The Web is Dead (Now have we got your attention?) By Sarna Marcus, President and Creative Director, The Page Group, Bethesda, Maryland Newaves in Personal Communications, November 1997 Odds are you already have a Web site -- you have to, in a high-tech industry. In the past few years, the number of sites on the Web has expanded at an amazing rate. During that expansion, however, there was so much pressure to get something -- anything -- on the Web that companies were putting up sites with little thought as to how they could be of real value to their businesses. Add to this an unfamiliarity with the medium, and the result was often jumbled and confusing screens that tried to be all things to all people and used very little of the Web's interactive potential. If you're currently online or planning to be, chew on this: A Web site is like a small business. Anyone can start a business, just like anyone can create a Web site. As we all know, the huge majority of business start-ups fail within the first six months. Why? Poor research, ineffective strategies, a lack of focus -- any number of factors contribute to the failures. The same perils exist for Web site start-ups. In order to save your site from an untimely demise, you must approach it like a new business venture. How did your company develop its Web site? Often, a middle-level manager with a minor technical bent is handed the company's Web project and told to run with it. These starry-eyed initiates usually go to one of two extremes: They either bury themselves in computer magazines and camp out with their technical staff as they try to create a stunning multimedia tour-de-force that will supercharge their careers, or they try to take all the company's printed information and find a way to cram it into its Web site. Both of these extremes, which I've dubbed Cyber-centric Syndrome (CCS) and Online Brochure Syndrome (OBS), can be fatal to your site. You know you are suffering from CCS when you find yourself compelled to "outcool" your competitors with the latest Web gimmicks: Shockwave, VRML, audio and video streaming. You have probably used these technologies, and, as members of the personal communications industry, you have technologically literate customers who are more willing to play with browser plug-ins than most. But the gimmicks should not drive the show. Though cutting-edge technology can excite your tech-savvy customers, it often adds to the time and memory it takes to view your site. Instead of focusing on meeting your customers' basic needs, sites suffering from CCS make those needs take a back seat to technological showmanship. The other rampant Web disease, OBS, compels you to fill your site with the exact same copy and graphics that appear in your brochure. But what looks fine in the brochure feels like endless blocks of text to the Web visitor. What is appropriate and effective on the printed page is death to a Web site. In addition, even the best promotional copy on a Web site can frustrate your visitor. Good Web copy is a quick take: It is short. It is punchy. And it cuts to the chase. Information is important when it is needed, and your Web site is a great place to provide information to an audience that is seeking it. But allow members of your audience to choose to access that information only if they wish. If your company is an authority on a subject, visitors will download and read reams of data that specifically address areas they are concerned about. Don't make them wade through unwanted screens and text blocks to get to what they need. Marketing Your Site Your most important task is to draw visitors to your site. This is not as difficult as it sounds. First, you must register (or re-register) the site with all of the major search engines; include the keywords and metatags in your site description that are most likely to be picked by people searching the Web; list your site in industry directories and newsgroups; trade links with other sites or purchase them; create banner ads and place them on the sites most visited by your audience; actively participate in listservs with members who are interested in your products or services; add a footer to your e-mails that touts your company's services; and, of course, highlight your site in all your promotional materials and ads, your letterhead and your fax cover sheets. Like any print advertising developed by your marketing department, your Web site needs to be focused on a target market and integrated with your larger business goals. You don't walk into a campaign without doing substantial research into your potential markets, choosing one or more target markets to pursue and then devising specific methods to entice the people in those markets to buy your product. When you create a good brochure, you probably work with several partners in the process: a design firm (or your in-house equivalent), a mail house, your marketing department, your project managers and your executive staff. For any major print campaign, you wouldn't dream of asking your mail department to develop your ads. Many companies come dangerously close to this, however, by asking their tech staff to develop a site. The Web is a targeted marketing medium. In fact, due to its interactivity, it is the most targeted medium. Visitors to your site have indicated an interest in what your company provides just by taking the trouble to enter your site, making them live prospects. But each prospect has very individual needs -- how your site meets those needs will make the difference between your success or failure in turning prospects into customers. It is your company's task to design your site around the most basic marketing questions: Who are the individuals you are talking to in your Web site? What do they need? What do you offer that meets those specific needs? (Do not be caught up by the idea that the Web can reach everybody. It doesn't. Lots of people still do not have computers. Many who have computers do not use them to surf the Web. And of those who do surf, few will find themselves on your site.) Find out which of your customers would go to your site for information, and design it for them. And allow the time and money for this analysis: 40 to 50 percent of your Web start-up budget should be reserved for market research to find this information and to set up your Web marketing strategy. The Second Wave Despite all the hype about interactive multimedia, the vast majority of the first generation of Web sites did not take advantage of the interactivity that the Web makes possible. Most Web sites are composed of little more than passive screens with long blocks of information with pictures or graphics interspersed. Sure, hypertext links allow you to point and click through the information that you find most interesting; but, compared to the possibilities, clicking between static pages in a hierarchical schematic is a pretty low level of interactivity. We are now seeing a second wave of Web sites that make greater use of interactivity. Books are static because they have to be -- your Web site should be dynamic. The content on your site should change every day. The look stays the same and the message and image conveyed is the same. But if you want to maximize the site's value by repeatedly bringing customers back, you need current information and ongoing features. There are a large number of truly interactive services you can provide on your site that will make it more than a hyperlinked index. With a basic site already online and some experience under their belts, many companies today no longer have the time pressure to get something finished and on the Web quickly, so