The World Wide
Web
Some of the exercises contain ads taken
from the Internet which you are asked to evaluate in light of consumer behavior
concepts as well as what makes for effective Web ads. Other exercises ask you to search the
Internet to find ads or to interact with consumer-oriented Websitess. The purpose of this section is to give you an
introductory background to the Internet to help you to do this.
The
World Wide Web (WWW or “Web”), the most popular component of the Internet (“Net”) and the main
commercial component, is that portion of the Internet servers
that support a graphical interface retrieval system which organizes information
into thousands of interconnected pages or documents called Web pages (home pages, start pages, welcome pages, landing pages)—the
introductory page or opening screen of a Websites), making navigation simple
and exciting. The Web is a digital
medium that combines sound, graphic images, video, and hypertext on a single
page. Each home page is like a bookcover
or gateway, acting as the starting point to additional information.
Content
providers are the parties that provide information on the WWW known as Websitess, which consist of one or more
Web pages with related information about a particular topic, usually overlaid
with graphics. Today marketing content
providers include companies, direct marketers, electronic retailers (e-tailers) and other organizations that
have their own Websitess, as well as Websitess that contain secondary
data. The WWW is that portion of the
Internet most heavily used by advertisers (the other components, which are
beyond the scope of this book, are instant messaging or electronic relay chat;
and Usenet discussion groups, newsgroups, and electronic bulletin boards or
boards, on which members can read messages on a given topic, post new messages,
and respond to existing messages.)
On the WWW Netizens—those who spend a considerable amount of time on the Internet
–can access an immense database of information in a graphical environment
through the use of programs called Web
browsers—software programs with a graphical user interface that enables the
user to display Web pages as well as navigate the Internet. In 1994, the first commercially available Web browser software that accommodated
graphics, Netscape Navigator, was
released (later followed by Internet
Explorer). People could now navigate
in cyberspace by pointing and clicking on icons, making the Internet almost as
user-friendly as the original online services (e.g., CompuServe, Prodigy, and
America Online, all born during the 1980s).
To connect to the Web, one needs to gain access in one of four ways:
through a commercial online service (e.g., America Online), a corporate gateway
(e.g., AT&T’s WorldNet Service,) a local Internet Service Provider (ISP),
or an educational institution.
Initially, people found it difficult to
find information on the WWW—it was like trying to find a book in the library
without a card catalog. This problem
created demand for another software program, the search engine—a computer program on the Internet where users could
type in a name, word, or phrase, and the search engine would troll the Net to
locate relevant information and Websites addresses. In rapid succession a number of programs with
catchy names like Yahoo! (founded in 1994 as a bare-bones directory founded by
E-commerce—the
sale of goods and services on the Internet—had its genesis when in 1995 Jeffrey
Bezos envisioned a new business paradigm that involved selling books online at
Amazon.com, and Pierre Omidyar launched eBay, an online marketplace.
Today, virtually every business, from the
local florist to global corporations, has its own Websites, and many
individuals have their own home pages. Since the online services and the search
engines are the gateways to all of these sites, they also attract the greatest
number of “hits”—landings on
the site that might represent multiple requests by the same visitor and so
doesn’t represent the number of unique users—and the greatest volume of
advertising. For many college students,
the WWW is the first source of information from everything from news to term
paper research to travel planning. For
advertisers, the Internet is a valuable component of an integrated marketing
communication (IMC) program and, like other media advertising and promotional
tools, is most effective when used in conjunction with the other program
elements.
The Internet is a digital interactive medium. It is interesting to note that initially
marketing was interactive, with the majority of marketing communication being
carried out by salespeople and face-to-face communication in retail
stores. Subsequently, marketers and
consumers relied more on mass communication, and, for the most part, interactivity
left marketing communications. With the
Internet, marketing communications increasingly involve interaction between
buyer and seller.
Advertising on the Internet is considered interactive advertising since, unlike
traditional advertising media, it offers the consumer an opportunity to respond
to the ad (as do other interactive media: CD-ROM catalogs and magazines,
stand-alone sales and information kiosks, and interactive TV). Interactivity is
a big plus since it gets the customer actively involved, leading to better
learning and often a sale. While some
observers believe these new interactive media will totally transform the nature
of advertising as we know it, others say that, like TV and radio before it, it
will simply be one more addition to the media mix. Nonetheless, given that consumers can make
purchases over the Internet, it also ads new channels of distribution. Most Internet advertising most closely resembles
broadcast advertising in that it has sound and motion.
