Download COX Christopher Robert - VLE

Summary
Stated Project Objective:
The objective of my project is to produce the project report as a guide to web marketing, so that it can
be used by others as a structure to their own web marketing campaign. This will be supplemented by a
promotional prospectus advising and advertising web marketing to business.
The Minimum Requirements are:
1. Investigation & Understanding of online & traditional marketing techniques.
2. Case Studies of successful and unsuccessful Web Marketing campaigns.
3. Study of the "Web Property Frontier" and Viral Marketing techniques.
4. Produce a prospectus to sell the idea of Web Marketing to business.
Project Achievements:
This project has achieved the objective to producing a guide to web marketing
All of the stated minimum requirements were met.
Contents
1. Introduction
1
1.1 What is Web Marketing
1
1.2 Marketing as a function of Corporate Strategy
2
1.3 Non profit marketing
3
1.4 Conclusion
3
2. The Retail Terminal
4
2.1 Overview
4
2.2 The Web PC
5
2.3 Mobile markets
9
2.4 Digital Interactive and Web TV
10
2.5 Other methods of Internet access
3. Web Property
10
11
3.1 Overview
11
3.2 Traditional Campaign Management
12
3.3 The Web Property Frontier
12
3.4 Brand perception and the Web Property Frontier
4. Security & Law
13
15
4.1 Web Security Technologies
15
4.2 Customers’ Trust
16
4.3 Privacy
18
4.4 Additional Legal Issues
19
5. The Case Studies
20
5.1 Overview and Case Structure
20
5.2 Case 1: Hotmail
21
5.3 Case 2: npower
24
5.4 Case 3: Meetings World (1969) Associates
27
5.5 Case 4: Boo.com
30
6. Web Strategy
34
6.1 Introduction
34
6.2 Planning
35
6.3 Designing a Web Strategy
7. Producing and supporting a web site
36
38
7.1 Professional site design
38
7.1.1 Early Decisions
38
7.1.2 Navigation
38
7.1.3 Web Site Performance
39
7.2 Branding on and off the web
40
7.3 Site Establishment and further promotional techniques
41
8. Customer Relationship Management
8.1 Overview
43
43
8.2 Newsletters
44
8.3 Communication is a two way street
44
8.4 Personalisation
46
8.5 Business to Business Web Marketing
47
9. Prospectus: Web Marketing - What’s that all about?
48
9.1 Concept
48
9.2 Content
48
9.3 Prospectus Design
49
1. Introduction
1.1 What is Web Marketing
What do the terms “eCommerce”, “eBusiness”, “eMarketing”, “Web Marketing”, “Internet
Marketing” and “Online Marketing” all have in common?
The answer is that for the most part and to the lay person they mean the same thing. The truth is that
there are subtle differences between all six terms. For the purpose of this text the author invites the
reader to view the first three terms as one concept. The remaining three terms are also a set that we
shall consider as a single concept albeit they are actually a subset of the first three terms. A little more
explanation is required.
e(electronic) Commerce (or eBusiness or eMarketing)
There is generally considered a fairly wide definition of eCommerce that we shall use as our umbrella
meaning for these three terms. eCommerce can be defined as, ‘actions that support the trading of
goods and services through an electronic medium’. This includes any electronic technology such as
telephones and televisions with Teletext for example. eCommerce also includes the management of
supply chains often with bespoke communication technologies between suppliers and their customers.
Web Marketing (or Internet Marketing or Online Marketing)
Web Marketing is a sub set of eCommerce. It deals exclusively with commerce on the World Wide
Web, to the exclusion of the other electronic media which are covered by the terms such as ecommerce
These eCommerce technologies do however play an important part in the overall picture so while this
text does not discuss telephone marketing it does discuss the role of telephones and call centres in the
support of Web Marketing.
For the purpose of this text we will view Web Marketing and Internet Marketing as one concept. This
could be disputed as the World Wide Web is only a virtual construct, sitting on top of the
communication equipment and computers that make up the physical Internet. Because of this, this
report will differentiate between the Web and the Internet. This will not be the case for the terms Web
Marketing and Internet Marketing unless made explicitly clear. The development of Web Marketing in
an academic sense is so relatively new, that the two terms Web Marketing and Internet Marketing
have become fairly synonymous, however the common term Web marketing currently prevails.
1.2 Marketing as a function of Corporate Strategy
You may have been perplexed by my earlier decision to give eCommerce and eMarketing the same
definition. You may have thought that marketing and commerce, although interrelated, were not the
same concept and that marketing is just one among several functions of general corporate strategy.
After-all, you may have asked, what does marketing have to do with automation of payroll or with
replacing desktop PCs in the accounts department. Many organisations might see marketing simply as
the business unit that is concerned with selling their product or service. Selling is of course how
companies principally survive and achieve their goals. Even in this narrow definition, marketing has
already become significant.
This view of marketing has become out-of-date and it is now seen in a much broader context. Dr John
Frain (1999) introduces in the preface of his book that concept that in the twenty years since the books
1st edition “marketing has evolved beyond its specialist focus and is far more strategic in its role… (it)
is becoming established as a ‘whole organisation’ concept and activity”.
Thus marketing is not just to do with the traditional pillars of selling and advertising but with the
strategic positioning of an organisation in its marketplace. Frain p3 (1999) describes marketing as
including many other activities such as:
?? Marketing research;
?? Product design and development;
?? Forecasting and planning;
?? related financial projections and control measures.
In overview, marketing is to do with positioning the business and brand(s) in the market. Therefore by
finding the niche to operate from, a business is able to sustain a competitive advantage over direct
competitors and other substitutable goods and services.
In niche marketing a business needs to shout out that it both exists and what it does better than
everybody else. It does this by establishing a brand. Sometimes the brand is synonymous with the
company name. Often however, one company will produce several products and they will use branding
to publicise and differentiate those products rather than publicising the company its self.
Jim Sterne p317 (2001) provides us with four rules or stages of branding which I summarise below:
?? People have to recognise your brand name or logo;
?? Then they have to become familiar with your brand;
?? They need to trust your brand - (and not distrust the parent company, if known)
?? They need to think of you when they want to buy.
Some conclusions to be drawn from these points are that a marketing campaign needs to be big
enough to be seen, go on long enough to create more than an impression, needs to be supported by a
product that meets the hype and needs to be sold in retail outlets that people will visit.
How these points are addressed in web marketing and the particular features of branding on the
Internet will be amplified later.
1.3 Non profit marketing
This report is meant as guide for business however web marketing does exist in a non profit
environment. Charities, Governments, NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations) etc, will often use the
web to further their campaigns and this report may also be useful for them even though they are not
the reports intended audience.
1.4 Conclusion
Having defined marketing as being involved in the centre of corporate strategy, how do we consolidate
this view with definitions of eMarketing and Web Marketing. The answer, in focus on Web Marketing,
is that where we seek to tackle a new frontier such as the Internet, perhaps through creating a new
business unit in an organisation, this new entity must have a role in defining the overall strategy of the
organisation. Thus to embrace Web Marketing fully there may need to be structural changes across
the whole of the organisation. It is the key objective of this report to how best establish a corporate
Internet presence and show how it will affect the direction of the existing organisation.
2. The Retail Terminal
2.1 Overview
The majority of Internet users access the web via a personal computer (PC). They can do this at
home, at work, in an educational establishment (such as Schools / Universities / Libraries), in Internet
Café or even on the move using a laptop computer. These PC users will in the vast majority of cases,
be running either a Microsoft Windows or Apple Mackintosh operating system. This is the ‘shop
window’ or ‘retail terminal’ in which most products and web marketing campaigns will be displayed.
The PC is not the only method of accessing the Internet. WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) phones
are becoming increasingly common. There are often bespoke Internet solutions in shopping malls.
Games Consoles are now beginning to offer limited Internet access. Interactive television can also
now offer web access. These create different marketing challenges to the PC sector as they provide
different environments and facilities. This is especially true for WAP phones and other mobile services
where the display technology is still relatively immature. These Internet access methods are described
later in the chapter.
Despite the increasing number of platforms for Internet access and the different challenges that they
provide, the PC still dominates as the standard display medium. Although there is some moves to
convergence between the various platforms there is still some way to go in this. This is especially the
case with Web-TV, as it is a relatively new and untried technology.
It would be fair to assume that as Web-TV develops it would seek to mimic the successful attributes
of the desktop PC that gives it the current pre-eminence. This is of course conjecture, and the general
convergence between PC’s and televisions and other home entertainment systems has been long
predicted but has not transpired..
Thus it is in this tumultuous environment that one must plan a web marketing strategy, which if not
aimed specifically at one of the previously mentioned technologies (i.e. with the relatively small number
of users of those technologies), needs to consider the home/office PC as their shop window at least in
the short term.
2.2 The Web PC
There are two things everybody knows about Henry Ford, that he invented the production line and he
once remarked that you could buy a model T Ford in any colour you liked as long as it was black. Fastforward to the 1990s and you could make that same witticism about the PC, except it would be a
enchanting shade of off-white and not black. The analogy runs out when we look under the hood
(sorry) of the PC, here we see the difference between the Detroit production line of Mr Ford and his
modern day counterparts. For the PC is arguably the most customisable consumer product in history
and as such provides for both opportunities and headaches for Web Marketers. I shall explain by
means of an example of music retailing web site:
A company may wish to provide sound on their web site as part of their business plan. Therefore the
conditions under which their customers hear the music would be significant. Firstly can they hear it at
all, as not all PCs have a sound card. They would have no means to playback the music. Of further
importance is how the site chooses to encode the music as there are many different file formats that
are suitable for listening to music from the web. Not only could the company choose to broadcast
music, they could choose to have their customers download it first. Regardless of which method, does
the consumer have the relevant software to read the music file? If not can they easily obtain it? If the
consumer is going to hear a continual broadcast of music, what is there Internet connection like? Do
they have enough bandwidth, etc? If they can hear the music what environment will they be listening
in? This could be in a busy office, sitting on a train using a laptop PC or at home with large
multimegawatt speakers.
This example underlines the complexity factor in the use of the Internet and how it is very difficult to
predict the conditions by which a consumer is using your service. The intrinsic customisation of PCs
(especially IBM compatible PCs) and complexity means that there have been standards enforced by
necessity, some set up by government bodies, and some not. These standards do at least provide us
with a framework by which we can make assumptions about our customers and what their retail
terminal will look like.
