Time - A not so hidden cost to Web Marketing

This topic addresses directly the difference between marketing on the web, and marketing just about any place else.

Time is a variable web owners must take into account in the planning stages for marketing efforts more than any off-line enterprise. Some of the reasons are obvious, some are hidden.

• Search Engines Move Slow
• Browsers often don't return
• Client bases change
• Alterations and Changes can slow you down

Search Engines Move Slow

Most search engines take several months to register any change to your web site. If your site is optimized (using site-maps, and well linked pages) then it might take less time, but it will always take more than a week on some engines, and a month on others.

Off-line enterprises can create more traffic and browsers by putting in full page adds, using Radio or TV commercials, or even those revolving spotlights. Web sites can be advertised this way, but as history has shown, the effect is not the same, and the ROI is often not worth the risk. Especially if you are trying to do something for a particular date.

Browsers often don't return

One of the key points of information analytic programs provide is your return rate. How often do visitors return to your web site?

Off-line marketing can put out flyers, visual reminders, and even barbeques to remind their visitors to come back on a particular day, and even a time. This works because the visitors are local people, who live or work in the area.

Web visitors, on the whole, aren't looking for a place to hang out, and have little interest in automatic loyalty. They aren't looking to 'sign-up', 'make a deal', 'remember a brand', or ... just come back. They might bookmark your page, but bookmarks are cheap, and forgotten in an hour's time.

Calous? Not so. If all you have is a store front with little value-content on your web site, you can't expect people to care much about your place. You offered them nothing they were interested in, why should they come back? This is an important question for any on-line venture. Why should a user come back to your web site?

Something else we need to consider is the growing number of tools which give users previews to search engine listings priort to them clicking on your link.

Client Bases Change

You might be thinking that this is referring to your demographics, but its not. I'm referring to the topical interest level of your web site.

Keeping a look at your keyword hits (what keywords people are really using to find your web site on search engines), you will notice that over time these key words change, whether you have changed anything on your web site or not.

Take for example www.webadept.net. You might guess that most of the keywords used to stumble upon this back-water web blog have to do with writing, web pages, SEO perhaps, or even perhaps George Bush.

As of the time of this writing, the largest traffic rate (by far, over 10 times the amount of any other key word set or phrase) is Habinero Recipes.

Search engines give web searchers, what they are looking for. They adapt and change according to the interests, and values of their users, not the web sites. They don't care that I'm a web writer, who is looking for customers interested in building or improving their web sales. They are interested in what people are searching for, and where that subject resides.

So you can't rely on hit counts alone (which I will get into further in a later section). Hit counts tell you I got 1000+ visitors this week. If you don't realize any better, then you might think this was a good thing. But really, it was not very profitable.

Alterations and Changes can slow you down.

Let's say you have some pages on your web site that deal with a topic your company is no longer interested in, so you are going to remove those pages, and put new pages up that focus more clearly on your company's direction and purpose. Well done.

After a couple of months go by, you find that your web site, which use to sport a Page Rank of 5, and showed up on the first page for several key word searches, is now a PR of 2 and no where to be found.

What happened?

You removed pages from your web site. The listings the search engines were using are no longer there. This lowers the value of your site, which tends to have a cascading effect. Trouble is, you aren't going to know about it for a few months (right about mid-November) and you aren't going to be able to get it fixed until February, or March.

As I mentioned in the previous point, search engines use your web site for all kinds of topics (you hope), so you may not really understand the value of particular pages. This is a great reason to use your analytics program to monitor page usage, and length of time spent on pages.

Great reason, yes, but beside the point really. You should never remove a page from your web site... ever. Don't do it.

Unlink the page from other pages, and from menus. Don't refer to it any longer. Perhaps put a note on it, that your company has changed direction and the information is no longer valid (add to the page, don't remove the content from the page) and leave it alone.

Very different from the off-line world. I can hear the collars stretching. This is one area however, where ignoring the difference in online and off-line content and marketing ideas can cost you a whole season of sales.

Posted by Glenn Hefley in Web Content, Where's the Money