An important aspect of consumer behavior
is the consumer decision-making process.
One important stage in this process, external
search for information, can occur online.
There are two general ways people search for information on the Internet. First is directed
search/prepurchase search (“shopping”) with purchase of one or more
particular products (and even brands) in mind.
Consumers know what they are looking for and usually have some existing
information to rely on (e.g., a producer’s name, brand name, or a set of terms
which describes the product category).
Here, they usually search for key/search terms in search engines as
described below. Second is browsing or casual search, with no particular immediate purchase in mind. Here, the user might not have an immediate
need or might have a less precise view of the information that might be
available. Browsing relies heavily on hyperlinks or links (electronic connections from one Websites to another
Websites) between documents, allowing the browser to navigate through
cyberspace in a non-sequential manner.
The Web has been likened to a library
lacking a card catalog—there is no central authority that lists all possible
sites accessible via the Internet. This
results in surfing—gliding in an
unplanned fashion from home page to home page.
There are, however, two organized ways to find information on the
WWW—general-purpose search tools such as browsers and search engines, and
specially designed tools, such as shopping bots:
First are Web browsers. You can search
by pointing your Web browser toward a uniform
resource locator (URL)—the Websites address or domain name, which
identifies a particular location (i.e., Web server and file on that server of
the site where the information you need is located). You can enter the URL for that site in the
search window (by clicking “File- Open Window”) of your Web browser, which
takes you directly to that site’s home
page. (The original six top-level
domains [TLDs] widely used in the U.S were: .com [commercial or “dot.com”],
.edu [education], .net [network operations], .gov [
A second organized way to surf the Web is
to use a search engine—a computerized
directory that allows users to search the WWW for information in a systematic
way. The big four sites are Google,
Yahoo!, MSN, and America Online. Others
include Alta Vista, Excite, HotBot (gives you a choice among three other search
engines too), Infoseek, and Lycos, among others. Each search engine contains collections of
links to documents throughout the world, and each uses its own indexing system
to help you locate the information you are looking for. Some search for titles or headers of
documents, while others search words in the documents, and still others search
other indexes or directories.
All search engines allow you to enter one
or more key words or search terms into the text box. They then return listings of hyperlinks. Alternatively, you can click
on a list of broad topics (art, business, entertainment, etc.) to go to
subdirectories or else home pages. Most
search engines use a best match search process and present search output (the “retrieval set”) in order ranked by relevance,
based on: how many of the search items were found in the document, how often
the search items were found in the document, where in the document the search
items were found, and proximity of the terms to one another.
It is not uncommon to find a large number
of hits; if this is the case, the rule of thumb is to scan the first 50 hits,
and if these don’t provide useful information, to consider redesigning the
search strategy. The retrieval set
usually takes the form of a list of Web pages representing the records
retrieved, ranked in order of their potential relevance to the query and
presenting a certain number (say, ten) at a time. Each of these incorporates a hypertext link
to the source document.
There are seven types of search engines:
(a) Hierarchical
search engines or directories
add value through human intervention in the assignment of subject headings to
records in databases. In a hierarchical
search engine, all sits fit into categories.
In addition, all sites are evaluated prior to inclusion. Such sites only contain submissions from
users—they don’t perform a search of the Web—hence, they are not comprehensive,
omitting a large portion of the information on the Web. Websites creators may their page for
inclusion in the evaluation process. The
maintenance of such directories is a labor-intensive process—therefore such
search services are selective in the sites that are included. However, such selection reduces the amount of
garbage one often encounters in an Internet search. Yahoo! is an example of a directory built on
a hierarchical, subject-oriented guide.
Others include Ask Jeeves, Excite, LookSmart, and Lycos. All sites have to fit into a certain
category/subject heading and subcategories (e.g., Stolichnaya vodka is indexed
as Business and Economy/Companies/Drinks/Alcoholic/Vodka). Going to Business and
Economy/Companies/Sports/Snowboarding/Board Manufacturers gives almost 60
companies that sell snowboards on the Web.
Searching is via menus of these subject headings and/or through keyword
searching.
(b) Collection search engines. Alta Vista,
Fast, Google, and Northern Light are examples of search
engines that use a spider—an automated program that crawls around the Web and collects
information. The advantage of these is
that they tend to be very comprehensive.
Because there are so many sites, they rank the best matches first.
