Hard driving

• Article 19 of 26
• M-iD, June 2005
• View a PDF of the original article ~ 1.2MB

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It is possible to build the best web site in the world, yet not have a single soul visit or even know it exists, without a sound strategy for driving traffic there - and keeping it there.

Even worse, if a campaign succeeds and traffic levels soar, it is often a challenge to keep that traffic coming back. But if organisations focus on a few proven methods and put the right kind of effort into their web sites, they can ensure they get both good traffic levels and site 'stickiness'.

Many organisations trying to attract business to their sites use offline campaigns, such as television, print advertising and direct mail campaigns to encourage people to visit a site.

These can help, particularly if customers and potential customers are not heavy web users and are more reliant on traditional channels for information. PC maker Dell, for example, relies heavily on print advertising in newspapers and specialist magazines to drive potential buyers to its web site - with great success.

Duke of URL
However, each channel has caveats, some of them surprisingly simple. For television advertising, for example, organisations need to have a simple URL, or potential customers will not remember it.

But the URL provided in advertising need not be the same as the one most users would reach via online mechanisms. Instead, says Spencer Gallagher, managing director of new media marketing agency Bluhalo, they can be simplified sites designed for people who may not be as familiar with the web or for different audiences. In addition, having a different URL can also help track which customers come to the site via which channels or advertising campaigns, enabling the effectiveness of different media to be more easily assessed.

Direct marketing and print adverts can use longer URLs for their campaigns, since the customer can read them from the campaign when finding the site. But, as with all advertising, they need to provide a strong incentive for customers to visit.

“Like all retail channels, discounting is a major incentive for customers to purchase, so it's no surprise this is an often-used strategy to switch customers from traditional retail channels to the web channel,” says Rob Mettler, a user experience consultant at PA Consulting.

“A variety of strategies can be employed, whether it is a waiver of set-up or booking fee, a straight £20-off offer, three for the price of two, or 10% off your first order, these can all lead to a substantial increase in web site sales when coupled with a well targeted and executed marketing campaign,” says Mettler.

Online is cheaper
Online campaigns will usually provide a cheaper and more effective method of increasing site traffic. However, organisations will often simply try translate the model they use offline. Instead of television and print adverts, they will use banner and skyscraper adverts; instead of direct mail, they will adopt direct emailing.

Yet banner and skyscraper adverts (and other forms of online advertising) have negligible 'click through' rates. Between just 0.01% and 0.25% will click on an online advert to find out more.

Indeed, many experienced Internet users today mentally block them out. Usability studies show - usually by tracking the eye movements of test subjects - that most people do not even look at banner adverts anymore. As a result, banner ads are highly ineffective at generating anything except brand awareness, at best.

Direct emails have a whole host of well-publicised problems. The bottom line is that any direct email campaign needs to be very carefully vetted and managed.

To start with, the European Union's directive on privacy and electronic communications, which has now been incorporated into British law, forbids the sending of unsolicited commercial emails.

This means that organisations can no longer approach email marketing in the same way that they would with a traditional direct mailing campaign - buying a list of supposedly appropriate people to target.

The proliferation of spam has made filtering email mandatory at most organisations and many legitimate email campaigns will be identified as spam as a result of these filters. What is more, if enough of the recipients regard the email as spam, there is the risk that the sender will be reported to an email blacklist.

When that happens, all future email from the sender risks being filtered by all organisations that use the blacklist to weed out spam. “Spamming means you need to be more focused and careful about where you're sending to,” warns Nick Sharp, vice president of sales and marketing at web analytics company WebTrends. “You need to be sure of who you are targeting.”

While email campaigns can be effective if correctly targeted, organisations still need to be sure they do not inundate customers. Email marketers need to carefully assess their targets and how often they send email campaigns to the same targets.

Payment by results
Probably the most effective way of generating traffic, however, is through the use of sponsored links, such as Google Ad Words, in search engines.

These either appear inline with search results, at the top of search pages, or at the side.

Many organisations steer clear of this kind of advertising, because they are unsure of it or because they prefer to rely on “search engine optimisation” - that is, trying to get their web site to appear naturally at the top of search results for particular keywords.

This is a highly specialised art, since Google, Yahoo and other search engines all have different ways of rating sites that they constantly change, making it difficult to optimise a site for all search engines.