PCs principally come in two formats, the IBM compatible Microsoft Windows PC and the Apple
Mackintosh While other formats do exist, particularly the prevalence of UNIX in academic institutions
they are not well enough established in the mass market nor unique enough as a platform to warrant
discussion. In fact the market monopolisation by the Microsoft operating system is so dominant that it
covers approximately 80% of all PCs. The Mackintosh warrants mention as an example of a
successful competing platform that business needs to be aware of when considering the needs of its
customers. It provides a good example of where the PC as a consumer product and retail terminal is
heading. The Mackintosh (I-Mac) it should be noted is a far more integrated and more aesthetically
pleasing platform than the standard PC and it even comes in more than one colour.
Regardless of operating system the principle method for accessing the Internet is fairly standard
across the competing platforms. Each PC requires both hardware and software components to the
Internet connection. This for the majority of users is by using a Web Browser, a Modem (probably
running at 56kbs), a connection to the telephone network and an Internet Service Provider (ISP).
Web Browser
The web browser is the application that is used to display Web pages on the PC. This is “only one of
the many activities that Internet Explorer makes possible” (Windows 95 - Help) according to
Microsoft’s own documentation on their market leading web browser. In fact Microsoft’s web
browser can be used to look through any Windows’ file system and also display image and text files on
the local computer and it has many more functions to boot.
Although Internet Explorer is now provided freely with any Windows PC, there are competing
browsers. The most notable competitor over the years has been Netscape. This particular browser has
the advantage of working on many different operating systems and so therefore of similar importance.
Simple web sites will be read by any web browser no matter what model computer is being used.
More complex web sites that make use of technologies such as Java (a web programming language)
or any of the more advanced features of web browsers need to ensure that their web site is
compatible with both Netscape and Internet Explorer. Some sites may wish to go as far as providing a
separate set of low complexity web pages to support other less complicated web browsers.
Modem and Telephone System
At present the vast majority of Internet users access the web by using a modem, now standard on new
PCs, linked to their domestic telephone line. Since telephone lines are present in over 99% of homes
and with the low cost of the modem it has allowed a relatively quick uptake of the Internet. There are
however limits on this technology that are currently holding back the development of the Internet,
especially in its capacity as an entertainment portal to rival Digital/Satellite/Cable Television.
The biggest limit of the traditional modem / telephone line combination is bandwidth. Put simply
bandwidth is the measurement of the rate of data that passes over a network connection. In this case,
the limit on the bandwidth for using this method of Internet connection is 56kbps (kilo-bits per second)
or 8,000 bytes.
To relate this to an actual example this means that a full colour photo-quality picture which might be
upwards of 50kb (kilobytes) is taking 5-10 seconds to load. Compare this to the ease of flicking
through the Argos catalogue which has hundreds of pages and thousands of glossy pictures. The
Argos catalogue is large biannual product catalogue for Argos Superstores that lists a very wide
selection of consumer products that can be bought from local Argos retail outlets. It should be noted
that there are many similarities between home catalogue shopping and shopping on the Internet
Thus the bandwidth limit determines the quality of the seductive environment that can be used to
display products. The conclusion to draw from this is that there is little point in planing to stream live
video images over the net at high resolutions as part of your web marketing campaign as few would be
able to view them. This is due to change in the future once there has been wide adoption of broadband
Internet.
Broadband Internet access
The limitations of a 56k modem are slowly being lifted by the introduction of broadband Internet
technologies which provide speeds upwards of 10 times that of a conventional modem, as well as being
‘always on’. Unfortunately the roll out of this technology is, in the UK at least, despite recent price
cuts by BT (now £20 a month) for their 512kbs ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line)
service, rather slow off the mark. There will not be an established market that can rival the number of
56k modem users realistically until 2005.
Other broadband connection methods exist in the UK apart from BT’s ADSL service. Still available is
BT’s 128kbps ISDN service (Integrated Services Digital Network), cable modems are also available.
The situation is generally slightly better in other countries but has yet to generally achieve critical mass.
Internet Service Provider (ISP)
In order to access the Internet, the average person requires an account with an Internet Service
Provider (ISP). The user then accesses the Internet by setting their modem to dial the phone number
of the ISP. The ISP will host the Internet session by providing a temporary IP (Internet Protocol)
address by which the Internet can refer to the new user. The IP address is, like a conventional postal
address, the means by which an Internet user would contact another user or web site. Every web site
on the Internet and every ISP will have a permanent IP address. The user of the ISP will only be
allocated a temporary address for as long as their Internet session lasts (i.e. when the modem hangs
up on the ISP).
The Web Page
A web page sits, like any other piece of computer software, within a file structure. Each single web
page (and there may be thousands on a single web site), each different image etc, is a single file siting
on a web server. Every one of these pages has an address on that file server just like that of any other
file sitting on a computer.
To access one of these files the web user sends an HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) request to
a DNS (Domain Name Server). The address for a web site (known as the URL - Uniform Resource
Locator) is usually something like “www.mywebsite.com/homepage” this is however just a reference
to the real IP address which is located in a lookup table in the DNS. Once the user’s PC has acquired
the IP address of the web site they wish to contact they download that web page automatically
through another HTTP request. If there are no requests for a specific web page then the server will
send the user the standard entry page for the web site refered to as the “homepage”.
Given the complexity of the modern web browser the limits of what can be achieved on a web page
have risen since the World Wide Web was founded. As previously mentioned most of the Internet
relies on standards and one of the most important of these is the language that web pages are written
in. This is called Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML). It is the role of HTML to provide the layout
of text, images, etc that is key to the design of a seductive web page. HTML, however, is only the
script of a web page. Real time content such as movies and more complicated programs need to be
written in different programming languages such as Java. The Java language allows any web browser
to run its programs regardless of operating system and provides almost endless functional and design
possibilities.
2.3 Mobile markets
The recent explosion in the ownership of mobile phones has led to a clamour for the rights and
technologies to exploit this by introducing a mobile Internet solution. The first generation of these
Internet phones (confusingly refereed to as 2.5G, since it is generation 2.5 of mobile phones) have
used a technology known as WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). This uses a stripped down version
of HTML called WML (Wireless Mark-up Language) to provide a very slim line Internet facility that
is predominately text based. The uptake of this medium has been disappointing for enthusiasts and
manufacturers alike and more hope is placed upon its successor 3G.
The 3rd generation mobile phones provide a much higher bandwidth for data transfer and along with
upgrading of the handsets provide a much more viable medium for mobile web commerce.
Anybody doubting the success of the mobile platform in light of the general downturn in the IT industry
on the world markets and specifically because of the relative failure of WAP could be understood for
having fears for its success. The mobile network’s operators will have particular fears in light of their
reliance on the future revenues from the success of the 3G phones. Other business should not take
these fears too seriously because of the massive investment the network operators have put in. For
example the costs of acquiring the UK rights to broadcast the 3G network cost the four major UK
operators a combined £20 billion.
3G handsets are likely to be eventually rolled out to all mobile phone users which is estimated to be
about 80% of the UK population as of 1st quarter 2002. The technology will at least be in the hands of
the users even if the public is initially sceptical of mobile web services. As a platform for eCommerce
and for medium and long term planning of marketing strategies mobile handsets would seem to be
commercially viable platform, albeit one which has yet to attain critical mass.
From a specific marketing perspective the mobile Internet holds key competitive advantages over other
marketing strategies. Perhaps the most celebrated advantage, in business quarters at least, that WAP
and 3G provide is the ability to ‘push’ their marketing message on the mobile user . This is when the
user of a mobile phone will receive a message to inform him of an event. A successful implementation
of this has been to keep mobile users up-to-date with sports scores and news.
The real power of this technology may only be realised once it is combined with the location identifying
capabilities of the 2.5 and 3G phones. This will allow users to set their phones to receive text
information / advertising specific to their location. The technology is to both the consumer and
marketing managers benefit as it allows a greater focus or targeting of advertising. Some uses of this
location based alert advertising are obvious, such as informing a user of club nights or restaurants in
the location that they are in. Other uses are still awaiting an enterprising company.
2.4 Digital Interactive and Web TV
The UK has recently seen the launch of Sky television’s digital interactive service, closely followed by
rivals operating through the cable television or terrestrial digital medium. These provide a middle way
between broadcast television and a fully integrated web-TV solution. This middle ground is currently a
competitor to web commerce in that it provides entertainment, news and sports information and can
act as a retail terminal. It is impossible to predict where interactive television will go in the future but it
is clear that it is a viable medium for Internet access and thus it has seen the development of Web-TV.
It is a relatively simple technical feat to provide a keyboard along with the usual set-top box in any
digital TV package and to equip the box with a web browser. However the problem for Web-TV has
been in designing the system to be as flexible as possible but still relatively easy to pick up and use. It
would be fair to speculate that this would, in the medium term, establish its self with at least a sizeable
market segment of the way in which people access the Internet.
Clearly the Web-TV as a package could present the best environment for a retail terminal given both
the technology and ability to stream as much video as you would require over a cable or satellite
network. Web-TV presents an advantage over the PC due to the position of the television in the home
as the central focus in many living rooms. Whatever the long-term success of Web-TV it does not
currently, nor will it in the short term at least, be a large enough niche in the web market to be
profitable. This is especially true because the willingness of the public to use the TV as a web portal,
or to conduct eCommerce over their TV sets has yet to be proven.
2.5 Other methods of Internet access
With the launch of the Dreamcast and X-box games consoles, users are now able to access the
Internet through these machines. The principle benefit that this provides the user is the ability to play
multiplayer online games. Currently both these consoles have seen relatively poor sales. So therefore
the success of this platform is unpredictable and is not explored in this report.
Many public telephones now also provide bespoke Internet facilities. Similar Internet only systems are
often found in shopping malls & service stations where access is regularly free to some sponsored
sites. These facilities usually provide a similar environment to that of the standard PC and browser
although it should be noted that systems in public environments do not usually provide sound.
3. Web Property
3.1 Overview
The Internet is quite literally the greatest library the world has ever seen. For the most part access to
web sites and property has been free. This however does not mean it does not belong to anybody and
there have been recent moves to increase charging for web content. In an article for the Financial
Times (Feb 6th 2002)* Stephen Phillips discusses how “websites are aggressively introducing charges
for hitherto complimentary services”. He presents Jupiter Media Metrix’s findings that predict the
blossoming of paid content from a $1.1billion industry in the US in 2001 to become a $5.7 billion
industry by 2005. Clearly there is money to be made from web services as long as intellectual property
rights are protected.
The reason the Internet has become such a successful library has been the development early in the
life of the web of directory services and search engines. These gateway services, analogous to a
library card index have opened up the Internet to inexperienced and/or non-technical users. These
services are owned by profit making companies who make money on advertising and through selling
affiliated services. Usually the web search or catalogue service is free.