(c) Concept search engines. Excite is an example of a concept search
engine—they use a concept, rather than a word or a phrase, as the basis for the
search. To narrow the original search,
one clicks on one of the sites found in that search to do another search. The percentage key gives the user an idea of
how close a particular site is to his or her concepts. For example, Ask Jeeves is a natural language search engine—it allows
users to type in natural-language questions.
Concept search engines can be a relatively efficient and focused way of
searching. The disadvantage is that they
aren’t as comprehensive as collection search engines.
(d) Meta-engines/meta search engines/mega-search engines search multiple search
engines simultaneously for words and phrases.
They then combine results, remove duplicate entries, and /present a
single listing. Examples include MetaCrawler,
Dogpile, and Debriefing (the latter is maintained by librarians who are
constantly refining and upgrading the site).
Some of these can be found in the list of search engines when you click
on the “search” button of your browser, and others are found by typing into the
Web browser “www.searchenginename.com (e.g., www.dogpile.com;
www.debriefing.com).
They are a quick way of searching across several search tools, although
they might not support some of the more sophisticated search facilities. There are also specialty search engines that
limit searches to specific topic areas such as law, business, and medicine, as
well as Web community sites such as www.theglobe.com.
(e) Robot search engines/search bots. This newest type of search engine acts like meta
search tools
and searches many Internet search engines in
parallel. They differ from meta search
tools in that they are loaded at the local workstation rather than operating in
client server mode. Also, they use
robots (“bots”) or intelligent agents to roam the Internet
in search of information. Shopping bots are specialized search
bots designed to locate and compare products.
They take a query, visit shops that might have the sought product, bring
the user the results, and present them in a consolidated, compact format that
facilitates comparison shopping. Many
also provide access to an order form.
Some shopping bots are comprehensive in coverage (e.g., MySimon.com,
NetMarket.com, Bizrate.com, Clickthebutton.com, Dealtime.com, and
Planetretail.com) while others focus on a specific product range (e.g.,
BargainBot for books, Bargain Finder Agent for Music and CDs, Gift finder for
gifts, Price Scan for computer software and hardware, and insuremarket.com for
insurance needs). Most shopping bots
claim to eliminate the searching necessary to identify the right product at the
best price.
Once a search has been performed, the user
needs to assign relevance rankings to the items retrieved. The intelligent agent uses this information
in the next iteration to modify its search operation. For example, Travelocity.com finds the best
deals for your traveling needs, while BargainFinder (www.BargainFinder.com) does so for
your music needs. Some Web retailers
have designed their sites to either refuse the robot admission or to confuse
the robot, as they wish to avoid a “cheap” image.
(f) Search
engines for specific sites.
E-tailers with large catalogs of products, such as Amazon.com, need a
search engine to support users in navigating their way through the
cyber-store.
Some search engines (e.g., Yahoo! and
Lycos) serve as portals
(entry/starting points) for Internet exploration, and they typically offer
e-mail, news, search, and games. America
Online is a well-organized Web portal from which a Web surfer can link/jump to
many locations highlighted by AOL.
Commercial Websitess pay portals to be featured in this way. Such portals can be vertical—serving one industry or market (such as an ethnic market)
or horizontal—serving multiple
industries and markets.
Which search engine should you use? The best search engines cover about 30
percent of the estimated pages out there. Drs. Steve Lawrence and C. Lee Giles
of the NEC Research Institute of Princeton, NJ found northern Light, Snap, and
Alta Vista as reported in the July 8, 1999 issue of the scientific journal Nature to index more of the Web (16%)
than other popular search engines. In
terms of freshness (the time it takes a search engine to index changes made to
pages) they found Alta Vista, Excite, and Hotbot to be the most up-to-date
search engines. Also popular are Yahoo!,
GoTo.com, MSN, and Lycos. However, by 2002, Google had become so dominant that
to “Google” something or someone—that is, to search the Web for that thing or
person—had become considered a verb.
It is a good idea to use multiple search
tools since there is surprisingly little overlap between the major search
engines. You will get different results
with different search engines because retailer and manufacturers pay to be
linked to search engines. Meta-engines are efficient since they
search multiple search engines simultaneously.
There are also specialty search engines
that limit searches to specific topic areas such as law, business, and medicine
as well as Web community sites such as www.theglobe.com. These niche or “vertical” search engines only
search within a narrow band of interest.
They are sometimes called vortals
(a contraction of “vertical” and “portal”), and they might also offer expert
reviewers and provide the “best” recommended sites in a given area.
