Breaking Through Website Clutter

Posted by New Media Philippines in Marketing Tips Jul 4th, 2009 | one response

One of the problems of traditional advertising is breaking through the clutter so that your marketing message can actually reach your consumer. When there were only 4-5 billboards along Guadalupe, they worked wonders. Now that we have a collage of images, people have the tendency to just ignore all of them unless what you put on the billboard can really grab attention. The same applies to your website. If you have so many elements flashing it in, then there’s a big chance that the website visitor will miss whatever it is you want him or her to click. Based on a lot studies published on books, a new user decides if he will stay or leave your site in just 3 seconds. That means that your website has to clearly communicate your marketing message and the desired action you want your prospect to take in a few seconds. More insights on this after the break.

Define the Objective of the Website
This is one of the biggest pitfalls of any marketer venturing into online marketing. You don’t just put up a website just for the sake of having one. Just like any other campaign, you have to make sure that you set objectives. Ask yourself these questions – what do you want your user to click when he lands on your home page? What will make the user come back to visit your website after he leaves? How will you communicate with your user again after he leaves your website? These are very important questions that will be the major factors of success for your site. If you can’t answer them clearly, then don’t bother investing on building one because it’s just a complete waste of money.

Objectives for Websites
Here are four objectives for websites that I’ve observed after reading through several internet marketing books and attending seminars in and out of the country. Note that there are a lot more reasons but these four are goals that have been mentioned time and time again.

1. Product Information
Personally, I find this to be the lowest possible objective in building a site. Basically all you want to do is to make an online product catalogue. Instead of doing fliers, you just put up the information on the internet and hope that the visitors will go through the items, pick something they like, and eventually head on over to your store to buy whatever it is he or she wants.

2. Forming a Community
Community websites are hubs for like-minded users to get together and discuss a topic close to their hearts. This is most evident in blogging, forums, and from my experience – online games. At Level Up, our game websites get hundreds of thousands of repeat visitors monthly because the gamers want to find out the latest promo, activity, or event about the game that they are playing. I keep telling my clients that they shouldn’t be building websites… they should be building communities.

3. E-Commerce
This isn’t all too popular yet in the Philippines but this is now the norm in the US. E-Commerce is selling items online. Companies that are into retail can do this on their own but there are also established e-commerce websites that will allow anyone to advertise whatever it is they are selling. Locally we have Sulit.com.ph, Auction.ph, and ebay.ph. Since credit card penetration here is still low (same with paypal), it will take a few more years before online shopping will boom. What you can do is to advertise items and offer more locally acceptable payment options like SMART Money, G-Cash, or even Bank Deposits. There are hundreds of e-commerce businesses that are currently running on Multiply using this payment model.

4. Building a Database
I strongly believe that all sites, regardless if you are a blogger, new business, or even a multinational company, should make sure that their websites can build their customer/user database. Building a database ensures you an open line of communication with your consumers and you can even get more information from them so that you can better profile your users better. One of my favorite local database building efforts was the campaign of TGI Fridays. They gave users discounts for giving them their contact information. I’ll write more about this in the coming days. This is by far my favorite topic when it comes to internet marketing.

Note that the four objectives above are NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. Your website can build databases while having a product catalogue that’s e-commerce enabled with a forum for your community. However, you have to pick one aspect first that you will focus on. You might even want to think of coming up with a different landing page for new users and your community. That way your marketing message hits the right people all the time. What’s important here is that the marketer drives the website, not the programmer.

I hope this short article helps you in your future internet marketing endeavors. Will write more about objectives, especially building databases, soon. Cheers!

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