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| Path: Main Street : Resources & Library : Research Articles : Feature Article |
Internet marketing strategiesby Steve Bocska, Penfold Consulting
December 12, 1995
The Weird and Wonderful World Wide Web
With so many WWW pages being put onto the Internet every day, it's easy to have your page get lost in the shuffle. Keeping a page user-friendly, fresh, interactive and accessible is a difficult task.
Some things to keep in mind
Steve may be reached at penfold@coastnet.com.
Where are you?
- Finding your web page is the first thing a user has to be able to do. If you're not registered with every possible search site, you're not maximizing your chances of getting your fair share of "hits". Sites such as "Submit It" are a good place to start to enhance your accessibility. Other search sites specific to your local area (eg. a Canadian Web Page Index, a Michigan State Search engine, etc.), will help to build a reputation in your region.
Content, Content, Content
Some pages are there just for fun. Others are strictly for business. An important step in designing a page is deciding what its going to do. It might:
- advertise your company
- provide customer service
- make useful information available
- be purely for entertainment.
Take a step back and evaluate what you're trying to get out of your page, and then make the content suit the needs of your target user. Far too many pages are insensitive to their intended audience.
Make them feel at home
Elaborate graphics and complex designs quickly become useless "eye candy" to many users. WWW users with anything less than 28.8 baud connections (who are still very much in the majority) are becoming less and less willing to wait for a 200k .jpg of your corporate logo to download to their machine.
Keep the page simple, yet interesting. Give them a "low-resolution" alternative which is the same information, but without all the graphics and elaborate formatting.
Keep 'em coming back
One way to build a loyal user base is by maintaining a list of useful URL (Uniform Resource Locator) links about a specific topic. Pick a topic that you or your organization has some expertise in and keep an inventory of links to other Web pages relating to that area. Add new links regularly to keep your page "up to date" and make sure that ones that you have already added are relevant. You can even use these pages as your very own "jumping off point" to frequently accessed page on the internet!
Another good "hook" to keep people coming back is the addition of a useful information database to your page. It should be something that you will be able to update as regularly as the information to changes. Having data that is three weeks old on your page defeats the whole concept of the internet. If your information gets "stale", your targeted audience might as well be using a CD-ROM!
Make sure that, if you're going to make the initial commitment to maintain a database, you'll be able to keep it going for a while.
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