By Tim Giles
As published in Marketing Magazine August 2006

The glint of the mirror ball caught the eye of the nervous website manager sitting in the gloomy velveteen corner. He eagerly tucked dollar bills into the garter of the web marketing consultant who teased in front of him throwing out the odd pearl of wisdom only to hide the good stuff behind some strategically placed feather or insultingly superficial Powerpoint graph, at the last moment. Then the cash ran out, the screen fell down and the Google results suddenly vanished.

A very stretched metaphor I guess, but the truth is it is hard to get good web marketing advice without being short-changed. E-commerce is being nobbled by an unwillingness to share fundamental knowledge and techniques even to those paying for the privilege. Web sites continue to be made without regard to search engine imperatives forcing costly redevelopments down the track. Agencies continue to play Secret Squirrel with clients forcing an ongoing dependency for even the most menial elements of the process. It is peep show consulting at its worst.

Successful web marketing is about much more than just getting a high search engine listing. In fact successful search engine campaigns can do long term branding damage if the customer experience is poor on arrival. Often the key problem is a lack of consideration as to what the purpose of the website is. Too much emphasis is being placed on fighting specific tactical battles rather than giving thought to the overall conduct of the war.

Many web businesses find themselves in a Catch-22 situation. With website components essentially becoming a commodity building a feature packed site has never been cheaper.

There are any number of turn key website products, open source modular components and web development companies looking to sell you a re-badged version of the last site that they built. There is a temptation to buy off the rack rather than taking the time to ensure that the end product will meet your individual business needs. But this can be false economy. The very standardisation of these components often makes it extremely difficult to make structural changes after launch. The problems compound. Therefore you can end up with an initially cheap site becoming increasingly expensive to operate over time. The much hyped information superhighway is littered with web sites parked in the emergency lane with their bonnets up.

The key to this is knowledge. Providing the right information in a timely manner to anyone who wants it, rather than artificially trying to keep online business in the dark ages so you can milk them with miracle cures. It is time web business was allowed to escape the toddlers pool and learn to swim on its own. In response to this a recent development in web marketing has been the arrival of a concept, which for want of a better name I will call Open Source Consulting. It is an idea that turns the traditional protective consulting model on its head and provides generic expert advice freely to help fast track marketers through the online learning curve.

The rationale is simple. The better informed the business community in general is about web marketing the greater the yield for all as the focus will shift from basic roadworthiness issues such as Search Engine Optimisation to actually driving the race car around the track. Business have been too accepting of poor web product for too long. Every day at Enedia we audit web marketing systems for clients that are dissatisfied with their web performance. On average at least sixty percent of the issues that we uncover would have been preventable if a bit of thought had been given upfront to the fundamentals, and for a fraction of the eventual cost of addressing them post launch. Often more thought is given to the colour scheme, images and fonts used than to how the site is going to help you make money. You need to ask some simple questions up front.

Why do YOU need a website? It is an easy enough question, but the answer to it will reveal a lot about the likelihood of your site earning its keep long term. If the first thing that pops into your head relates to your competitors or some vague notion of branding then you have missed the point. Websites are channelling media. They funnel visitors through pathways to and away from information. Unless you are actively providing convincing guidance in this process then the difference to your bottom line between having a website or not, is going to be minimal. Treat your site like a salesperson otherwise you might as well not have one.

The truth is that every business is selling something and the web provides opportunities to take products and services to new markets and manage existing ones more efficiently and effectively. The catch is that you need to have a plan otherwise you just end up drifting aimlessly. Web sites don't operate in a vacuum. Any developed site needs to both draw from your offline marketing endeavours and contribute in kind. A bolt on approach will contribute to a site underachieving or at worst becoming a cost centre.

