies - It may well be that your organisation is developing a broader, more corporate-based, promotional campaign that can be utilised to
advertise and market your Web site. This will probably not apply to SMEs who have one central office, but will be most relevant to larger companies that may have
several overseas offices.
However, remember that, if you are involved in an affiliate partnership(s) with several other companies, then it makes sense for all
companies concerned to pool resources to optimise promotional activities and opportunities. This is particularly useful if the partnerships consist of SMEs who,
individually, may not be able to commit to a large marketing budget for their own company.
What automated tools can help my Web site promotion?
Keeping track of your Web site promotional activities can sometimes require extensive resources to analyse, monitor and provide suggestions to improve your marketing
activities. However, there are several automated tools and applications that can be utilised not only to reduce the resources required, but also to optimise existing
promotional activities.
Analysing log files - Your Web site should provide you with a mine of information on who has accessed your site, what they did
while they were there, any problems they may have encountered, where they were before arriving at your site, and how long they stayed at your Web site. Additional
information is also generated by your Web site, which should be analysed on a regular basis to help assess Web site traffic and the effectiveness of your Web site
advertising.
There are many software tools available that can analyse these Web site log files, and provide detailed information (both text- and picture-based)
on all of these issues. Perhaps the most popular Web analysis application is Web Trends, which provides information on these points and displays its output in a
Web browser window, making it very easy to use.
Analysing your Web site log files will provide a goldmine of useful information, such as:
- Which parts of your site are the most popular?
(Is this because you have a sale in particular sections?)
- Which parts are the least popular? (Why is
this? Can users actually find that part of your site? Is there a broken hyperlink?)
- Which Web sites were users visiting immediately
before arriving at your site? (Were these competitor sites?)
- Which are the top exit pages at your site? (Do
users leave immediately after browsing your product catalogue prices? This might suggest your prices are too high.)
Assessing Web site rankings - After you've submitted your Web site to the various search engines, you
should check regularly to ensure that your site stays high in the ranking lists. This can be done manually and should not take up too much time if you have submitted
your site to only a few search engines.
However, if you need to check your site on a very frequent basis, or have submitted your Web site details to several
dozen search engines, then you may want to use a software tool to automate the process. Arguably the most popular of all such applications is Web Position (http://www.webposition.com), which provides a number of useful features such as generating Web pages designed to rank high on
the search engines; checks your existing Web pages; provides plain English advice on how to improve them; reports on the effectiveness of your current keywords, etc.
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