The importance for a company’s web site to being listed on a search engine cannot be underestimated
and the techniques to do so will be discussed later. Search engines however, highlight the problem with
attempting to “own” part of the Internet. While Google.com, for example, own their web search engine
they are not responsible for the content of the web sites that they list. They are also unable to
influence the choice of how people use their facilities. Many of the web sites listed will have been
listed automatically by their software without any human decision to include it. Equally Google have no
control over what people search for and have only limited control over what will be returned by
favouring certain web sites. Unlike in the real world there is much less control over the way
consumers will use your intellectual property.
3.2 Traditional Campaign Management
By its very nature no marketing campaign can be under the complete control of the campaign
manager. From third party resources such as external advertising firms that are used, to the target
audience, there is a boundary between what can be controlled and what can not. This is especially true
on the web because of the many co-operative relationships that are necessary for the Internet to exist
let alone for a company to begin trading on it.
Consider this mock example of a traditional marketing campaign. Company ‘Clean Easy’ produce a
brand of washing powder known as “Brilliant Whites”. In order to market this effectively they need
the help of other firms. Firstly they need a retail outlet to stock their washing powder. Their prime
customers are in fact the supermarkets who will stock their product and not of course the final
consumers of the product. Thus the marketing campaign needs to be targeted not only to the
consumers of the product but it is now reliant on somebody else stocking it. Thus suppose Clean Easy
decide they want to raise the profile of their washing powder through a TV advertising campaign.
They will be relying on further business to business relationships to professionally design the TV
adverts, a commercial Television broadcaster to show the adverts and the government will intervene in
the form of the Advertising Standards Agency (in the UK) to ensure that the adverts do not breach
their code of conduct. In just this small example we see that there are many relationships and groups
to manage, which is all part of the marketing remit.
Of course there is little point in designing a marketing campaign to launch a product called “Brilliant
Whites” to find out six months and million of pounds later that the product does not produce ‘brilliant
whites’ or that it eats the clothes when they are washed regularly in the product. A great product
launch could be ruined if press articles and consumer organisations act against you. Apart from the
moral implications of launching a substandard product onto the market it is an example of bad
marketing as it is something that lies within the sphere of control of that particular company.
3.3 The Web Property Frontier
The sphere of control that a company has over the world obviously extends to the Internet and the
author has chosen to call this the Web Property Frontier. The most obvious exponent of this is the
difference between the information on your site, which you control, and the information that others
have on their site about your organisation. Protecting the perceptions of your products and organisation
means that you have to exercise some control over what the public is thinking about you.
Getting people to talk favourable about you, creating a positive brand perception, is the key to all good
marketing. What this means in the online world is that you want to have other people talking
favourably about you and your products on their web sites, thus passing on your message to their
friends and associates, who might again feature you on their own web sites.
The advantage the web has always presented (and indeed why we refer to it as a web) is the ability to
place Hyperlinks on a web page to link to other pages, links to own site’s pages, but to other web sites
as well. Often the links will display the URL but they can also display any text or picture and when
clicked, launch a new window, or refresh the existing one to link to the new site. This gives rise to
banner advertisement, which is perhaps the most obvious tool in the web advertising handbook. The
best example of this and the most relevant to discussion on web property is when you see company
logos on other companies web sites. This is such a common occurrence that you will struggle to find
any web sites that do not have other companies logos plastered all over them.
Where companies are in partnership it is common for the issue of web property to become confused.
This can cause conflict but can also have tremendous advantages. The case in point is the use of
banners on partners web sites. When reciprocated they are to the advantage of both companies. Often
the banner is in the form of a hyperlinked company logo linking to the partners web site. While
anybody is allowed to place a link to your site if they wish, they will need your copyright permission to
use your logo.
I have heard (and apologise for not being able to recall where) the Internet described as the latter-day
‘Wild West’. This is a perfect attitude to take to the ‘Web Property Frontier’ where you can stake
your claim to what property you want but you might have to fight for it as in the ‘Wild West’. It can be
quite a lawless environment as much of the required legislation has yet to catch up with the early
settlers. This is expanded further on in chapter 4 Security & Law.
3.4 Brand perception and the Web Property Frontier
It may seem obvious but you need to be aware of what is being said about your product on the web
beyond what you control. Whether it be consumer watchdogs, competitors, aggrieved ex-employees,
pressure groups or teenage hackers, there are many who may undermine your operations or brand.
Criticism may be justified in some cases. Then as well as fire fighting the resultant bad publicity, steps
may need to be taken to rectifying any accidental or deliberate fault. The web has proved excellent for
uniting aggrieved customers against often large multinational corporations because of real or perceived
‘faults’ that they see within the organisation. An example of this is www.nthellworld.com, which has
been set up by dissatisfied NTL customers. While smaller companies may be subject to less high
profile attack, the damage can be worse as they are more vulnerable. Therefore on whatever scale
deemed appropriate, there does need to be continuous research into both general the perception of
your brand and into specific web sites that may be talking about you. Wouldn’t you want to know if
there was a web site slandering your company or product?
One of the classic marketing tactics has been to use spam, which can often lead to many retaliatory
actions from web users. Spam is the shorthand term for unsolicited email and is basically the misuse of
newsgroups and email addresses to send multiple marketing messages to people who may not want
them. This is very different from targeted email campaigns which will be discussed later. Spam may
seem attractive to companies who have traditionally used large untargeted postal campaigns to attract
custom. Traditional “junk mail” is crucially different as the postage and handling is paid for by the
mailing company. This is not like spam which monopolises the IT resources of others.
Spam is therefore seen as morally dubious and is against the spirit of the Internet culture (known as
Netiquette). Why this should still be a problem for determined spammers is because it may encourage
revenge attacks. For full details on the extent of revenge possible please take a look at the Blacklist of
Internet Advertisers (http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/BL/). If the very existence of such a
web site isn’t enough to put you off spamming then the author encourages you to read this web site
first.
Techniques such as email marketing make the most effective use of the web by using other’s
resources outside of the Web Property Frontier to spread the marketing message. Not all web
marketing techniques are as likely to attract negative campaigning for example Viral Marketing which
will be discussed later. If it hadn’t been obvious before then it should be clear that there is the need
for security of all your corporate assets both real and virtual.
4. Security & Law
4.1 Web Security Technologies
It is not just security from hackers that needs to be considered in web site design but it is the
perception that your site is secure that is also important. Many companies may wish to use the web to
carry out transactions with their customers. It is therefore vitally important for the customer that they
firstly trust that the information that they transmit across the Internet is secure. Secondly the customer
needs to trust the company they are trading with and not believe that they are likely to be ripped off.
Traditionally the public has not been over keen on trading on the Internet because of these trust issues.
Thus there has been significant effort to address this problem.
One of the early developments in Internet security that has now become almost standard in all
monetary transactions on the Internet (especially when involving credit or debit card details) is the use
of a secure server. While it is beyond the scope of this report to discuss in detail the cryptographic
techniques that are used in secure servers a basic understanding of why they are necessary and why
business and consumers should trust them is.
When information is sent to a web site on the Internet it does not just go straight from the sender to the
receiver. The signals that each computer sends will often be routed through many different computers
before it reaches its destination. This means that everything that you pass over the Internet can be
seen by those computers. Hence if you were to send unencrypted information over the network it
could be viewed, used and abused by a potential hacker. Thus when someone wants to send secure
data that they will use an algorithm to encrypt it. Only the person that is meant to receive the data will
know how to read the data by using another algorithm to unencrypt it. The flaw in this would
seemingly be that if the sender and receiver had never communicated before then they could not have
previously agreed on the encryption algorithms and they couldn’t send those algorithms out over an
insecure network.
This problem has been solved by a technique known as ‘Public Key Encryption”. Since two different
algorithms are used, one to encode the data and another to decode the data, then it becomes possible
for the receiver of the data to broadcast a public encoding algorithm that only it knows the correct
decoding algorithm to. Thus when an Internet user finds he wants to carryout a credit card transaction
his computer will receive the public key from the company that he is transacting with to encrypt his
credit card details.
Just because the transmission method is secure it does not mean that all the Internet is completely
foolproof. The problem for the user who is wishing to buy something over the Internet is that while the
actual transaction is secure, he cannot guarantee that his details might not be stolen after the
transaction. It is therefore important for any business that they are comprehensive in their security
procedures, to not only protect their exposed virtual assets (i.e. over networks) but also that their
material assets, e.g. buildings and computers are secure from rogue access or theft. All companies
need to have planned their security measures, from locks and alarms on their premises to who has
access to which systems and data. Carelessness in forgetting to disuser an ex-employee might be
disastrous if they decided they would try to get revenge by selling your confidential information to a
rival because they still had access to your systems.
With the advent of inexpensive broadband technologies, it is likely that as a result of the ‘always on’
feature of the technology then many if not most companies will have at least one computer always
connected to the Internet. If that computer is also connected to a network then this creates a security
issue across the whole of that network.
The best guard against network attack is to have no connection to the Internet at all. This may simply
be inconvenient for some, however for many the reduction in risk may not justify the loss of
operational function. Therefore the best compromise is to install a Firewall. This will monitor all the
network traffic that enters from outside the corporate network, in this case the Internet and decide
whether to let it in or not.
This is not a complete solution to the problem as there are ways around a firewall, for example by
containing a virus program in an email. Therefore it is important that all employees with access to the
corporate network are familiar with security considerations.
4.2 Customers’ Trust
In the run up to Leeds Untied FC's crucial UEFA Cup Semi-final vs Galatasary Istanbul in April 2000,
hackers, presumably Galatasary supporters decided they would attack Leeds United’s web site
(www.lufc.com). Thus on the day before the game they somehow gained entry onto the server
displaying Leeds’ web site and stopped all access to the original web pages and inserted their own
web page. This would be viewed on request for access to the Leeds site. While normal service was
resumed within the same day, for a few brief hours the cartoon image of a Galatasary fan running
across the screen and urinating on Leeds’ club crest presented a memorable and not to mention
humorous image to all those who attempted to access the site.
As amusing as this tale is the question is this, would you have happily bought something from Leeds
United’s online shop the next day? How about the next week, month or year? Suppose instead of the
offensive logo the Galatasary fans had decided to ‘mock up’ part of the Leeds web site, and replace
the existing shop with their own, they could have represented themselves as the Leeds shop and taken
the credit card details of many customers in the time before they were found out and the service was
pulled.
So how is the credit card user to know if the web site they are using is genuine. The secure server
may stop rogue hackers from finding out your details but maybe the people at the other end are not
whom they say they are. Thankfully for business and customers alike there is a way in which the
identity of the web site can be verified. This is by using a trusted third party. In the case of most
transactions over the Internet this will involve the use of a digital certificate which is held by a third
party organisation which proves that the web site is who it says it is.
