|
| Year
2005 |
How
to Export - Part 15
Attracting Customers to Your Web-Site |
| Designing
a professional web-site is at best a job half-done -
unless it is able to attract customers and bring business.
Web-sites are not merely for image enhancement - but
also a marketing tool that attract customers and bring
business. The least a web-site can do is to return the
money invested in its creation.
To make a web-site work for your business - you must
promote it among target audience so that potential customers
can locate it conveniently and find it useful as well
as easy to navigate. Many exporters make the mistake
of investing total budget in web-design and leave nothing
for promotion.
Your web-site, however good-looking and useful it may
be, is not going to attract customers unless you work
for it consciously. You must have a plan for promotion
- and budget as well ! If necessary, cut down on some
fancy Flash gimmicks and invest that money in web-site
promotion.
Developing Plan for Web-Site
Promotion
To develop promotion plan for a
web-site - one first needs to identify all possible
sources from where visitors may come. The core of the
promotion plan is to prioritize and maximize traffic
from each of these sources.
There are essentially 6 sources of traffic to a web-site
- Direct Visitors : Those who type in your
domain name and go directly to your site. Off-line
advertising, word of mouth, viral marketing etc.
are main drivers for this kind of web-site traffic.
- Search Engine : Those who search for your
name, product or service in a popular search engine
and land-up at your web-site. This is going to be
the most popular and major route, web-site visitors
are likely to take.
- Directories/Yellowpages : Those who find
your company and consequently web-site from Web-based
Yellowpages such as alibaba.com, vanik.com, infobanc.com,
infospace.com etc. Vertical, subject oriented yellowpages
(such as vanik.com, infobanc.com) are becoming increasingly
popular than generalized ones like infospace.com.
This channel usually sends high quality, serious
visitors who has the potential to become customers
in near future. Seriousness of the visitor is visible
from the effort he/she has demonstrated in reaching
your web-site by first identifying a suitable subject
oriented directory/yellowpage and then locating
your company from it.
- Banner/Advertisements : Those who reach
your web-site by clicking paid banner or classified
advertisement in another web-site or search engine.
This is an easy but costly way of attracting visitors.
However, it could be very effective if proper care
is taken to place banner/classifieds in strategically
important places.
- Link Exchange: Those visitors who find
your web-site while surfing through another web-site
of similar content. This is an inexpensive way of
bringing visitors that has the added advantage of
increasing Google Pagerank.
- Target e-Mail Visitors : Those who click
through to your site from an e-mail. Success of
this source depends a great deal on quality of your
e-mail distribution list. If your mailing list has
people who are truly interested in your product
and service or in the information you are sharing
- it may bring high quality visitors.
However, if you play on quantity and resort to spamming
in the belief that even if a small section of the
millions or thousands from your mailing list respond,
it will bring windfall - you are surely heading
for disaster. E-mails collected from dubious means
such as purchase, harvesting etc. do not help in
bringing customers - if anything it invites wrath
of anti-spam groups and authorities.
Conclusion
If you have a web-site - you should
also have a plan to promote it. Web-site promotion plan
should consider all sources of traffic, prioritize them
as per available resources and present a step by step
action plan. A good plan should set targets and deadlines
as well as monitoring process.
Happy and Productive Surfing
Dr. Amit K Chatterjee
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