In the years that I have been marketing websites for new clients, I am still surprised by the answers I get when I ask, “What do you want your website to do?”. In the simplest forms, websites breakdown in 3 basic groups; e-commerce, lead generation and brochure type websites.
An e-commerce site is build around generating money for the owner of the site. This can generally be done through placing ads and banners on the site all the way up to selling products with a shopping cart feature.
Lead generation sites are built around getting visitors to complete some kind of form. This form can then be given to sales or other marketing departments for analysis, lists or to start a sales cycle.
A brochure site is a simple way of having marketing material online. These sites will have a contact us page as all sites should but they tend to not push visitor toward a form or try to sell them anything.
The key here is to understand your business, what it does and how to bring that forward in your site. A restaurant site at the very least should have a menu of their dishes with a map and driving directions along with a store locator if they have other locations.
As a web marketer, it is my job not only to market your site but also to understand your business so I can market it better.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
How about social networking sites? How do you suggest those be marketed?
Social networking site are e-commerce sites, just look at them, they've got banner ads, adsense ads, all kinds of ways to make money for the site.
Look at Linkedin, they've got a few banners; plus a paid service. Many networking sites have also included a paid service for their members. Facebook… is full of ads. These sites all have to pay for the hosting, server space and bandwidth in one way or another. Most of the social networking site offer or soon may offer some form of higher level paid service. No paid service on Myspace yet but ads everywhere.
Post a Comment