(g) ) Blog search engines such as
Technorati, Blogdigger, BlogPulse, blog.iderocket.com, or Google Blog
Search. If you’re looking for very
current information (such as today’s buzz), these are useful.
Searching is on the basis of full text
and/or product categories.
The procedure for searching is:
·
Use a plus sign (+) in front
of a word to indicate that it must appear in each Web page of the query results
(e.g., hotels+San+Fransisco). Without
the plus sign the word isn’t considered mandatory.
·
Use a minus sign (-) in front of any word that shouldn’t be
included in any Web page in the search results (e.g., Cars-Ford)
·
Enclose a multiword phrase in quotation
marks to tell the search engine to list only sites that contain those words
in that exact order (e.g., “
·
AND works like the plus sign,
indicating that all the words joined by AND must appear in the document (e.g.,
to find documents that contain the words wizard,
oz, and movie, enter: wizard AND
Oz AND movie).
·
OR joins words, at least one of
which must appear in the document (e.g., to find documents that contain the
word dog or puppy, type: dog OR puppy).
OR is often used to broaden a search (e.g.: (travel OR tourism OR
cruises OR cruising OR vacations OR vacationing OR vacationers) AND (Caribbean
OR Bermuda OR Jamaica OR Virgin Islands))
·
AND NOT or OR NOT is similar to the minus sign and is used to exclude words
in the document, words that are likely to match your search requirements but
have nothing to do with the search topic. (Thus, to find documents that contain
the word pets but not the word dogs, enter: pets AND NOT dogs; e.g.:
Dolphins NOT NFL).
·
NEAR should be used when words
should be near each other (e.g., Moon NEAR River).
·
() Parentheses are used to group portions of
Boolean queries together (e.g., to find documents containing the word fruit and either banana or apple type
“fruit AND (banana OR apple”).
·
Title search allows you to search for
titles of web documents (e.g., “title:Mars” or “t:Mars” will retrieve all documents
with the word “Mars”).
·
* Wild card (e.g., eco* will return
economy, economics, ecology, etc.)
+ Some Hints for
Searching:
·
Be specific. Tying in “DVD Players Reviews” will give you
a better set of results than the more general “DVD Players.”
·
Add quotation marks. Keep exact phrases and proper names intact by
enclosing them in quotation marks. Use
words most likely to be used (e.g., try “John F. Kennedy” and “born” rather
than “John F. Kennedy” and “birth date”).
Use
the “advanced Search” feature tool. For
example, you can scour only certain kinds of documents by excluding pages with
certain words.
3. After typing the search request, click on the search button. (The search engine then searches the entire Web or a subset of the Web to locate sites meeting your search parameters.)
Websitess
are also discovered via word-of-mouth communication as well as checking
favorite Websitess on others’ home pages.
Overview
Of all the options available to Internet
advertisers, the WWW holds the greatest potential. It is like no other communication medium
because of its ability to combine several of the unique qualities of the other
media (i.e., print, sound, and visual) into one, while allowing for two-way
communication between advertiser and customer.
It allows for detailed and full-color graphics, audio transmission,
delivery of in-depth messages, 24-hour availability, and two-way information
exchanges between the advertiser and the customer. A Web page can provide corporate and product
information as well as allow the consumer to make a purchase. The primary difference between the Web and
the other three cyberadvertising media is that while they are push media and might therefore be
resented by consumers, the Web is a pull
medium—the consumer actively searches for the advertiser’s home page.1
Consumer benefits for browsing using the Internet include: convenience,
saving time, saving money, breadth of information, and comparison
shopping. Te key to online marketing is
customization and one-to-one selling.
Amazon.com, for example, knows each of its customer’s preferences, so it
can offer books to suit each individual’s interests.
Web audiences
As in offline marketing online marketing has two broad target markets: consumers and businesses. The consumer market (business-to consumer or “b-to-c”) is upscale and leads an active lifestyle; they use the Internet largely to save time and for convenience. Although the Internet consumer market grew rapidly in the late 90s, growth has slowed in the early twenty-first century due to the “digital divide” between those who can and can’t afford PCs and online access, the existence of some adults who feel no need for the Internet, and ex-users who feel the Internet doesn’t meet their needs. The trend in target marketing on is toward niche marketing. Consumers are more likely to spend time on a site if there is information of specific interest them. For instance, profitable pet supplier Waggin’ Tails specializes in high-margin products, unlike the defunct Pets.com, which tried to do it all.
