Do You Have What It Takes To Do Your Website?
May 6th, 2008 by Charles
In a typical web project in my country, it seems like most of the people who wish to do websites are just paying to patronize their friends’ web design companies. Most Singaporean companies don’t believe in websites. Let alone for the website to do something for them. They can only identify websites as their “online brochure”. And I must say that is one very good use of it. And another thing is that they focus on using their email addresses to keep in touch with their customers whom they have been doing direct sales or referral sales with.
With that in mind, I can safely say that their website is going to fail. Fail in a sense that it is not a money-generating website. Fail in a sense that it makes no difference to having their own printed brochures in their hand (Just being more convenient to tell people their website address…)
As an Internet Reviewer, I have the responsibility to dissolve the myths about your website. And I hope this article is going to help those people who happened to see this blog post.
I can vividly remember how I was tasked to do a website back in 1998. The company simply told me the specifications of what they wanted, and I am expected to do magic to come out a portal for them. (Back in those Web 1.0 days, web portals are the latest fad!) When i started programming, I start to realize that I am supposed to write all the copywriting for them! Didn’t they realize that? In the end, I get to see lots of lousy copywriting from many websites, including mine as well.
The very first thing I was shocked to hear from a web designer is that the boss has actually tasked the work to them, telling them not to focus on marketing at all. That’s the single important factor that has killed the project. A website that is designed without the focus on doing permission marketing is going to be an expensive project because they are probably going to spend money on TV and expect it to work.
I was looking through the Gantt Chart of the whole project. I saw them focusing on getting the web development up in a few months. And the time taken for web promotion is 5 days! A website that can be on its own in 5 days… The only way I can think of is to use the old marketing technique… And that is what Seth Godin is talking about… Which is “interrupted advertisements”.
Interrupted advertisement is a very expensive method. You basically spend lots of money to make it work in TV and radio, telling people about your website when they are actually expecting to listen to great musics or even to watch their favorite shows! Even if I am your target market, I might have missed it anyway because I usually spend my time on other things since advertisements are going to waste my time.
A full web marketing campaign actually involves more than just making Google rich by paying to their advertisement system. It involves asking the people who are interested in your website to spread the word through emails. It involves making the people open up the address book of their gmail account, and spread the word about their favorite website they are at. It is all about permission marketing here.
Oh I really love Seth Godin’s marketing knowledge… I learned lots of things from this marketing genius. Here’s my permission marketing to expose you in my market!
I just bought a lot of his books from amazon.. Waiting for my books to arrive Singapore in June…
When you are working on a web project, try to ask yourself if you will want to participate in this very project as a visitor or not. If not, why? Why don’t you change it? It’s all about sitting from the view of a visitor. It’s all about thinking about the benefits of a visitor… IT IS NOT ABOUT WORKING ON THE FEATURES OF YOUR WEBSITE!
To get a project to mature and become a real social networking website, we have to obey the rules of the giant reputable players in the Internet. They are Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Digg, StumbleUpon, FaceBook, etc. If they say this is good, this must be really good! So, if you have to put a nofollow tag, just do it… Don’t be slapped by google in your page ranking (just like my blog).
Come on, we are working on a real project over here. Don’t focus on building a SCAM… If it doesn’t work, say so! The best way is to abandon the whole project! Internet has evolved to a stage where the consumers have lots of say. If you have a really good website, people will blog about it, talk about it in forums, or even mention about you in their articles. But if you have a scam website, you will also get equal exposure! In other words, you simply have to be remarkable… Don’t be average like most products out there… It’s not going to work. Not in this world anymore… Not even in the offline world because people will talk about you in the online world!
Then why people have been focusing on working on average products? That’s because of the fault from old marketing school of taught… In order to have a massive appeal, you have to buy TV ads, Radio ads, and even expensive internet banner ads. And after getting the massive appeal, those people have to come down to the retail shops out there to buy… So they have to produce massive number of products to keep stock. And to produce really good products in mass, it’s not going to work effectively because we have to take care of how we can absorb the cost of the leftover stock!
Hey TV Ads, get lost! They are so expensive…
Google has effectively changed the way of how business should be done. It’s a headshot every time. You only pay when people click on your ad. It’s that simple. And if you don’t make a sale, you have only spent $1 or even $0.10?
Take a good look at this old marketing cost:
$100,000 for TV Ad. 500,000 have seen your ad. 5000 have gone to your website. 500 bought your product.
How about new marketing cost:
$5000 for paying 5000 people visiting your website. 500 bought your product.
Effectively, you have saved $95,000. Is this math good enough to understand?
Again, please thank Seth Godin with his brilliant teaching that has drilled me to become a better reviewer.
Conclusion
You may think that I have deviated a lot of about what it takes to build a website. In fact, a website is a marketing tool by itself. It’s the actual store that your visitors are looking at. Of course, you have to learn about copywriting (which I am now learning… I just bought dealdotcom’s latest deal about copywriting. I think the materials are fantastic. Haven’t start reading yet though.). You have to work hand-in-hand with your web designer on your web project. It’s not about leveraging on them and forget about it. Of course yes you may do that for a greater business efficiency, but you can never tell your designer not to focus on marketing at all!
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