eMagine's B2B Web Strategy Blog focused on aspects of web marketing and web strategy.
While we couldn’t agree more, fortunately we didn’t have to say it; David Meerman Scott did, in his recent RainToday article.
David acknowledges off the top that his premise is a fairly sweeping generalization …but one based on his personal review of more than 1,000 websites. By and large, he says, agencies are conditioned by their print-ad DNA to make two key errors: [Read more...]
Recently, we blogged about how a poor website can seriously harm your business. Yet we continue to encounter prospects who give us umpteen reasons why they can’t get started – just yet – on a rebuild they realize full well they must do…
“We have to have a complete interdisciplinary team to do this, but Mr. Yoo is on sabbatical and Ms. Snapple is on a 6-week project in France.”
“Our people are just too tied up until after {the Syapsis ’07 show; year-end closing; our worldwide sales meeting; … (choose one or more)} to write our new content.”
“We can’t even start developing our content until Satchem Associates presents our new branding.”
It all boils down to this: they’re waiting for 100% of the resources to be available to do the absolutely perfect website re-build. Ah… Nirvana; if only there actually was such a place! In the real world, it takes an unusual alignment of the planets for 100% of the resources to become available at the same time; and absolute perfection is rarely achieved in any case. Also, by viewing it as one giant monolithic project (we call it the “Big Bang” model), it can look too intimidating to even start on. [Read more...]
Maybe you’ve heard some of the feedback, possibly whispered in the more dimly-lit corners of those industry networking meetings…
“Have you seen XYZco’s website? …it looks like it was done way back when Netscape went public!”
“Yeah, I went to their site… what I saw didn’t read anything like what I thought they were about.”
“I thought it was funny that their Events page invited me to ‘See us at HealthFair 2005’ …until I got to wondering whether they might be going out of business.”
Mostly, though, even your best friends won’t tell you how bad your website has become; you kind of have to figure it out for yourself. It’s really not all that difficult, though: you can get feedback from a small focus group; you can look at your log files and note the high percentage of quick exits; or you can simply put yourself in the place of a good prospect visiting your site for the first time, and ask yourself how the site would impress you and how well it would meet your informational needs. [Read more...]
Batman is scary looking. To say he’s intimidating would be an understatement. He dresses in black from head to toe, he has long, pointy ears, bulging muscles and spends his time beating people up. Don’t get me wrong; I realize he’s one of the good guys. He’s probably the coolest looking super hero of the bunch. That black cape and the array of gauges on his utility belt define the cutting edge of cool. Here’s my point. If you didn’t know who Batman was and what he stood for, you’d run as fast as you could in the other direction if you ever saw him walking toward you on the street.
Unfortunately, many companies aspire to emulate the “cool, super hero” look of the caped crusader on their home page without conveying two very important points –
1) What the company stands for.
2) How the company will attempt to rescue the web visitor in their time of need with easy to find information. [Read more...]
Strange question, right? …especially since you’re probably accustomed to us asking, “Can you afford not to….”
But recently we’re finding many companies (typically high-techs with internal technical resources) with first- and second-generation websites which have either been completely built in-house, or maintained and expanded upon in-house. It’s one thing if that expansion consists only of content edits (content is never difficult to move into a new system); but it’s another thing entirely when actual development has continued over a significant period of time. What they usually end up with is a site with a lot of disparate custom applications and lots of hooks to and from various databases; i.e., a site that has grown like Topsy. It’s scary even to touch it for maintenance, never mind for another major extension or complete refurb. [Read more...]
BtoB Magazine’s 2007 Marketing Priorities and Plans survey of 569 B2B marketing executives is out, and contains some surprising results. According to a nice summary of the study by the folks at MarketingVOX, more than three-fourths of B2B marketing executives say they plan to increase their online budgets next year.
Interestingly, the biggest slice of the larger online marketing budgets – nearly a third – will go toward website development. The next-largest pieces are email at 21.8%, search (18.7%) and webcasts (8.8%). Banner advertising and sponsorships are nearly off the radar screen, at under 6% each. A combined 7.6% is expected to be allocated to online video, blogs, RSS, product listings and lead-generation programs. Probably no surprise on this: customer acquisition will be the primary marketing goal for next year (said 60%+ of respondents), followed by brand awareness with less than 20% and customer retention at 11%. Among offline vehicles, direct mail and events will see increased spending, for 50 and 44 percent of respondents respectively. The one-time Goliaths of print, broadcast and outdoor advertising will not see significant increases in ’07, says the survey.These results are consistent with an offline-to-online shift in marketing spending that we’ve noticed among our clients for some time now. At this point, it would seem prudent for every B2B to ask themselves, “Are we on the train? …or on the tracks??”
OK, you’ve taken the plunge and just completed your first major re-design in several years. It looks great, says what everyone thinks it should say; but the response “out there” ranges from tepid to deafening silence.
A good bit of the beauty of the Web is that sites market themselves, to an extent; but they invariably do much better with some human help. A new or re-designed site needs some extra directed effort even more; otherwise it could feel like eons before the site starts contributing like everyone hoped it would. Here are some things you can do to jumpstart the effectiveness of your new website… [Read more...]