Both the Netscape and Internet Explorer web browsers recognise this technology. Therefore the
browser user can find out enough information about a web site to feel confident that it is genuine. Of
course just because a web site doesn’t use such security certificates, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t
genuine. It is still worth questioning whether you buy from a site without one. This is because even if
they are genuine, would you want to buy from a company so out of touch with common web
technology?
So you’ve decided to use both secure servers and security certificates to give your customers
confidence in the integrity of you operation, well done, but how does the user know that they are going
to get the quality of goods and/or service that you have promised. They will of course have to trust in
you, or to be more precise they will trust in your brand, and the legal framework within which it sits.
The law of course requires that a company makes good, at least in varying degrees on most of its
promises of quality of service. The consumer can be relatively confident that you will deliver on your
promises. Unfortunately because of the virtual nature of online sales the customer cannot feel they are
guaranteed delivery, nor can they inspect the quality of the merchandise before they buy. Although this
is occasionally possible with trial software versions etc. The consumer needs to develop trust in your
brand, probably by means of reputation. This can be both real, “That review of Amazon.com said how
wonderfully prompt they are with their deliveries”, or implied, “Amazon.com must be prompt, as they
couldn’t possibly be lying about the delivery date as they wouldn’t risk their reputation”. Remarkably
the rather weak sounding argument for the implied reputation is how people trust most transactions,
whether they are on the web or not. After all how many people check their grocery or petrol receipts
against their bank statement.
The development of a brand on the Internet will be discussed later but there is an important difference
between the brand that exists only on the Internet and the brand that is imported from the real world.
The problem for an Internet brand which has no recognisable physical presence in the real world is
that it is harder for a user to trust it. The case in point later in the report is Boo.com, a fashion retailer
that was the most high profile fallout from the “dotcom” crash. The failure of the company could at
least in part be put down to the lack of consumer confidence in the company (which in this case was
inseparable from the brand) and their ability to deliver on their promises, as well as decisively a lack of
confidence from major investors.
Unfortunately for the rapid development of eCommerce, even when a brand has been well established
on the Internet, people have been slow and reluctant to part with their money over such a perceived
insecure medium. This has seen many companies (with Amazon being an example) trying to find a
way around this problem by allowing a user once he has accessed the web site and chosen the product
he wants to order, phone up and order over the telephone. This is not a more secure method of
transaction, as statistically credit card fraud is more likely to occur when phoning a call centre than
when using the Internet. This is simply a way of satisfying the need of those people who are not
confident in the Internet as a means of transaction.
4.3 Privacy
Companies conducting online transactions with their customers will obviously be collecting sensitive
information that the customer would like to be treated as confidential. While it is obviously criminal for
the company to disclose a customers credit card details to anybody who is not involved in the
transaction, they also have certain obligations under the Data Protection Act (in the UK) to keep other
details private. It is the responsibility of the company to be aware of the legal issues, and what data
they are allowed to keep about their customers.
It is also important that the customers are made to feel comfortable about the information they give
and how it will be used. For example it is now a legal requirement when asking a customer to submit
personal details to ask if you wish to share their details with other companies. A further requirement is
to ask them if you want to send them publicity material. This second requirement obviously links up
with the spamming issue raised earlier. It is therefore vital that companies gain the permission of their
customers if they wish to send them newsletters or the like to their email address (this will be
discussed later).
4.4 Additional Legal Issues
A major headache for many businesses, whether using the Internet themselves or having their
traditional market encroached by the Internet, is that the legal framework it sits in is far more
immature than the technology. Issues of intellectual property rights and taste and decency which are
constantly being debated in the real world are of even greater concern on the Internet. This is because
of the ease of access, of distribution and communication of articles, images, MP3 files, etc.
The global nature of the Internet means that without a world wide legal system and controls it is very
easy to avoid the law in one country by basing your services in another. The classic example of
companies trying to protect their interest where the Internet has started to erode their market share
has been the reaction that the music industry has taken to Napster. Napster was a service that allowed
the user to share their data files over the Internet. The result has been users using the service to copy
the MP3 music files from other users. This, the music industry has successfully argued in the US
courts, is an infringement of copyright and they have been successful in shutting down service,
however only after a very protracted legal battle. The problem for the music industry is that they will
have to go through the whole process again for every rival service set up in other countries.
Security and legal issues will continue to pose new problems for businesses as the Internet is such a
dynamic environment that they will frequently arise. The lead times for solutions are often far behind
the initial discovery of the problem and especially where case law is involved.
5. The Case Studies
5.1 Overview and Case Structure
I have chosen to illustrate the use of web marketing through case studies of four distinct companies
and campaigns. These cases demonstrate both successful and unsuccessful campaigns and the effects
of individual techniques. The chosen cases are:
1) Hotmail
2) npower
3) Meetings World (1969) Ltd
4) Boo.com
Each of the four cases is presented with the following structure:
Case #: Name
Corporate Overview
- Who are they?
- What do they do?
- Where do they operate?
- Age of the company and/or subsidiary,
- Size of the company
Reasons for choosing the case
Market Analysis
- Customers,
- Competition and substitution
(Parent) Company Mission and Objectives
Strategic Position
- Market positioning
Web Marketing Strategy
- Objectives,
- Web Site functionality and technology,
- How does the web strategy fit in with the existing organization?
Conclusions
5.2 Case 1: Hotmail - (http://www.hotmail.com)
Corporate Overview
Hotmail, owned by the Microsoft Corporation, is the largest email provider on the Internet and it is free
to anyone who has access to an Internet connection anywhere in the world. There can be few Internet
users who haven’t heard of Microsoft. It is the epitome of a modern multinational company.
Microsoft’s virtual monopoly of the operating systems market (80% of the worlds computers run on
Microsoft’s Windows operating system) has made them one of the richest and most powerful
companies in the world.
As well as being one of the most popular Hotmail is one of the oldest suppliers of email accounts,
however it was only after purchase by Microsoft in 1998 that it has become the largest email provider.
Hotmail is part of the larger MSN subsidiary of Microsoft. MSN is responsible for all of Microsoft’s
online operations and is chiefly an ISP and information portal. MSN do not have the sort of market
monopolisation of the ISP market that their parent company enjoy in the operating systems market.
Therefore the vast majority use alternative network providers and many if not most offer email as part
of the package offering dial-up Internet services.
Reason for choosing the case:
There are no adverts for Hotmail either on the TV, or on the radio or in the press. Despite this,
Hotmail has become one of the Internet success stories. This is purely down to web marketing. This
combined with Hotmail being an example of an important web service and not a physical good or
service is the reason the Hotmail case was selected.
Market Analysis
The importance of email in the short history of the Internet can not be underestimated. Email is often
one of the reasons people give for choosing to get onto the Internet in the first place. It is estimated
that there are actually more email accounts than there are people who actually use the Internet. In fact
this author will admit to recently having had concurrent use of five different email accounts: a personal
account from my ISP, a redundant second personal account with Hotmail, two email accounts from
the University of Leeds, and a business account for a recent employer. Both my recent employer and
university heavily use email. This desire to use email in businesses and academic institutions was one
of the driving forces behind the growth of the Internet. The importance of email and its now relative
simplicity compared to other Internet services explains why it has become such a competitive industry
that many services have become free and now compete on quality of service rather than price. There
is now no large market for paid-for email services as customers have come to expect it to be free or at
least bundled in with other services that they are willing to pay for, for example with an ISP.
(Parent) Company Mission and Objectives
Microsoft’s mission statement:
“Microsoft's vision is to empower people through great software - any time, any place and on any
device. As the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing, Microsoft strives to
produce innovative products and services that meet our customers' evolving needs. At the same time,
we understand that long-term success is about more than just making great products.”
Taken from http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp (Jan 29th 2002)
This summation clearly shows that Microsoft’s objective is to obtain and retain market dominance of
the whole software market.
Hotmail ‘s Strategic Position
Microsoft have chosen to provide the Hotmail service for free, thus this business unit’s only income is
through advertising revenue. It should however noted that Hotmail produces intangible benefits to
Microsoft. These include the benefits to their reputation and improved customer relationships. While
there is no stipulation that you use other Microsoft products alongside Hotmail the majority of users
will in fact be concurrently using other Microsoft software e.g. Windows, Internet Explorer, Office.
Having such a large database of email addresses Microsoft can send as much of their own publicity as
they wish to their own customers, sidelining the spamming issue by making this a condition of service.
Microsoft are seeking to use their domination of the software industry to cross promote their products
and Hotmail is one of their best tools for this. Microsoft do not need to make money from Hotmail
therefore their market position is one similar to conventional low cost leader, however they are also
heavily competing on quality of service as well.
Web Marketing Strategy
Technologically the Hotmail service is as good as any other email service. It provides most features
expected of an email service but discussion of the detailed pro’s and con’s of system is immaterial.
Hotmail importantly does have the advantage of being accessible from any Internet connection
anywhere in the world, where many email services are not. For example this is sometimes the case
with corporate email accounts that do not allow remote logon.
Hotmail is especially interesting from a web marketing perspective because of their original and
effective promotional campaign. Microsoft have not sought to spend money on promotion of Hotmail
as it is after all a free service that does not generate significant revenues for Microsoft. They have
limited explicit advertising to only its own and its partners web sites.
The key to the success of Hotmail has been down to the purest form of what is known as Viral
Marketing. This is the use of established networks to pass on a message that people will want to hear
on a one-to-many basis. In the Hotmail example the email user sends out emails in a normal way but at
the bottom of every email that is sent is Hotmail’s marketing message: “Get your private, free email at
http://www.hotmail.com”. In this case the most important word in the message for the success of the
strategy is “free”.
The marketing strategy uses the existing social and business networks of the users to spread the
message. Because of the combination of a desirable product and an easily transmitted marketing
message that would be passed through existing communication networks, the growth rate for the
numbers of users became, theoretically at least, exponential. The speed of growth of Hotmail caused
problems for Microsoft as the popularity of the service grew faster than they could install the servers
to manage the accounts. Since there are not an unlimited number of users to support an infinite
exponential growth rate, the size of the problem is both limited and quantifiable as an approximate
number of worldwide Internet users at any one time is known. As of March 2002 there are
approximately 560 million Internet users worldwide. (Source: http://www.glreach.com/globstats/ =
Global Reach)
Conclusions
There has been a significant maturity in the Hotmail product that still allows it to retain the large
customer base even where people may have access to alternative email systems. Perhaps because of
the size and reputation of Hotmail, it can be seen as having greater permanence than its rivals,
especially in the world of free email provision. Because email and ISP services are often free and in
an unpredictable economic sector where the current trend is for previously free online services to
become paid for services, it becomes difficult for users to trust that they will not have to pay for a free
email service in the future. As long as users of Hotmail always expect it to be free for ever, it will hold
a competitive advantage over smaller rival free email services. One of Hotmail’s greatest competitive
advantages is that the value of an email service to a user becomes more important with time since
email addresses (such as [email protected]) are non transferable and people do not want to lose
their address. Seemingly Hotmail can hold on to these users indefinitely.