Web objectives. Unlike other media, the Internet is a hybrid
of media. In part it is a communications
medium, allowing companies to create awareness, provide information, form and
change attitudes, and create a brand or organizational image, all communications objectives. But the Internet is also a direct response
medium, allowing users to both purchase and sell products via e-commerce—the direct selling of goods
and services on the Internet (or, from the consumer’s perspective, we guess you
could call it, uh, Windows shopping).
Thus, firms can have both communications
objectives and sales objectives,
as well as miscellaneous
objectives.
Communications
objectives include:
·
Create awareness. Web advertising can create awareness about
both the company and its products and brands.
·
Disseminate information. Early use of the Internet for commercial
purposes was to provide in-depth information about a company’s products and
services. In b-to-b marketing, this is
virtually mandatory as most buyers now expect a firm to have a site providing
detailed information about its offerings.
In the government sector contracts are often put out to bid on the
Internet. Many consumer marketers use
the Internet to communicate more product information, with ads often referring
consumers to the Websites. A surrogate
for amount of information gathered is amount of time users spending on a site—stickiness.
·
Create and change attitudes toward the organization and
its offerings via persuasion and preselling.
·
Create an image. Many Websitess are designed to reflect the
image a company wishes to portray.
> However, banner ads tend to
be poor at this.
Miscellaneous
objectives include:
·
Improving customer service. Companies can improve customer service and
build customer relationships by providing information, answering inquiries, and
offering an opportunity to register complaints.
·
Increasing distribution. Websitess can be used as
an exclusive Websites or in addition to bricks-and-mortar
sites (traditional retail stores) for product distribution. Most successful are businesses that operate
in both the physical and virtual worlds, allowing consumers to toggle back and
forth between the two. Also, such
fence-straddlers are able to leverage their existing assets of stores,
catalogs, powerful brands, and the like across both realms. Any company can spend $25,000 to put up a
Websites, but then the must spend $150 million building distribution outlets
and customer service centers, plus launching a marketing campaign; traditional
marketers already have they in place.
·
Creating customer
experiences. This is the total experience the customer has
with the brand on the Internet—including how customers enter and navigate what
type of visuals and movement they get, how they get a response and in what form
or format, and simply how the online brand experience “feels.”
·
Developing a relationship
with the customer (relationship
marketing) by encouraging frequent interaction with the site.
·
Build a database by having consumers register with the site, i.e., fill out
an electronic form requesting additional information (e.g., name, e-mail
address, mailing address or zip code, and basic demographic information).
·
Gather research information. Companies can learn more about their target
markets – demographics as well as buying behavior, a practice known as profiling and yielding profile information. However, a privacy issue has arisen regarding the quantity and nature of
information collected about consumers.
Information is sometimes collected with the consumer’s agreement, as
when they fill out surveys or registration forms in return for receiving sales promotions
like samples and electronic coupons.
However, data is often also collected involuntarily without their
awareness due to the use of. cookies (not
the Mrs. Fields type!)— tiny files (information tags) placed on (downloaded to)
users’ hard drives by servers on Websitess they visit (usually without their
knowing it) so that a Websites can identify a particular person—or at least a
particular browser (preferences, login information, and so forth)—the next time
it visits a particular site. Cookies collect
clickstream information (literally
the sequence of pages and what on those pages buyers click on and where when
online) about your interaction, including where you visit, how long you stay
there, how frequently you return to certain pages, where on a site you click,
and even your electronic address. They
allow Websitess to give users different information depending on whether they
are first time vs. repeat visitors.
Cookies came about because Websitess needed to recognize return visitors
to offer them customized information and service. However, cookies raise privacy concerns for
visitors, who are typically unaware of the cookies (unless they’ve programmed
their computer to warn them when a cookie is about to be placed). But, cookies don’t personally identify Web
users. Names, addresses, lists of
favorite Websitess, and other backend records of consumer activity aren’t
accessible via cookies; rather, cookies build marketer-specific anonymous
profiles of visitor activities. Simply,
users are tracked anonymously with encrypted identification numbers.
Also used to gather surfers’ personal
data is spyware—programs secretly
downloaded without users’ consent and
buried in a user’s computer to monitor their online activities, resulting in
delivery of pop-up ads. Another is known
as adware—software hat Internet
advertising firms download to PCs with user permission that tracks users’ Web
surfing and feeds the data to an advertiser.
The adware then hits surfers with pop-up ads based on their interests.
