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Red Herring
The advertising industry is on the verge of being shattered into a thousand fragments due to the knowledge explosion and the proliferation of new technologies. There are no more grand theories that hold sway over the entire industry. Michael Strangelove
Advertising is
Reality
The System
It's better to
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The eMail certainly raised a laugh in the office.
SureSite, based in Columbus OH,
assured us that "The Instant Web Publisher...enables anyone with a web
browser to create a professional looking business web site in less than 10
minutes..."
Yikes! If only we'd known! We could have avoided floors covered with index
cards...spouses and children begging for attention while we tried just one
more time to "fix that table"...
The mail got better:
"The Instant Web Publisher requires no knowledge of HTML programming
[sic] or graphic design. The Instant Web Publisher features
thousands of combinations of graphics and layouts to make everyone's web
site unique and professional looking..."
Our resident graphic designer rued his years at college and his
apprenticeship in the Academy of Hard Knocks.
Seriously, however, the pitch was a blatant come-on for an ISP. A visit to
the site bore the thumbprint of HomeSite 2.5. The "professsional looking"
site is simply selected from a number of templates and adds in some
mix'n'match graphics.
But it begs the question as to how far the level of professionalism one
brings to one's site is degraded by pitches such as this.
Design - and in particular graphic design - is the art of presenting
information to the best possible advantage. It must simultaneously engage,
stimulate and inform. It requires a rapport between professional and
client.
And, in the case of the Web, a thorough understanding of the limitations of
the medium.
Those of us who are concerned to maintain high standards of Web design must
be angered and disturbed by claims such as these.
--John Blower
In the continuing discussion over the value of banner ads, there is a lot
of buzz around concepts like CPM, click-through rates, cost-per-sale and
cost per contact.
With the fast pace of Web developments, perhaps a short-term focus
is inevitable. But Terry
Roberts suggests that some attention to a classic tenet of
marketing could have a dramatic impact on the decisions we make when it
comes to Web marketing.
That tenet is the "lifetime value of a customer," or LV for short.
The basic definition of LV is the total amount of sales revenue the
average customer contributes to the company over the life of the
relationship. Being able to determine that number is one of the
many arguments for the importance of a customer database. By
capturing all sales by customer in a database, the company can
easily determine average lifetime value.
Once LV is known, one of the most strategic marketing questions
that can be asked and answered by the company is, "How much are we
willing to spend to secure a new customer if the LV of that
customer is $X."
As you might imagine, the answer to that question is very different
from the answer to the question, "How much are we willing to spend
to secure one sale?" The difference often results in a much more
thoughtful and higher-caliber marketing effort.
But there is an even greater benefit to thinking in terms of
lifetime value. It helps shift the company's focus from getting a
sale to creating a relationship - which is what the Web is very
good at fostering.
Once the focus
is on LV, a focus on how to increase LV quickly follows. That
requires the company to emphasize quality of
service, smart cross-selling, up-selling, and all sorts of other
marketing strategies and tactics.
This is a fundamental concept, and one which deserves serious consideration
by Web marketers. --John
Blower
Regular readers of our columns and attendees at our seminars
for recruiters will be aware that we are leery of the use of the word
"community" when applied to the Web.
After all, "community" in the accepted sense of the word is a "body
of people living in same locality; body of people having religion, profession
etc in common" (Concise Oxford English Dictionary).
Obviously, the first part of this definition cannot apply to a virtual environment.
Which is not to say that an "online community" cannot exist, simply
that the term is, in our opinion, over- and often mis-used.
So how can you create the notion of a commonality of interest around your
Website?
An obvious channel is the institution of a "chat area" - which
has unfortunate connotations, not entirely unjustified. "Chat" takes
place in real time, which makes it subject to the vagaries of time zones.
It is also ephemeral, the start of any given thread being perhaps several
screens away. It is also subject to the 80/20 rule: 20% of users contribute
80% of the input. And, in general, the quality of discourse is not high.
We prefer the model used by Anchor
Desk. In this model, users are invited to comment on a posted article,
which in turn is posted. Further participants comment on the response as well
as the original article, and thus begins an ongoing "conversation".
One advantage is that site content becomes self-generating and semi-permanent.
Another is that you are facilitating a genuine commonality of interest, centred
upon a specific topic or series of topics.
As a recruiter, for example, you may wish to post an article about employment
trends in your particular occupational area. It helps if the article is somewhat
contentious.
Now distribute the article via eMail along with a link to the site and an
invitation to comment (you may wish to brief a "shill" to get the
ball rolling...). Of course, the 80/20 rule applies.
In this way, you will begin to build a core constituency who will return
to your site in order to see what you and other respondents are up to today.
Repeat weekly or as prescribed... --John
Blower
Now that the Gorilla is behind
WebTV, we suppose that
we'll be
seeing more of the great unwashed accessing our sites through their 36"
Sonys.
Indeed, WebTV estimates that an astonishing 95 million
Americans will
access the Web through the boob tube in 1998.
Of course, we all know that the Web isn't "just another
channel",
although we suspect that URLs accompanying TV ads subconsciously
convey that
impression.
We suppose that, eventually, we shall have to come to terms with reality.
So what are the design constraints imposed by WebTV?
Here they are:
IOHO, putting that lot together would give you nothing less than a
dog's
dinner of a site...
Is it worth it? Nah!
(BTW - you can find the Full Monty
at http://www.webtv.net/primetime/preview/design/sguide-3HTML)
--John
Blower
Take a look at the Archives. We've indexed all the past issues with topic pointers.
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