Perhaps the biggest long-term challenge for Hotmail will be the integration of email services into
mobile services. Microsoft, with its wide range of cross-pollinating products, should be in a good
position to face this. The important question, yet to be answered, is how will this service be paid for?
Directly by the mobile services consumers, by their network operators, or by Microsoft’s deep
pockets.
5.3 Case 2: npower
(www.npower.com)
Corporate Overview
npower is a brand that was set up by its parent company Innogy Plc out of the old National Power
company. npower retail predominantly gas and electricity to domestic and business customers in the
UK but also they have recently enlarged their product range to include for example insurance and
telcoms services.
Since the initial formation of the brand, Innogy have set upon an aggressive program of acquisition and
expansion in a consolidating utilities market, purchasing the brands, customers and assets of for
example MEB and Northern Electric. This has turned npower into one of the top UK companies with
parent company Innogy listed on the FTSE top 100 companies.
Reasons for choosing the case
npower provide an example of a large company providing their services nationally, adapting to use the
Internet to sell to new customers and provide further online services for all customers. This was the
predominant reasoning behind the selection of npower.
Market Analysis
npower are the largest retailer of electricity and second largest retailer of gas in the utility market but a
minor player in the insurance and telcoms markets. The UK utilities markets were privatised and
deregulated in the 1980s and 1990s and are now among the most competitive in the world. npower
views separately the markets for business and domestic customers and as such provides different
facilities, including online facilities, for business and domestic users.
The customer base of the utility market in the UK involves approximately 25 million homes and several
million businesses. npower supply their flagship energy products to approximately 7 million customers
from this market.
(Parent) Company Mission and Objectives
The corporate plan launched two years ago was the ‘4to5’ plan. Its outline is to sell 4-5 products to 4-5
million customers within 4-5 years. The first objective was to enlarge npower into the leading supplier
of gas and electricity to domestic and business customers. Two years this objective was completed
when, as previously stated, the number of customers rose to 7 million. The second objective has been
to turn the company into a supplier of all domestic maintenance requirements with the establishment of
a telcoms product and other pilot products such as home and motor insurance. At present only gas and
electricity represent a significant source of revenue
Strategic Position
Due to the competitiveness of the market npower have decided to compete predominately on price and
have come close to being the genuine low cost leader in the market.
Web Marketing Strategy
npower has decided to invest heavily in its web services. You can now buy their full range of products
on line as well as carry out certain service operations such as a submitting meter readings and viewing
your bill(s). It takes time to develop a site of this depth. Initially the site was used to support off line
promotions to generate brand awareness. The year 2001 was seen as crucial for promoting the brand.
The marketing campaign included the sponsorship of the England cricket team’s test matches, a large
campaign of television adverts, the sponsorship of the prime time television program ‘The Bill’ and
sponsorship of English and Scottish football teams.
At the same time the Internet was used to place banner advertisements on partner’s sites with the
objective of generating as much traffic through the web site as possible, as well as supporting brand
awareness. In the summer period when npower was sponsoring the test cricket both a cricket themed
game and an applet that popped up every time a wicket fell both featured on the site. These
entertainment features helped the web site increase traffic by 2000%(*) in August 2001 from the base
of July 2001.
npower’s review of their own site (specific information has been specially provided by npower)
informs that after the summer publicity campaign the web site was selling 250 contracts per week of
not just gas and electricity but of the new products that had been added online. Npower also claim that
an advantage of the web site is the ability to cross sell products but they have not substantiated this
argument.
Some web traffic on the npower site comes through the major search engines but this is not the only
incoming route for web traffic. As well as banner advertisements npower also has generated sales
through customers using Internet price comparison sites to find the best deals. Although price sensitive
the Internet Comparison sites generate a significant percentage of web site sales.
Web sites such as Uswitch.com allow users to enter details about their current utility uses (i.e.
predominately electricity and gas) and find out which companies if any it would be cheaper to switch
to. It has recently become very easy in the UK to change energy suppliers and so their are significant
savings to be had if you hunt around for the best deals. It is the purpose of these comparison sites to
do that job for you. Once you have entered details about your location, your current supplier and the
cost of recent energy bills the site will list whic h suppliers would be the cheapest as well as providing
information about the quality of service that the companies give. Sites such as Uswich.com will then
ask for more personal details if you wish to continue to change your supplier, they then pass these
details over to the supplier (in this case npower) and they receive a commission once the customer’s
contract is validated.
Internet comparison sites offer a potentially significant source of custom for npower as the Internet
becomes established. These sites have to date only produced good publicity for the industry. This is in
contrast to the door-to-door sales tactics of npower in particular which have come under criticism from
consumer groups in the past 12 months (for example on the BBC’s Watchdog television program).
Since these sites usually rank energy companies by the savings a customer can make, then customers
are only likely to come to the npower site when the price is competitive. This is an excellent example
of how the web marketing strategy as a whole, not just a web site strategy, needs to fit in with the
overall corporate strategy. In npower’s case they have, with recent price freezes compared with rises
by competitors, shown that this part of their web marketing plan is consistent with their overall
strategic position that puts them as one of the industries low cost leaders.
Conclusions
npower’s web site is designed to both attract new customers and provide customer support. Once the
intensive development is finished then they are set to benefit from the projected growth in
eCommerce. Once the web site is generating enough business it should create cost savings for npower
as this method of customers signing up is much cheaper than using unpopular door-to-door salesmen.
The transparency of both price and quality of service that the Internet provides means that npower will
need to remain competitive on both points but especially on price.
5.4 Case 3: Meetings World (1969) Associates
(http://www.meetingsworld.co.uk)
Corporate Overview
Meetings World are a small single site company based in Bournemouth in the UK that deals mostly in
arranging international conferences for the travel and tourism industry. This is the companies
predominant source of income.
Set up in 1969 by current chairman Geoffrey Gray-Forton, Meetings World have since organised many
prestigious international tourism and trade conferences and yet despite their international credentials
personnel wise they are only a small company. Meetings World have worked in over eighty countries
worldwide and currently have particular expertise in working in the Persian Gulf region.
Reasons for choosing the case
This small company represents the alternate end of the scale to the large companies in this project.
They have recently been in the process of setting up their web site and marketing campaign, and as
such have providing an opportunity to observe the early development of their web presence. The other
cases feature larger often multinational companies who have already substantially developed their web
sites and web strategy. This case should provide a good contrast to these companies.
Market Analysis
The tourist industry is currently in a slump because of the aftermath of the September 11th attacks.
This has profoundly affected Meetings World, especially work in the Gulf region.. The unique nature
of the business means that there is relatively little direct competition and realistically any organisations
seeking to take part in industry conferences are potential customers.
Company Mission and Objectives
Meetings World have established, according to their web site, a reputation as a “world leader” in
conference organizing. Their objectives have always been to support this reputation and to generate by
their own means as much business as they can handle.
Strategic Position
Meetings World have in this difficult period chosen to launch their web site. As a small company they
do not appear to have the finance nor requirement to employ full time IT staff so they are in
partnership with Virginbiz.net to develop their web site. Virgin biz specialise in getting small UK
businesses online and providing resources and consultancy.
Web Marketing Strategy
In fitting with the size of the company the web site is a modest affair designed currently as a tool of
promotion rather than to carry out any complex business function. The site provides contact details and
information about the company, directors and reviews of previous events that they have organised..
Launched in the second half of 2001 the web site has not had any content updates since that year. As
a result several typographical errors and textual misalignments have gone unnoticed and unrepaired.
This web site is indicative of how many small business treat the web. They are initially interested and
enthusiastic about the web site, yet have given little thought to a long term strategy. They have been
distracted by other day to day functions until such time as the web site has become forgotten about.
It would be unfair to expect the same standards of a small business in their web site as in a large
company’s. There are indeed several commendable features on this site that would be expected of a
large firm but cannot always be expected of a small one. The first is that they have decided to invest a
certain amount of money in the site rather than attempting to run it with no budget. The site has a
distinct and memorable URL and the company has used a consultancy firm.
Perhaps the best feature of this site is that it presents a more personal and friendly image than large
impersonal corporate sites. The site uses interviews with the chairman and characterization of the
directors alongside their profile. (see following image)
Off site, Meetings World have ensured that they are listed with a number of search engines. A perusal
through several search engines (Google, Lycos and Yahoo) presented mixed results. Generally the
“.com” suffix search engines did not return their site in the top ten sites under a search on “Meetings
World”, in fact it took a search on “Meetings World 1969” to return them in a top ten list. Some of the
“.co.uk” suffix search engines did return them in the top ten. lycos.co.uk even had them top.
Meetings World’s web site and general contact detail can also be found elsewhere on the Internet.
There are several sites that link to the Meetings World web site or provide alternate contact details.
For
example
the
web
site
of
“The
Association
for
Conferences
and
Events”(
http://www.martex.co.uk/ace/index.htm) lists them in their directory.
Conclusions
If Meetings World were geared towards a greater involvement on the Internet it is possible they could
use the site to conduct further business. They could certainly carry out transactions over the web and
possibly could extend their site to feature information and resources about specific conferences that
they host. They have to date chosen to use the web site simply as a reference and contact point and
publicity tool.
Through a lack of web design skills and time spent checking and verifying the end-product, what could
be a simple but effective site now looks somewhat unprofessional. While a couple of textual
inaccuracies are forgivable, pages entitled “Frequently Asked Questions” that don’t include any
questions at all, whether frequently asked or not, are less forgivable. This and the seeming
abandonment of this web site during the production of this report (no changes have been made since
late 2001) should provide an example of how not to conduct a web strategy.
My most personally damming criticism of Meetings World’s approach to their web strategy I have
saved until last. After they were kind enough to send me some of this years promotional stationary, I
was disappointed to see that they had included all their contact details on the cover of my
complimentary pocket diary, except their email address and URL.
5.5 Case 4: Boo.com
(http://www.boo.com)
Corporate Overview
Boo.com are perhaps the most infamous example of an Internet start-up company going bust. The
clothing retailer is best remembered for a series of quirky television advertisements, not unfortunately,
for actually selling any clothing. Although there is still a boo.com web site, the original company failed
spectacularly and it is this period in its history that will be covered in this case study. Sadly what is left
of boo.com today is a shadow of the founders dream and is really just a mirror to other web sites.
The dream of “boo” was much grander than what remains today. In early 1998 Ernst Malmsten and
Kajsa Leander came up with idea of the first truly global sports and fashion clothing site on the net.