1. Banner advertising. Banner ads (display banners), the most basic and common form of Web
advertising, are paid placements on other complementary corporate,
entertainment, or media Websitess that have high traffic. They resemble billboards, spread across the
top or bottom of a Web page, and contain editorial material. They usually include a link (or hot link) to the advertiser’s own home
page. Thus, the ad must not only catch
attention but also entice visitors to click on the ad to jump to the
advertiser’s home page (therefore more and more of them are animated). Through hyperlinking to the advertiser’s home
page, the customer can learn more about the particular product.
Many high-traffic sites that provide
information content (e.g., Yahoo! And HotWired) contain banner ads, allowing
the advertiser to get a high level of exposure.
Other sites have lower exposure but are more targeted (e.g., a running
shoe brand could advertise on a site devoted to information on running). Banner ads sometimes contain electronic
commerce capability, i.e., products can be ordered directly from the banner
ad. A variation on the banner ad is the skyscraper—a tall, skinny banner ad
Banners have evolved. In 1999, they were like print ads, containing
simple graphics and text. By 2001 banner
ads could alternate images, by 2003 some contained animation, and by 2006
rich-media technology let viewers select from a rotating wheel of embedded videos
and use pull-down menus without leaving the Web page.
A cousin of the banner ad is the button ad (a.k.a. tiles)—an ad smaller than a traditional banner ad. Buttons resemble icons--side of a Web page,
and they contain only a corporate or brand name or a logo. Also, ads larger than traditional banner ads
are gaining popularity among online advertisers.
Attention-getting elements of banner ads include copy, color, and graphics, in that order. Some tips for creating effective banner ads include:
·
Include action words, e.g., “press,” “enter,” and “click here.”
·
Use animation—it can increase response rates by 30 to 40%.
·
Use bright, contrasting colors rather than nondescript dull
colors such as beige and gray. Best are
yellow, orange, blue, and green, rather than reds and blacks.
·
Relevance of the banner ad to the Websites on which it appears is important. Both its content and design/style should
relate to the Websites.
·
Interactivity is important—users expect this.
With lower click-through rates today (less than .1% today, vs. .25 to .5
percent in 2000 and 10 to 40 percent when banner ads were first introduced),
banners must display their interactivity even before they are clicked on.
·
Size
is important—as in print ads, larger sizes are generally more effective at
attracting attention and interest, but they also cost more.
·
Updating the banner ad constantly is important since the life of a banner ad is
very short.
·
Yellow, orange, blue, and green
are the best bright colors.
·
Animation gives you more value since it allows increased space by rotating copy.
·
Download times for 28.8 modems shouldn’t be too slow.
This requires judicious use of enhancements such as graphics, animation,
and sound.
·
Location of the ad in the lower corner of the Web page next to the scroll
bar increases the number of ad clicks
(the number of times users click on an ad banner) and click-throughs (or click rate)—
the percentage of ad views that result in an ad click; how often a viewer
responds to a banner ad by clicking on it to go to the advertiser’s home page.
·
Incentive banners increase click-throughs.
·
Company and/or brand name should be included to generate awareness.
Unfortunately, the percentage of consumers
who click on banner ads has rapidly declined because consumers realize that
they take them away from the Websites they are visiting, as their novelty has
worn off, and as their static nature has made them boring compared with newer
technologies. Today less than .25 to .5
% of consumers click on them, vs. 10 to 40 percent when banner ads were first
introduced. Also, banner ads are
considered to be intrusive and annoying by many consumers. Plus, they increase page load times due to
their complex graphics and animation. In
fact, there are now ad blocker
programs (e.g., AdWipe) that allow consumers to load pages sans banner
ads. Consequently, some advertisers are
ditching banner ads totally, instead using old-fashioned TV spots to drive
traffic directly to their websitess, rather than through intermediaries like portals.
The ideal is to make
Internet advertising have the visual impact of TV and the interactivity
available on the Internet. The trend is
to make ads more involving and interactive.
Thus, increasingly advertisers are using enhanced banner ads—banner ads with complete information already in
them, as opposed to having to click for additional information. Some also include rich media—enhanced video, audio, and animation in online
advertising—based on software technologies, like Macromedia’s Flash animation,
which is now built into browsers so plug-ins aren’t needed, or on Shockwave,
Java, Acrobat, and Enliven —audio plug-ins, media streaming, or some other
enhancement. Generally, these ads with
full motion, animation, and sound perform better than traditional banner ads.
