FEATURE
planning your web strategy

Every company can benefit from a website. But a website has to provide a real service or it will have little value. Many companies feel they have to have a website simply because the competition does, or because it's what everyone is doing, but they are not sure what can be accomplished with it.

Every company has different needs. A company that manufactures washing machines is not likely to utilize the web the same way Amazon.com does. However the washing machine manufacturer can show photos of the different models and give specifications and features so that anyone at any time can learn about their product. The company can provide support to their marketing channels with an online catalog and give value to the end-retailer while saving money on printing and mailing catalogs.

You could put individuals in your company to work designing your company's web strategy, but would you go to your plumber for medical advice? It is our business to know the best and latest methods for helping you succeed with your web strategy. We help companies all across the country succeed on the web. Whether you are a single real estate firm leasing space or a corporation with 1500 franchisees, we've found the right Internet solutions for them and we can do the same for you.

Research and Planning

Before any major project you must take time to analyze where you are and carefully plan where you want to be and how you should go about getting there.

We provide two methods for helping you determine where you want to go with your web strategy. The first is a One-Day Cursory Study (ODCS). We travel to your location, listen to you, and briefly analyze where you are in relation to the web. We study your business and provide ideas about practical ways to utilize web technologies. We'll give you cost parameters and a range of finiancial projections for each. We provide this at no cost other than transportation for two web professionals. We provide the service and all other expenses.

The second method, which can be done in concert with the ODCS, is a Web Strategy Needs Analysis (WSNA). This is a comprehensive and detailed study of your company's current web strategy (if one is in place) and where you want to be with your strategy. We study practical current and future goals and give you some idea of what it will take to achieve those goals. This gives your company a road map showing where you are, where you want to go, and most importantly, how to get there.

Part of the process of providing a WSNA study is determining the company stakeholders and sitting down with each of them to bring together all of their issues. We also incorporate a security control plan to protect all company data and to allow appropriate access to authorized users.

Tools and Measurements

Site Promotion
Building a powerhouse website is fruitless without visitors. Everyone wants their website to be ranked highly in the search engines. Because of the profusion of search engines and the variety of their criteria, being one of the first sites in every query related to your business is impossible to guarantee. But there are a lot of things that can be done to give your site a competitive advantage - click here for more information.

There is no magic bullet whereby any site will reach the top of every search engine. And unfortunately, if your site comes back as the 40th listing on a search, it might as well be 400th in many cases. However, finding a comfortable mix of well-researched keywords and well-coded web design usually provides the greatest value in gaining search engine visibility.

Click Analysis
You've probably seen hit counters at the bottom of some websites, inidicating the total number of hits to a site. But who are those people? Are they the same person clicking a hundred times? Where are they from? What search engine did they use to find the site? Having a large number of hits to a site is not any guarantee of success or even an accurate measurement of site usage. We have the tools to give you answers to these questions and more with our web traffic reporting tools. Here are some examples of what we can give you:

Click Analysis Reporting

1) Shows number of hits on each page of site; these numbers then provide a navigation path measurement throughout site.

2) Shows number of returning visitors.

3) Breaks down visitor data by day, week, month, and year.

4) Shows number of channel visits.

5) Shows number of special promotion visits.

Click Analysis Reporting for Commerce Web Sites

1) Shows number of hits on each page of site; these numbers then provide a navigation path measurement throughout the site.

2) Shows the number of returning visitors.

3) Shows the number of returning buyers.

4) Shows the number of shopping cart sessions.

5) Shows the number of channel visits.

6) Shows the number of special promotion visits.

7) Breaks down visitor data by day, week, month, and year.

8) Breaks down buyer data by day, week, month, and year.

Conclusion

Keep checking back with us for more information on web marketing. For further research into search engine promotion, check out Search Engine Watch and Traffick.com