Boo was meant to be the one-stop-shop on the Internet for almost any fashion or sports clothing you
wanted, the timing was perfect with no major competitors in site.
Boo was to go from conception to being a multinational corporation valued at £125 million pounds and
from a staff of two to 400 all within 18 months, it was perfectly positioned to ride the dotcom boom.
With backers such as J.P. Morgan, Benetton and Eriksson it couldn’t possibly fail. Unfortunately the
golden child of the boom became its most high profile casualty when the market collapsed in early
2000.
Reasons for choosing the case
The reasons for choosing this case were simple:
1) Boo was a dotcom startup that would never have existed without the Internet.
2) Their marketing campaign had a tiny budget for a global company ($25 million) and yet they created
perhaps the biggest hype that the Internet has yet seen.
Market Analysis
At the launch of Boo in the summer of 1999 there was no other independent online clothing retailer
that had the same vast range of products and nothing that traded internationally in multiple languages.
Boo, it seemed, was ready to take over the world because they had the critical first mover advantage.
The customer base for boo was only limited by two factors, the (rapidly rising) number of people on
the Internet and the efficiency of the roll out of boo’s technology to be able to serve them.
Unfortunately for boo it was this second problem that was to defeat them.
Company Mission and Objectives
The objective was simple, to become the first genuinely global Internet clothing retailer.
Strategic Position
With first mover advantage Boo’s position relied on speed and secrecy as they were obtaining the
relevant finance and setting up the company. Once they were up and running they needed to have a
wide enough product range that would appeal to their target customers. With the average Internet user
in the 16-25 age bracket this was where Boo was predominantly targeting their product range.
Interestingly for an Internet retailer boo were not seeking to compete on price. Where as the
customers of airlines and insurance services look for price before brand label the fashion industry does
not work in this way. Boo were not seeking to mark down their prices but to offer designer label
clothes at high street prices. They would compete on product availability and the gimmick that you
could “virtually” try on the clothes.
Web Marketing Strategy
The most technically challenging aspect of the entire project was the on site use of 3-Dimensional
images of all the clothing that could be bought. A user could “try-on” different sizes of clothing and put
together different outfits on a virtual model. This would, it was hoped, get around the problem of not
actually being able to touch the clothing. The problem with this cutting edge technology was because it
was so new and the company that were responsible for the contract to produce the images were so
small, that it took too long to produce the images for such a large catalogue.
The 3D images were just the pinnacle of an ambitious web design that would allow anybody in the
world to buy clothes from the site. This meant that they had to have contracts to export to the whole
world as well as providing many multiple language boo sites (i.e. a www.boo.de for Germany… etc).
This was also complex and ambitious. Such language problems were made worse by the use of “Miss
Boo”.
“Miss Boo” was another of the flagship technologies on the web site. Part style consultant part
customer relationship manager, Miss Boo was an artificially (un) intelligent bot that would guide the
web site user through the shopping experience. It was these technologies that were one of the major
problems with Boo. As well as getting these technologies working and all the resource costs involved
there was also the problem that they all required bandwidth to be downloaded for each user.
The worldwide roll out not only involved television advertisements but also press articles that would
generate free publicity for the site and company. By focusing publicity efforts on the press the
founders channeled the hype about the Internet towards their web site and company. Chief among
Boo’s publicity tools were the glamorous nature of the young founders of the company (Ernst and
Kajsa) who carried out interview after interview. They were the concurrent focus of much of the
early publicity before the site was operational.
With image so important in the fashion world, the contribution of the glamour (and former model good
looks of Kajsa no doubt) of the founders cannot be underestimated as a contributory factor to all the
good publicity they attracted.
Like any good web marketing campaign there was a newsletter. Not just any newsletter but a regular
online magazine with the obvious adverts but also fashion and life style articles that would attract a
regular readership and crucially attract people onto the web site.
The television campaign was also an important milestone in the history of Boo. With a public not yet
used to seeing Internet firms being advertised on their TV set, the resultant campaign was very
successful in generating awareness and discussion. The “Geek Chic” campaign, as Ernst Malmsten
describes it in his book “Boo Hoo” a retrospective account of the life of Boo, whipped up the hype.
The television adverts showed “geeks” in fashionable sports clothing playing basketball in inner city
areas of LA and caught both the eye and the imagination. The irony of the campaign was perfect for
attracting the Internet user to their site. But the (delayed) launch of the site was where their problems
were to manifest themselves.
Conclusions
In a review for BBC online of Ernst Malmsten’s book, Emma Clark described “Over-ambition… (as)
a recurring theme in the book”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1629000/1629742.stm
This report concurs, over ambition on the technical side, over ambition on the time it would take to set
up and crucially an over confidence in the number of people who would use the site were contributory
to Boo’s downfall. An impressive number of people did come to the site. Clark quotes Malmsten as
saying “There were plenty of visitors to the site, but not the tidal wave of traffic that we had
expected”, but people were not buying in sufficient quantities.
The logistical challenges of setting up a multinational company were also crippling but most of these
technical and logistical problems could have been sorted had Boo had time. What killed Boo in the end
were the winds of fortune of market conditions. Ever since the Financial Times announced Boo’s
existence on the 10 May 1999 at a valuation of $125 million Boo had been over hyped. As Ernst
Malmsten p177 (2001)himself says “Where did they get that figure from? Our valuation had nearly
doubled over night (from $75 million)”. This hype was not for just Boo but for the whole sector. When
Internet shares plummeted in the spring of 2000 the massively overvalued Boo was head first down
the slope.
Perhaps Boo could have been saved, but as the financial backing drained away, the company was
doomed despite the rising sales that it was eventually attracting.
6. Web Strategy
6.1 Introduction
In the beginning the web was an academic network where the presentation and design were given
minimum thought. Businesses who did operate on the net were so far ahead of the game that the
actual design of the web site didn’t matter. As the web has become larger and more people have
greater experience of using the web and general production standards have risen, it is fair to say that
the barriers to entry for web commerce have many ways risen.
Regardless of whether you are a dotcom start-up heavily invested in the Internet, or already
established company just creating their first web site, then the Internet should be viewed as an
important new marketplace and not a trivial distraction from normal business operations.
You could easily build a simple web site with free web hosting with very little time, effort and
experience for no other cost outlay other than your telephone company will charge for dialling your
free ISP. This would not be a professional course of action to take for even the smallest of companies.
The reason I have suggested the barriers to entry have risen for a firm starting on their web site is that
expectations and standards of what a corporate web site should look and feel like have risen.
Therefore when an experienced web user arrives on a corporate site which and has a design circa the
mid 1990s and it has a trademark URL of one of the common free web hosts, for example
“www.geocites.com/user987654/TrustMeLawFirm”, then they may be put off from trusting you.
Technological Internet standards have been previously mentioned in this report. It is very important
that when designing a web site that the designer takes note of not just technical standards but of as
many Internet conventions as practically possible. The individual little conventions such as, for
example, the hypertext on a web page being underlined and in a different colour that changes when
clicked, means that Internet users will instinctively know how they work. The user is likely not to
notice these conventions but they are quite likely to notice when they are not there.
A corporate web site is one of the entry points into your company that your new and existing
customers will look at. It needs to present the best first impression. The look of your web site should
give the same impression as you would wish your company’s head office to give. When people
communicate with you through the web site then they should get the same standard of care and
consideration as if they had telephoned your switchboard. Generally because of time differences
around the world, a 24-hour reply turnaround time is expected from a business.
Thus before you consign Kevin the work experience lad from the local technical college, to design
your window into the World Wide Web, remember the whole world is looking back in. Now send
Kevin to do some filing and set the management team to write a proper business plan.
6.2 Planning
A business should not decided to have a web site before they have fully thought through their web
strategy. A web strategy is more than just operating a web site in isolation from the rest of the
Internet.
Dr Ralph F. Wilson for his “Web Marketing Today” online magazine describes building a web site as
“building a storefront on a dead-end street. If you want any shoppers, you must give them a reason to
come”. Therefore a comprehensive web strategy needs to look in detail at how to bring in the
customers to the web site.
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/basic -principles.htm
Before decide you want a web site you need to answer one principle question, what do you want it
for? Sensible web marketing is not making the decision to have a web site and then deciding what you
are going to put on it. Any company setting up on the web needs to define their web marketing
strategy in a business plan that sets out clearly what the business is trying to achieve from this new
business unit. Before any decisions are made a proper analysis needs to be made of what the company
could be achieve on the Internet.
At this stage even a company of limited finances should not be dissuaded from thinking big. As
Boo.com showed the Internet has raised the expectations of what a start-up company can achieve to a
point where the founders were able to create a company valued at $125 within 18 months from
scratch. Although the financiers are not now as willing to throw their money at any Internet start-up as
they were in the golden period before the dotcom crash, it should however be remembered that with a
sound business plan it is possible to find outside investors.
Should your company have a web site or not? well the short answer is probably yes, because as Sterne
p3 (2001) says “Not having a site whatsoever seems like trying to do business without a phone or a fax
machine.” If your company works on anything other than a very local basis then you need to maximise
the number of ways your customers can contact you and the number of ways that you can contact
your customers. Even a company that has traditionally only traded locally can benefit from using the
Internet to help people to find them.
There are really only two good arguments against a company not having a web site, time and money.
While sympathy is extended to the very smallest of companies, it should be remembered that with the
exception of the purchase of a PC (which is tax deductible for small businesses) there are no other
necessary financial costs involved in producing the simplest of web sites. The costs in time depend
very much on what you are willing to put in, a single web page can be set-up in minutes. To produce
and layout a web site with couple of pages of text and with a scattering of images need only take a
couple of hours.
For the larger company the decision whether to have a web site or not is more of a forgone
conclusion.. A larger company will however need to take more time in considering the advanced
options it has because it is in a much more flexible situation, but also because it has a corporate image
to protect that a shoddy directionless web site might damage.
6.3 Designing a Web Strategy
Producing a web marketing plan is a very similar process to establishing a new product or even a
company. The business needs to evaluate the customer’s needs, the market, the core competence’s of
the business and decide what position to adopt.
I have reproduced Frain’s cycle of strategic review and development p120 (1999), which can be seen
overleaf, but whereas Frain uses it from a Marketing perspective I will use it to describe the
development of a web strategy. Discussion will start at the top of the diagram and moving clockwise
When designing a web strategy the first thing to consider is what are the customer’s needs and
expectations of the web. By looking at existing competitors web sites and by the analysis team
developing ideas for the web strategy the business should then build up a framework of marketing
information about the Internet and the possibilities.
After analysis of the core competence’s of the business the company needs to make decisions on
what web services they will produce (if any) and restructure the existing business to fit in with this.
Therefore they will choose the strategic position from which they will eventually gain their
competitive (strategic) advantage.