However, their complex graphics and animation increase Web page load times
Also increasingly popular are
keyword-activated banner ads or smart
banners that pop up when users input keywords in a major search
engine. For instance, auto-by-tel.com
could buy a smart banner that is prompted only when users type the keyword
“auto.” Cost ranges from a few hundred
dollars a month to about $500,000 per
day (about the same as a :30 on a very popular TV show) on leading portals like
&Yahoo and MSN, depending on the number of visitors and how targeted they
are. Thee spots are so hot that the
portals, like the TV networks, sell them long in advance, Interactive
banner ads, which came into being in the mid-2000’s, spring to life when
the Web surfer crosses them with the cursor (no click necessary).
2. Corporate home pages/Websitess. Another common form of Internet advertising is to establish a corporate home page and a number of linked subsequent pages providing further information that serve as a Websites. Here, a marketer makes available detailed information about the firm and its products. These range from being reminiscent of product brochures to full-fledged showrooms. Domain names (URLs) should be intuitive or easily guessed (e.g., WWW.companyname.com) and descriptive to increase chances that visitors who don’t know the domain name can find your site. Domain names should also be unique and memorable. Firms such as idNames and GoDaddy Software, Inc. assist companies in identifying, registering, and managing domain names. Others, like 1 & 1, offer hosting that includes maintenance of domain names, website connectivity, e-mail accounts, and some limited applications for as little as about $10 per month.
The home
page (welcome page, start page) represents the consumer’s
“first look’ at the websites. Therefore,
it plays a pivotal role in gaining and maintaining consumers’ attention, either
driving them further into the We site or away from it. Home page “essentials include information
clearly identifying the company and its brands, what is inside the Websites,
and how to contact the company. The home
page can be one to several pages long, but short is usually better, with
hyperlinks offering routes to additional information. Including much more than these “essentials,”
such as complex graphics, might make the home page too complex and slow to
download. The home page can be thought
of as an alternative “storefront”—a location where people can come to find out
more about the company and its products.
First, a Websites must be designed or
built. The nature of these sites
varies—some companies treat them as a brochure
to promote their products; others try to create a “cool” information and
entertainment environment that people will often visit; and still others treat
it as an online catalog store or virtual storefront where merchandise can
be purchased (e-commerce).
As we’ve seen, the Web is a multimedia
environment, combining attributes of different media: sight (print), sound
(radio, TV, film), and motion (TV and film).
In addition, it offers two-way interactivity—the user can interact with
the ad, requesting information and offering opinions.
Integration of Web advertising with
off-line advertising media is important (integrated
marketing communication). However,
just as, say, radio advertising can’t simply be a transfer of the audio from a
TV commercial, neither can Internet advertising simply be a transfer of offline
advertising. When designing an Internet
ad, one must consider the medium’s creative strengths and weaknesses, just as
one does with any other medium. The
Internet’s greatest strength is the detailed information that can be
provided. Thus, in an IMC campaign,
media such as TV and print can be used to develop a brand image, and the URL
can direct people to the Websites to provide detailed information and to help
close the sale. (Recall that the two major Internet advertising objectives are
communicating information and making a sale.)
Good Websitess are characterized by: 1.
substantive information, 2. entertainment value, 3. ease of use, and 4.
interactivity. Regarding substance,
the number one thing people seek online is—information! Content (news, data, and entertainment) is
king. Thus, most Websitess contain rich
product descriptions, mimicking brochures and posters. Information should be of interest to
readers. Information on products as well
as sales/promotional offers should be constantly updated to keep people coming
back for more and to keep them abreast of new products and services, sales
promotions, and other developments. The
bottom of the home Web page should state when the page was last designed or
updated (like “freshness dating” on perishables such as milk and beer). Especially the opening screen should resemble
a poster. Hyperlinks should be used to
allow customers who want more detailed information to “drill down” to get
it. This way, users who don’t want too
much information don’t feel overwhelmed.
Give a brief overview of your product, and then allow users to click
into specific areas they wish to learn more about. It is also useful to post a
FAQ (frequently asked questions) page.
Since Internet shoppers can’t ask clerks
for help, more Websitess now also offer advice.
Godiva.com features a gift selector that helps shoppers budget, and
Discovery.com (the Discovery Channel) launched a telescope-buying guide.
When providing information, keep in mind
that the Web is all about KISS—“keeping it short and sweet” (or, “Keeping it
simple, stupid,” as they say in the army).