they are taking more time to analyze the purpose of their sites and develop interactive features. The sites that keep people coming back have to do a number of things right. They are an important source of information (or entertainment) to their visitors; they convey a feeling of membership or community; and they post new information frequently -- usually daily. You can build a loyal following for your site by implementing some or all of the following features: Showcase new products or services -- lead prospects through an interactive exercise to find which version or model would best suit their needs. Provide online accounts to reduce the time and costs associated with ordering and billing for individual accounts. Staff an online help desk where customers can talk to product or service managers to answer their questions and help them use the products or services more productively. An online help desk can reduce your 800 number billing charges and need for personnel while simultaneously improving service. Set up a user group discussion forum on your site. This is a virtually maintenance free area for you, with considerable value to your customers. It is also a good way to learn a lot about how your customers use your products. Provide a weekly tips column to educate customers on how to take advantage of your products' unique features (and then move them up your product line). Create online tutorials for your customers with a certificate of proficiency for those who complete a full set of courses. Periodically feature contests or sweepstakes for frequent visitors. This is a good way to entice visitors to provide some demographic information in order to qualify for the contest. The phenomenal growth of the Internet has been an extraordinary communications revolution, but can you make money on it? After the popular press jumped the gun, making some unrealistic predictions about the glory of Web commerce, it then declared, "the Web is dead" when profits proved slow and hard to realize. But Web commerce is gaining ground. Finding the right business model is a struggle, and buying on the Web is still a novel activity for most people, but the Web is finally becoming the revenue center that was forecast. With the help of extremely successful commercial sites like Amazon.com, users are finally becoming comfortable with buying over the Web. By focusing on a relatively low cost commodity that consumers are familiar with and used to buying -- books -- Amazon was able to entice many book lovers into making their first Web purchase. Forrester Research, a leading online research company, estimates that $518 million changed hands over Web sites like Amazon.com in 1996. With the number of people who access the Web at least weekly poised to grow from 20 million to 152 million by the year 2000, and the percentage of those who are willing to spend their money over the Web simultaneously growing, Web commerce is certain to expand at a rapid pace during the next few years. With several competing currency exchange models on the market and a number of technical problems that make setting up an online marketplace a nontrivial endeavor, you may be sitting on the sidelines waiting for a simpler way to do business on the Web. By creating a well-attended, interactive site with interesting content now, you will be positioning your company to reap the benefits of the growth of Web commerce, whether or not you are ready to begin selling on the Web today. ANALYZING A WIRELESS CARRIER'S WEB SITE: A Case Study PCS carrier Aerial Communications volunteered to have Sarna Marcus of The Page Group critique its Web site (www.aerial1.com) as part of this article. Below are her suggestions. The Look Aerial does an excellent job of creating a coherent visual feel that holds together throughout the entire site. The consistent design keeps visitors aware that they are within the Aerial site and provides a more professional look than sites that were obviously pasted together by several freelancers with no direction from the company's management. The site's graphic design continually stresses Aerial's main message: Aerial is staffed by nice people who smile constantly, do not hide behind technical jargon when you need help and are genuinely concerned about their customers. When viewing the site, you get a strong feeling that you could have a good time if you dropped by Aerial's office unannounced. The site makes effective use of overlaid ovals with soft fades into the background that are repeated throughout the site. The ovals are filled with pictures of employees, a building they work in and rich colors that fit well together. Well-designed, repeating graphic elements like these ovals work well to give a site a coherent feel. On the home page, Aerial has placed animated graphics interchange formats (GIFs) of several employees. However, the GIFs are distracting and strange to behold as smiling employees jerk and contort their faces in funny motions. The Content The copy is good -- it's short and informal, which appeals to Web readers. The tone and content of the copy combine with the graphic design to reinforce Aerial's visual message. The opening line on the home page, "Hey. We're Aerial Communications," is followed by text that tells you that Aerial employees care about people. It's hard not to believe this message with all those people smiling at you. The site attempts to put you on a personal basis with Aerial's employees at every chance it gets. But Aerial relentlessly drives this home to the point of redundancy. The copy is up-to-date too. When I checked out "What's New," I was able to find a press release dated just a few days earlier. Within the Web medium, current copy should be a given, but too often sites fail to update their content. Nothing will send your visitors off your site faster than finding advertisements for events from the previous year -- it says your information cannot be trusted. The Features The Aerial Store takes advantage of dynamic content to personalize its Web information to visitors from different geographic areas. When you go to the Aerial store and type in an area code that is within one of its service areas, Aerial says it will present you with customized information, including local prices and a city map to help you find services. However, when I typed in "301" for Bethesda, Md., I expected to find a listing of Aerial's services in my area. Instead, I found myself looking at boilerplate promotional copy -- a dead end where I had expected customized data. Aerial developed an easy-to-use Personal Needs Assessment worksheet to help prospective customers decide which service package is best for them. The form leads prospects through a series of questions about wireless phone needs, computes your expected level of usage, tells you how much money you can save over the average price and then computes an estimated monthly bill. The form makes choosing a plan a snap but unfortunately does not automatically fill out your order form for you once you have chosen a plan. The site does not provide true online ordering, but has an HTML form that customers can use to place an order and receive a call back from a sales agent. The investor relations section provides online financial and contact information as well as an almost-real-time Aerial stock quote from a customized link to Nasdaq's site (www.nasdaq.com). Aerial's site also includes an e-mail hotline, a "Why Aerial?" promotional section, an employment recruiting search database and links to information about wireless services (not very extensive) to provide information and add value to Aerial's online presence.