In the time it may have taken to conduct this process a lot can change on the Internet so it is
necessary to re-evaluate the market position (environmental scanning) and the web services and
how they affect the customer’s needs and expectations.
This cycle should be relevant for both large and small business to aid understanding of what it is they
are trying to get from the web.
The cycle of strategic review and development.
7. Producing and supporting a web site
7.1 Professional site design
7.1.1 Early Decisions
Part of the business plan will need to identify who will actually be producing the web site. Many
companies will be tempted to automatically think of hiring in another company to do all the work for
them. This will prove to be relatively expensive and it is certainly worth considering building an inhouse design team. It should be remembered that whatever the size of your web marketing campaign
it will most likely require continual maintenance from a permanent member of staff to process the
queries and orders and to keep the site updated.
Why does a web site need a professional design? Firstly because, as mentioned previously, it needs to
conform to the users expectations of it. Far more importantly the design needs to aid users in their
navigation of your site and direct them, if relevant, to part with their cash at the earliest convenience.
The look and feel of web sites has changes since the early years of the 1990’s. With the average
Internet user only having access to a 14.4kbps modem web sites were purposefully sparse to ensure
reasonable down load times. Now with most Internet users having 56kbps modems there are more
options for better graphical design.
Because of these restraints the average web page of 1994 looked very different to today’s pages.
Back then all you would usually see was some text and a couple of images on a monotonous grey
background. Today web pages are filled with menus, animated images, search facilities, logos and
banner advertisements. The user is generally presented with a much busier but more attractive web
site
7.1.2 Navigation
The downside of progress for web users is that it can often be much harder to navigate their way
around large corporate sites unless they have been very well designed for this purpose. The key note
here is that web sites should be practical and an aid to your customers and not secondly pretty to look
at. If not you may find your customers go elsewhere.
The biggest step for web design since 1994 has been the addition to most web sites of frames.
Although not supported by some of the oldest web browsers frames are almost a must for large
corporate sites. Put simply frames are multiple documents displayed as a single web page. As a
general rule of thumb the bigger a web site the more navigation information you will need to provide on
each and every web page. Frames allow you to do this in the most presentable of ways.
By dividing up a web page into multiple sections using frames a web designer can set each different
web page to contain a navigation frame that may or may not change from page to page. This is to the
advantage of both the web user and companies. Firstly the users benefit from having a continuous
reassuring theme run though a your web site, this makes navigation much easier. The company can not
only benefit from the users’ improved navigation but the frames present an ideal location to place the
company name and logo’s ensuring that the user always knows who’s site the are on.
A greater amount of navigation around web sites requires a more structured approach that simply
providing the user with a list of twenty different web pages. Just like this report is divided by headings
and sub headings for ease of reading so a web site needs to be divided with menus and sub menus.
Some web sites reject the need for large numbers of menus and choose to provide a site search
facility. These search facilities are the same as general web search engines but in this case the search
is confined to details of the relevant site or sites. This is fine if your customers know what they are
looking for but what if they don’t. Thus it may be necessary to provide a contents or index of the web
site, this allows the user to see all of the areas covered by the web site.
Good web site design is nothing without valuable content but this report cannot presume to predict
what form this might take only advise that it must pass the criteria of being either useful, informative or
interesting to the customer/web user.
The golden rules of web design to take away from this report must be to keep it simple and keep it
fast. Nobody wants to be forced to wait an age for a 3D web site map to load.
7.1.3 Web Site Performance
One of the most important aspects of maintaining a web site is to ensure that you site can deal with the
volume of traffic that will access it. In the earliest planning days you should be setting targets of the
level of traffic you are trying to achieve within a certain time frame. Planning here is difficult but
crucial when the popularity of a web site goes through the roof.. Without adequate planning you may
be caught out and find that your web site runs far too slowly. As previously mentioned this happened
to Microsoft who were unable to keep up with the demand for Hotmail. The only answer is to install
more web servers.
But how will you know how many more servers you will need? Initially you will need to have an idea
of how much web traffic you are generating. This can be done with various pieces of software which
can measure many different features of performance. There are however many experienced
companies which will offer comprehensive monitoring services which would be more suitable for firms
without large numbers of IT staff. These firms can also provide impartial advice on dealing with server
suppliers and with ISPs.
7.2 Branding on and off the web
According to Frain p57 (1999), branding employs “ a particular name, term, stylised form of lettering,
symbol, picture colour, or some combination of these in order to identify its product or service…”.
When starting a new brand on the web you may have a free hand in choosing how many of these
items you use. If you are adapting an existing brand for the net the you need to follow all the normal
brand rules. Not doing so may have been acceptable in the early days of the web but with the design
capabilities now available there is no excuse.
One specific technique to support the brand should almost always be used. A companies name and
logo should appear in the same place every time on every individual web page. For web sites that
choose to break this rule it’s best to have a good reason. The logo or company name is usually a link
back to the homepage so this is very good convention to follow.
One of the ways that free services are paid for is through banner advertisement. Instead of your
company logo appearing on just your own page you can pay to put it on other popular, but relevant to
your customers, web sites. When this became fashionable in the mid 1990’s this meant that web sites
that were popular were suddenly able to turn web traffic into cash.
A few years ago people who used banner advertisements to bring Internet users to their site, realised
that they needed a measure of how successful the adverts were. This led to the web sites that were
displaying the banners often being paid for each person who clicked on the banner. This was all well
and good for a couple of years but then the total number of people clicking on these advertisements
started to go down. More people were still coming onto the Internet and more banners were put up,
yet less total clicks were recorded. The problem was and still remains, that people have got used to
seeing advertising on the net and started to ignore it.
The death of the banner advert then, No. While banners may not be able to bring in the same level of
clicks per banner, with strategic placement they do still server a function. Just as roadside billboards
remind you to buy Coke-Cola next time you are thirsty so banners can do the same.
The process of developing brand identity and awareness is one of the tasks which works best if off
and online campaigns are combined. Npower provide a good example. The combining of the web
cricket theme at the same time as they were sponsoring the test cricket was a major factor in the
increase of web traffic to the npower web site. Off line promotions need to provide cross support back
to the web site for example by placing your URL at the bottom of each television advert. The
importance of a strong central theme running through all of your promotional activities is paramount.
The web can support this or even lead this but it should never take the focus away from how best to
satisfy the customers needs.
As a result companies should be careful of getting too carried away with using off line marketing
campaigns to attract people to their web site. In most cases the predominant business activities such as
selling happen mostly off line and the advertising budget should not be frittered away on plugging just
the web site. As a general rule of thumb, sell the product first and “by the way, you can also buy it
online at our web site”.
7.3 Site Establishment and further promotional techniques
When the first search engines were launched they hailed the prospect of being able to find anything on
the net, not however as the small print details, everything. Day after day search engines catalogue
more and more web pages but every day the Internet grows and morphs faster than they can keep up.
There are several ways in which you can get you web site indexed on search engines:
?? By blind luck. A search engine may come across a link to your web site and choose to investigate.
?? By paying having an agreement with the search engine operator. Involving payment to doubt.
?? By paying a popular indexed web site to host a link to your web site. It will need to be near the top
of the tree of pages of that site to be seen by the search engines.
You can improve the odds that the search engine will return your company on a search by providing in
the page header of your homepage a list of meaningful potential search term. What these are will
change from business to business.
Clearly some promotional techniques are free and some need to be paid for. The cost structure is not
always so transparent though. If you conduct your marketing by email (see 8.2 Newsletters) for
example then where are the costs. The costs in this case are fairly reasonable. There are the costs of
designing the email campaign (i.e. in man hours) however the distribution costs are low since they are
born mainly be the email servers. If you receive large amounts of email their will be further costs in
handling but not if you are sending them.
Publishing to relevant newsgroups has been a traditional call point of web marketers, unfortunately the
number of people you will reach is not necessarily worth the effort.
The Hotmail case demonstrated the Holy Grail of web marketing that is Viral Marketing. The
effectiveness of this has been demonstrated but we are left to explain the rules: Wilson (1999)
provides six basic elements of a viral marketing strategy, which I have summarised here.
1) Give away a valuable product or service
2) Provide for effortless transfer to others
3) Strategy must scale easily from small to very large
4) Exploits common motivations and behaviours (for example the urge to gossip)
5) Utilises existing communication networks
6) Takes advantage of others resources
The Hotmail example meets all these criteria (although even they struggled on the scaling problem) but
not every Viral Marketing strategy necessarily needs to.
If getting people to your site seems hard then remember that you have to keep them there as well and
keep them coming back. This general theme is dealt with in the next chapter on Customer Relationship
Management (CRM). More explicitly on keeping people interested enough to remain on your site you
can use entertainment features and competitions.
Competitions to win “cool stuff” have been running for almost as long as the web. Often the
competitions are to win company products but sometimes customers are not interested in wining a
years supply of your product. The advantage of a competition is that it will form the dual function of
attracting people to your site in the first places and keeping them there long enough to through a few
marketing messages at them. It is not even inevitable that a company is forced to pay for expensive
prizes. Many companies may be willing to let you have their exciting product for free to run in a
competition as it is equally good publicity for them. Don’t forget the reciprocal web links as well.
8. Customer Relationship Management
8.1 Overview
The Internet is above all a tool of communication and as such offers an unprecedented opportunity for
business to communicate with its customers.
In the early days CRM on the web was simple. Companies would predict what questions people would
want to ask and list them in the ubiquitous Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section on their web
site. If the customer still had questions then often support would be provided by email or by phone.
Already through the FAQ section and email the web site was saving large companies thousands of
pounds by taking the strain off call centres.
The larger picture of CRM is about providing quality of service to your customers so that they will
develop trust and loyalty to your brand. When this involves transactions over the web then this means
you need your web site to provide support in the decision making process to encourage you customers
to buy. Also it means that you need to provide support after they have purchased. For goods in
particular this usually means some for of order tracking.
Ordering goods off the web is very frustrating for many customers. They have parted with their cash
and yet they do not have their order in front of them. Thus even if you can not do it on line a company
should provide some means by which a customer can find out where their order is. Coupled with this
needs t be a realistic estimate of how long delivery takes, if it will take two weeks then tell them or it
could damage your reputation otherwise.
It is not just questions about deliveries you may need to answer. Therefore by whatever means
employees will be communicating with your customers they need to be trained to answer the queries.
8.2 Newsletters
One of the ways you can keep in touch with customers is by producing a regular newsletter that is
sent out to customers. While this might have been traditionally expensive because of print and delivery
costs, the Internet provides the opportunity to send out a newsletter for virtually no cost at all.
The value of the newsletter is in supporting that old adage, “the best customer is a repeat customer”.
