Lecture 08

Creating an Effective Web Presence

Businesses have always created a presence in the physical world by building stores, factories,
warehouses, and office buildings. An organization’s presence is the public image it conveys to its
stakeholders. The stakeholders of a firm include its customers, suppliers, employees, stockholders,
neighbors, and the general public. Most companies tend not to worry much about the image they
project until they grow to a significant size - until then, they are too focused on just surviving to
spare the effort. On the Web, presence can be much more important. Many customers and other
stakeholders of a Web business know the company only through its Web presence. Creating an
effective Web presence can be critical even for the smallest and newest firms operating on the
Web.

Identifying Web Presence Goals

On the Web, businesses and other organizations have the luxury of building their Web sites
intentionally to create distinctive presences. A firm’s physical location must satisfy so many other
business needs that it often fails to convey a good presence. A good Web site design can provide
many image-creation and image enhancing features very effectively - it can serve as a sales
brochure, a product showroom, a financial report, an employment ad, and a customer contact point.
Each entity that establishes a Web presence should decide which features the Web site can provide
and which of those features are the most important to include.

Achieving Web Presence Goals

An effective site is one that creates an attractive presence that meets the objectives of the business
or organization. These objectives include:

 Attracting visitors to the Web site

 Making the site interesting enough that visitors stay and explore
 Convincing visitors to follow the site’s links to obtain information
 Creating an impression consistent with the organization’s desired image
 Building a trusting relationship with visitors
 Reinforcing positive images that the visitor might already have about the organization
 Encouraging visitors to return to the site

How the Web is Different

Most Web sites that are designed to create an organization’s presence in the Web medium include
links to a fairly standard information set. The site should give the visitor easy access to the
organization’s history, a statement of objectives or mission statement, information about products
or services, financial information, and a way to communicate with the organization. Sites achieve
varying levels of success based largely on how they offer this information. Presentation is
important, but so is realizing that the Web is an interactive medium.

Meeting the Needs of Web Site Visitors

Businesses that are successful on the Web realize that every visitor to their Web sites is a potential
customer. Thus, an important concern for businesses crafting Web presences is the variation in
visitor characteristics. People who visit a Web site seldom arrive by accident; they are there for a
reason.

Motivations of Web Site Visitors

 Learning about products or services that the company offers

 Buying products or services that the company offers
 Obtaining information about warranty, service, or repair policies for products they
purchased
 Obtaining general information about the company or organization
 Obtaining financial information for making an investment or credit granting decision
 Identifying the people who manage the company or organization
 Obtaining contact information for a person or department in the organization

Goals when Constructing Websites

 Offer easily accessible facts about the organization

 Allow visitors to experience the site in different ways and at different levels
 Provide visitors with a meaningful, two-way (interactive) communication link with the
organization
 Sustain visitor attention and encourage return visits
 Offer easily accessible information about products and services and how to use them

Trust and Loyalty

When customers buy a product, they are also buying that service element. A seller can create value
in a relationship with a customer by nurturing customers’ trust and developing it into loyalty.
Recent studies by business researchers have found that a 5 percent increase in customer loyalty
measures (such as proportion of returning customers) can yield profit increases ranging from 25
percent to 80 percent.

When a customer has an experience with a seller who provides good service, that customer begins
to trust the seller. When a customer has multiple good experiences with a seller, that customer
feels loyal to the seller. Thus, the repetition of satisfactory service can build customer loyalty that
can prevent a customer from seeking alternative sellers who offer lower prices.
Rating Electronic Commerce Web Sites

Two companies routinely review electronic commerce Web sites for usability, customer service,
and other factors. Many people have found these review sites to be useful as they decide which
sites to patronize. Unfortunately, one of the sites, Gomez.com, no longer publishes most of its
scorecards for electronic commerce sites. It now sells the information it gathers to the companies
that operate the Web sites and offers suggestions for improvements. BizRate.com provides a
comparison shopping service and offers links to sites with low prices and good service ratings for
specific products.

Website Usability

Research indicates that few businesses accomplish all of their goals for their Web sites in their
current Web presences. Even sites that succeed in achieving most of these goals often fail to
provide sufficient interactive contact opportunities for site visitors. Most firms’ Web sites give the
general impression that the firm is too important and its employees are too busy to respond to
inquiries. This is no way to encourage visitors to become customers!

Usability Testing

Only a small percentage of companies perform any usability testing on their Web sites; however,
more and more companies are realizing its importance and are doing some usability testing.

Customer-Centric Web Site Design

 Putting the customer at the center of all site designs is called a customer-centric approach
to Web site design. A customer-centric approach leads to some guidelines that Web
designers can follow when creating a Web site that is intended to meet the specific needs
of customers, as opposed to all Web site visitors. These guidelines include the following:
 Design the site around how visitors will navigate the links, not around the company’s
organizational structure.
 Allow visitors to access information quickly.
 Avoid using inflated marketing statements in product or service descriptions.
 Avoid using business jargon and terms that visitors might not understand.
 Build the site to work for visitors who are using the oldest browser software on the oldest
computer connected through the lowest bandwidth connection—even if this means creating
multiple versions of Web pages.
 Be consistent in use of design features and colors.
 Make sure that navigation controls are clearly labeled or otherwise recognizable.
 Test text visibility on smaller monitors.
 Check to make sure that color combinations do not impair viewing clarity for color-blind
visitors.
 Conduct usability tests by having potential site users navigate through several versions of
the site.
Connecting With Customers
The Nature of Communication on the Web

Most businesses are familiar with two general ways of identifying and reaching customers:
personal contact and mass media. These two approaches are often called communication modes
because they each involve a characteristic way (or mode) of conveying information from one
person to another (or communicating). In the personal contact model, the firm’s employees
individually search for, qualify, and contact potential customers. This personal contact approach
to identifying and reaching customers is sometimes called prospecting. In the mass media
approach, firms prepare advertising and promotional materials about the firm and its products or
services. They then deliver these messages to potential customers by broadcasting them on
television or radio, printing them in newspapers or magazines, posting them on highway
billboards, or mailing them.