Usually, optimisation requires frequent content updates; incoming links that use appropriate text and that have been around for a long time, from highly rated sites; and appropriate content, page “metatags” and site title.

For ecommerce sites, it can be even harder to get a “natural” listing without taking extra steps. “If your site is information heavy and text heavy, don't run it as a dot-com,” advises Daniel Mohacek, a sales director at new media marketing agency, The Search Works. “Run it as .co.uk and ensure it runs off UK servers with UK IP addresses.”

The reason? As a dot-com, it risks being swamped among the plethora of US web sites and not seen by the UK consumers that it is aimed at.

Paying for ad words is likely to generate far more results than search engine optimisation. “You can get professional link builders,” says Mohacek, “but it's a lot easier to just buy ad words at four pence per click, than to get someone to scour around at £20 per hour, for hours and hours, trying to build up links. Paid search marketing campaigns are very cheap: the margin on search marketing can be so huge, you can get away with spending a few thousand pounds to try.”

Sponsored links also helps organisations to cope with the changes in search engine ranking techniques that can cause their placing to drop unexpectedly. With 90% of users not bothering to check the second page of any search and many not looking beyond the first five or six results, slight tweaks to search ranking algorithms can cause massive traffic fluctuations. Sponsored links, however, always remain where they are.

Spelling test
Trying to work out which words to sponsor is the most difficult part of this model. Search engine companies will provide details of how many people have been trying particular search terms, which can help, and web analytics can determine which search terms were used by visitors to the site.

“You should stick with generic terms for ad words,” says Mohacek. “Companies can be jargonistic: car companies might be tempted to use specific phrases like 'Jaguar XJ6', but what people actually search for are terms like 'hatchback' and 'small car'.” By using visitor tracking software, organisations can see which search terms led to visitors arriving on their site and even if they came back to make a purchase.

Sometimes the keywords to pick may not be the ones expected. For example, the word “loan” is frequently mis-spelled - 400 people a day type “car lone” into search engines instead. Bidding for placement on spelling mistakes is normally cheaper than bidding for correctly spelled searches, but can sometimes generate just as much traffic.

Organisations have to be sure, however, that the kind of people who make these mistakes are the kind they actually want as customers.

Both Google and Overture, the advertising network that handles sponsored links for Yahoo, MSN and other common search sites, are worth considering, says Bluhalo's Gallagher. Although four-fifths of searches are done through Google, the traffic from Overture is often just as good as that from Google.

“Google is the one that people who are a bit savvy and price conscious use. They won't go to the first product that comes up, they'll go round in circles shaving pence off,” says Mohacek. “[Others] have a PC with MSN as the default home page and use the Internet search in the left pane, a lot of people use that.

”Then there are so-called silver surfers who got Freeserve [now owned by Wanadoo] as their ISP, got it as their home page, and have never once changed it. They do all their buying from Wanadoo as a result,“ he adds.

Generating all this traffic, however, is no use if the web site is no use to the customer and they leave as quickly as they came. The web site has to offer features that will attract and keep the customer returning. Typically, this will involve making it easy to use, good to look act and easy to understand. ”People steer away from sites that are confusing and difficult to use. They are also attracted to sites that appear to be trustworthy and look professional, with a reputable organisation behind the scenes,“ says John Knight, director of the User-Lab at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design.

Knight points out that users like sites that reflect their personality and interests, so they must reflect what the audience likes rather than what the organisation wants to present.

”Tailoring your offering to its audience affects everything from text, images, animation and even the colours you use. For example, if you are selling to a younger audience, provide bright colours, which older users might dislike. Preferably sites should support different types of users through personalisation,“ he says.

The best time to ensure usability is before the design has even been approved, so organisations should take usability into account at the earliest stages possible - not test it out shortly before it is due to go live.

If a site is truly usable and appeals to the target audience, organisations can even consider taking the ultimate step possible to ensure their users stick with the web channel rather than offline channels: they can remove their phone number and other offline contact details.

It is a very risky strategy, since a frustrated user who cannot use the site will be tempted to go to a competitor.

Getting traffic to a web site can be relatively easy and inexpensive - if the strategy is soundly executed. Keeping it once it's arrived is far harder. But by making sure the site offers something to the customer, rather than just the organisation, it becomes a far easier prospect.

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