Why do YOU need a web strategy? Having a well thought out strategy enables you to ensure that the driving reasons for having any web endeavour are fundamental to all decision points along its lifecycle. Otherwise websites can loose focus, become stale or simply whither on the vine. All web marketing initiatives will follow a basic circular timeline. They will pass through a conceptualisation and brainstorming stage (Innovate), a planning and implementation stage (Plan), a deployment and operational stage (Manage), and finally a review stage (Audit) the outcome of which then feeds back into the cycle. When a website loses focus it loses business.

The art is in the technique not the technology. It is in managing the evolution of the site through these cyclical stages. The biggest problem in talking about doing business on the web is that the fundamental understandings of the medium are so heavily influenced by individual experience. Unless you have some threshold understanding of how it all works it is easy to become seduced by visuals and a few spinning logos and funky dissolves can hide a truckload of functional weakness. One of the biggest traps for new players is getting caught up in the hype of the possibilities rather than focusing on your current needs. Don't take things at face value. It is not just the budgie at your grannies house that can become obsessed by shiny objects in its cage and forget to eat.

Most people learn about the web by clicking around a browser. The trouble is that most of the key operational interactions on websites occur under the bonnet or behind closed doors and are not immediately apparent to a viewer. Search engines display information but are not forthcoming regarding the rationale for their listings. Web development companies use Intellectual Property excuses to hide their run of the mill techniques from exposure. Platforms and applications are temperamental beasts and one man's funky animation is another's irritating browser crasher.

The reality is that web marketing is not rocket science but it does rely on some understanding of fundamentals. For starters it is important to realise that...

• The structure of your website will influence its performance in search engines and fixing this does not always require a full scale web development.

• Fresh content means weekly not monthly updates and there are products, services and tools available to reduce the effort required to manage this.

• The wording of text copy is more important than you realise. Potentially every word counts and relevance is king.

• Maximising the flow of customers through your site to the contact points is the most important thing that you can do towards increasing yield. Everything else will capitalise on that.

• Web years are like dog years. A long term web strategy document is 18 months not 5 years. No matter how much you spend now your site will be a dinosaur in a couple of years.

• The more relevant links you can get to your site the better it will do in search engines. Get them to link from a text keyword if possible rather than an image or logo.

• Most people wont get past your home page so put your best deals there and update regularly. Play your trumps and be aggressive.

As you can see most of the tenets are fairly simple and, important as they are in their own right, success is about much more than just Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or running Google Ads. SEO is the low hanging fruit that has the most margin and hence the most activity not necessarily the greatest impact. Even if you are looking to outsource everything to agencies it is important to realise that it needs to be all encompassing and that this needs to cover the following elements to be successful.

• For long term results in the free listings the site itself must be optimised. Off site mechanisms can work for a while but can always be switched off at a whim and you are back to square one. This will require a good relationship with a quality web developer and the ability to edit the site content internally without requiring technical training. SEO does not always mean a complete redevelopment, just knowing what to concentrate on.

• Pay attention to copywriting. Good copy works on a number of levels. It can provide keyword fodder for search engine spiders, it can actively sell the benefits of your wares, it can aid navigation and the effective use of the site, as well as being a key design element. Writing for the web is different from writing for print. It needs to be short sharp and direct.

• Use agencies but keep them on a short leash. Agencies are good at managing a lot of the really fiddly and potentially time consuming tasks because they can take advantage of economies of scale through the use of full time account managers. Unchecked they can quickly blow your budget on irrelevancies.

• There are a large number of tools and resources that can help you understand the implications of web marketing and refine the sites channelling of customers to hot spots where your key sales interactions take place (whether this be via shopping cart, email, telephone or walking in off the street). A good selection can be found in the Web Marketing Resources Directory at www.enedia.com .
Don't be afraid to experiment. The web provides the most cost effective marketing medium to do this with. It is also the most accountable as responses can generally be tracked quickly and accurately. Remember that in most cases the best expert regarding selling your products and services online is YOU. What you need is assistance in converting this experience for use in the new medium not being told how to suck eggs. Trust your instincts.