Just as you would design your products and services around the needs of your customers, you must
also design your newsletter around the needs of your customers. Newsletters should not just include
the latest waffle about your company but be tailored to your audience. The form of a newsletter will
depend very much on the operations of your company and what you are trying to sell. A record
company sending out a newsletter to a large audience of fans will be far more concerned with making
their newsletter entertaining than a company in the agricultural supplies industry. There is however one
thing which all customers like and that is getting something for nothing. Whether it be through prize
draws, discounts or access to free services on your web site a newsletter should be seducing your
customers back to your web site
The topic of unsolicited email (spam) was brought up earlier therefore it is important that you gain
permission to send people a regular newsletter. How do you get permission? By asking for it. Place a
form on you web site where users can enter their email address and at the click of a button they will
receive the latest newsletter to their email address. In the first newsletter you send you will need to
again ask their permission to remain subscribed to the newsletter. This is to avoid people maliciously
singing up others to your newsletter. This form of newsletter is commonly known as a double -opt-in
newsletter. It is good practice to provide a means by which your readers can unsubscribe from the
newsletter and to remind them of this every issue. Then you will be sure that you are only sending it to
interested parties.
8.3 Communication is a two way street
If you don’t ask your customers if they like your web site then how will you know if it is any good.
When people complain businesses usually take notice. The problem comes when people don’t
complain. Customers may hate your web site, it might be so slow or so difficult to use that they give up
and never come back. There are plenty of ways in which you can measure the success of your web
site but they are mostly covered by the twin pillars of customer feedback and rigorous statistical
measurements.
Feedback is about directly asking the customers what they think. At its simplest level you could ask
“What can we do better”. While the results you get will not be particularly quantifiable, the advantage
of asking such an open-ended question as this, is that you may get answers you would never have
thought of.
On a more planned and statistical level you can ask web users specific questions and then get the
results straight into your database. One way of doing this is by operating online polls. There are several
companies that can provide you with the software to do this and it creates both an interesting feature
and a valuable tool for your site. For example:
Do you like the colour of our site?
Yes 24%
No 76%
How do you rate our customer service?
Excellent
28%
Good
35%
Average
18%
Poor
12%
I will never buy from you again
7%
The chances of people answering a single question like this are quite good but you might want them fill
in a full survey. For this, depending on how long it is, you may have to offer them some sort of bribe,
perhaps in the form of a discount. The advantages of a full survey are that you can gain a large
amount of statistical data to analyse.
There are now many ways in which you can monitor and measure the way people use your web site.
How many people have clicked through from one of your banner advertisements to get on your site?
Well you can measure these ‘click throughs’ as well as many other attributes about the speed and
usage of your web site.
What ever information you gather there is little point in it just sitting in a database, you need to make
use of it. With proper analysis and implementation you can make changes that will dramatically
improve the retail experience and your sales. Plus more you can solicit your customers opinions and
measure their actions then the more you can understand about the way they will use your web site.
8.4 Personalisation
Whether through your newsletters or on your web site you can present your customer base with more
bribes but this time in return for useful personal information. Whenever you sell to you customers over
the web then you will need to record all the personal information that they give you in a database.
Conventionally you could hold onto the data until the delivery of your product had been received and
then discard all the personal data, or you could, within the confines of the Data Protection Act, build up
a customer profile.
The most obvious advantage of building up a customer profile is that you can learn how to sell to that
customer better. It works the other way though. When you have a large database of customer profiles
you can start to draw conclusions about who buys your goods and services. This information can then
be used to target prospects with greater accuracy.
You can use many of the same techniques to gather personal information about a customer as for
gathering their opinions about you web site. After all an opinion says as much about the person who
says it, as of whom they are speaking.
As mentioned earlier, at the moment that a potential customer decides he wants to buy he should be
thinking of your brand and not your competitors. Through newsletters specifically but also through the
web more generally there are new opportunities to remind the new or existing customers of who you
are just at that critical moment. If you can predict when your customers will want your product then
you can remind them why they should buy your products and not your competitors. This is obviously
more important in close business-to-business trading relationships but it can work in retail relationships
as well. Simply by predicting your products life span you can be in position to offer a customer a
replacement product at the right time.
Trying to resell the same product is fine if you sell a disposable product like shampoo but it is not so
useful to keep asking the same customer if they would like another DVD player. It is here however
that you can use the information that you have gathered about your customers to sell them other
products that they may want. If you have sold a customer a DVD player then next time they come
back to your site you should be prepared to offer them discounts on movie DVDs, something you will
no doubt have offered when you originally sold them the DVD player.
8.5 Business to Business Web Marketing
When you go to buy your Heinz baked beans from your local supermarket you are expecting them to
stock it every time you go. This is usually a fair assumption as the food retailers and food
manufacturers have, over the years developed intimate relationships. The manufacturers also have
suppliers and possible some of their suppliers have further suppliers too, and in many cases they will
have equally intimate relationships. Looking after all these relationships is the process of supply chain
management.
The automation of orders between businesses in such a supply chain is not new and predates the web
its self therefore in this case we will treat it as an Internet Marketing issue and leave detailed analysis
for a text so entitled. Businesses to business relationships however are more fragile because the
quality of service and a good relationship between partners is more important. Product failures or
missed deliveries etc, can lose large contracts and the web does present new opportunities to help
manage these relationships so the topic does bare some comment.
Personalisation when you have many thousands of customers is important but it is far more important
if you deal with just a few significant clients. Retailer’s web sites often have an online shop to conduct
business with the public but the same idea can be scaled to suit intimate business-to-business
relationships.
For example a company could use the Internet to process regular orders from customers who can alter
their order details on line. This is an especially useful way of using the Internet because business to
business customers may often have large orders of many different products and wish to keep track of
delivery dates and times and of what was ordered.
9. Prospectus: Web Marketing - What’s that all about?
9.1 Concept
Part of this project involved producing a prospectus designed to inform a businesses audience about
web marketing and to advertise that it is a lot more than just sprinkling a few banners advertisements
around the web to link to your web site. The objective of the prospectus is to encourage the reader to
discover more about web marketing by either doing their own research or by reading this project
report.
The relevant textual content of the prospectus has been reproduced below but what the prospectus it’s
self looks like can be seen in Appendix B.
9.2 Content
What is Web Marketing?..
? ?
A whole organisational view of the web.
? ?
A customer centred approach.
? ?
A structured method of planning your web
involvement.
Why Web Marketing?..
? ?
You can spread your marketing message to millions around the whole world over the net.
? ?
You can offer your customers new services that will help keep them your customers.
? ?
Your web site provides a 24/7 sales rep and advert.
? ?
You can use the web to learn more about your customers and tell them more about you.
We already have a web site...
? ?
But do you know what it’s for?
? ?
Could it be damaging your brand?
? ?
How do you get more people to come to it?
? ?
Are customers satisfied with your web site?
? ?
...etc
What else do I need to know about?
Loads…
? ?
Setting up on the web from scratch.
? ?
The pitfalls of email marketing.
? ?
Business to business web marketing.
? ?
Security and legal issues.
? ?
How web users interact with the web
? ?
How to use Newsletters, Viral Marketing, personalisation, publicity on the web, etc...
Where do I find out more?
? ?
In the project report…
? ?
...or on the web of course.
What else is in the full report?
Case Studies of:
? ?
Microsoft’s Hotmail – The biggest provider of email services on the net, and it’s free!
? ?
npower – their comprehensive online strategy.
? ?
Meetings World – A small firm on the Web.
? ?
Boo.com – The bankrupt Internet clothing retailer. What lessons can be learned?
Web Marketing is not about just setting up online…
… but about using the web to attract and retain your CUSTOMERS!!!
9.3 Prospectus Design
The prospectus was designed using Microsoft Publisher 98 to set out the document and using Ms Paint
to produce the “Web” theme running through the document. In order to reduce printing costs and to
allow photocopying the prospectus was limited to a black and white design.
The ”Web” image on the front of the document was designed to fit in with the web marketing theme.
It shows a spider, representing a dotcom-enabled company, catching the dollar sign ‘fly’ in its web.
28 point text was used for the main heading and 16 point underlined text for the sub heading. Embolden
11 point text was used for the ‘small print’ on the cover.
The same font “Times New Roman” was used throughout the prospectus and all text was enclosed in
a ‘shadowed’ text box. 20-point text was used for questions and major points and 16 point text was
used for answers and details.
Bibliography
Boo Hoo; Ernst Malmsten, Erik Portanger and Charles Drazin, London: Random House,
(2001)
eBusiness essentials : technology and network requirements for mobile and online markets
; Mark Norris, Steve West, Chichester : John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., (2001)
Enabling eBusiness; W.S. Whyte, Chichester: John Wiley and Sons Ltd, (2001)
FTIT, Financial Times, “Internet freeriders under threat as websites charge into new
territory”; Stephen Phillips , Wednesday 6th February (2002)
Help, Microsoft Windows 95, The Microsoft Corporation (1995)
Internet marketing: strategy, implementation and practice; David Chaffey, Ricahard Mayer,
Kevin Johnston, Fiona Ellis Chadwick, London: Prentice Hall, (2000)
Internet marketing and e-commerce: company project: Brandon Medical Limited; Awoniyi,
Oluwarotimi Samuel, Leeds: University of Leeds, School of Computer Studies, (1999)
Intoduction to marketing; John Frain, London: International Thomson Business, (1999) 4th Edition
Profiting from the Internet; Virginbiz.net, (2000)
The Association for Conferences and Events”; http://www.martex.co.uk/ace/index.htm,
(2001), last accessed 28/4/2002
Web Marketing Today; Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt/ (1999), last
accessed 28/4/2002
World Wide Web Marketing; Jim Sterne, New York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc, (2001)
Appendix A – Project Evaluation
The period of production of the project was concentrated more in the months of March and April than
most projects due to external issues. This meant that I was unable to explore the idea of presenting my
report and it’s finding to a business audience, since there was less time to arrange this. Although this
was not one of the required objectives of this report it would have been an interesting addition.
The production of the prospectus would have been better if it had been possible to produce a colour
design. The overall impression of the prospectus is perhaps not as striking as would have hoped.
The writing of the project report did take longer than was anticipated and more time was spent
formatting the report to the relevant submission criteria than was expected. There was however,
plenty of time to review the report after completion although review was also done on a chapter-bychapter basis.
What went particularly well were the case studies. They show a good range of web marketing
techniques and it is hoped that these examples provide understanding of Web Marketing in action.
If I were to be starting the project again I might choose to take a greater look at real world advertising
and marketing campaigns than I have chosen to do this time around.
Overall the project has satisfied most of my personal objectives.
Appendix B – Reproduction of Prospectus
A sample prospectus is included in the paper submission of this report.