Studies show that Web surfers don’t read---they scan, so your site
should be scanable. Studies consistently
reveal that content and headlines grab the visitor before photographs and other
design elements. Graphic design is the
second-most important skill needed to develop a Websites. The top-ranking skill? Writing!
The shorter, quicker, and more to the point sentences and paragraphs
are, the better. Bulleted items should
be used where there is lots of information to present. Also, use lots of one or two-sentence
paragraphs, listed items, and clear and consistent identifiers marking
important statements and the starting and ending of sections. Registration forms should also KISS.
Key visual elements include eye-catching graphics but not so complex that they require long download times (one way to achieve this is to provide small visuals and make them clickable to larger versions). Text should be simple dark (ideally black) type (one or at most two typefaces) on a contrasting background. Type should be large enough to read on small screens. Lists should be short (the “rule of ten” says, like The Ten Commandments and David Letterman’s lists, they should be ten or less.)
While hard
sell sites might attract surfers
seeking product information, they are unlikely to attract and capture the
interest of more casual browsers. To get
most people to visit to your site requires a second important characteristic—an
entertaining
soft sell approach by using goodies
such as games and downloadable ringtones and podcasts. For example, the Cartoon Network site allows
kids to direct the action in an interactive cartoon. Videos and online video games are growing in
popularity. A company called YaYa
develops software for marketers it calls “avergaming,”
which integrates advertisements and product placements, with the marketer
inserting its product or logo throughout a game. For example, Honda’s game lets players choose
a Honda and then race around city streets that are plastered with Honda
logos. The “Chrysler Get Up and Go”
campaign gave Websites visitors a test to determine their travel personality
and uncover which of the automaker’s vehicles suited their profile. The Suave Naturals personality test guides a
woman to reveal her “fragrance personality.”
Vanilla Coke’s Mystery game involves finding “the boss” by asking
animated suspects sitting in a nightclub and uncovering clues. The Vanilla Coke brand appears throughout the
game. Each week there is a different
puzzle, and if you solve that week’s puzzle you win a prize, such as a Vanilla
Coke T-shirt or CD. At
subservientchicken.com, visitors could command the “chicken”—a man in a tacky
chicken suit in an equally tacky living room—to do any stunt they wished. (It
was an offbeat take on BK’s longtime message: “Have it your way.”) Advertisers can gather consumer data such as
e-mail addresses and zip codes as a condition of playing.
A sticky
site is one that is able to attract repeat visitors and have them stay for
extended time periods. Rational branding emphasizes the need
for a Websites to provide unique information and entertainment to keep visitors
returning for long visits. For example,
Proctor and Gamble’s beinggirl.com promotes the Always and Tampax brands
through this teen advice site. The “ask
Iris” section answers questions like, “Are you more likely to be eaten by a
shark f you’re on your period?
A third crucial websites characteristic
for both hard information seekers and casual browsers is ease of use, achieved
through multiple navigational tools—the
more navigational tools available, the more likely a visitor will like the
site. Navigational tools help guide
visitors around the site; examples include hyperlinks, home and section icons
(“click here” blocks), a site-specific search engine, a site map which is
accessible from every page, a navigation bar (left side of screen preferred),
gift finders specific to gender or age, and a site index. These should follow the KISS rule. To help KISS, Websitess should be designed to
present a minimal amount of information on the top pages, with more information
readily available to those interested in more details by clicking on
links. The fewer clicks needed the
better, because people get lost or bored.
Ease of use is also achieved through having graphics and information
that can be easily and quickly downloaded.
The trend is toward streaming
media—which launches moving images, video, or audio without the need for
downloading. Americans are increasingly
using faster broadband connections (such as DSL and cable modems) that will
allow richer and higher quality sound and audio to come into their homes. Such streaming ads command much higher
click-through rates than traditional banner ads. Also, the checkout procedure should be
straightforward—two-thirds of shoppers abandon their shopping carts, many
because they get lost here, due to factors such as failures with account
setups, a checkout process that is too long, checkout requiring too much
personal information, poor site navigation, long download times, and confusing
error messages, and unexpected shipping costs added on (therefore shipping
information and costs should be included as early as possible in the checkout
process. Back buttons should take
shoppers back to the product page to recheck an item if they wish, and the
number of pages and clicks needed to go through to complete a transaction
should be at a minimum. Some e-tailers
email consumers to remind them of searches they’ve made to help stimulate a
purchase, while other sites remind hem of earlier searches when they log back
in.