Midlands Business Journal Feature

Web Sites Indispensable Marketing Tool for Small and Large Businesses

June 23, 2006

While more businesses have recognized the need to have a Web site, some are still not defining its place in their market strategy or managing the site well, resulting in ineffective or outdated messages for their target audiences.

There's no doubt that the Internet has come of age as a marketing tool, said Jason Petersen, owner and president of aijalon in Lincoln.

"Print ads are at least as likely to display their Web site address as their street address or phone number," he said.

A consultant should help you develop your Web site as part of an overall marketing strategy, Petersen said.

"Business people should be careful about hiring someone who is just a technology professional or just a marketing expert, Petersen said. "Both perspectives are needed."

A good consultant can help you design and manage your Web site for search engine optimization, he said.

"I would caution against hiring anyone who guarantees you a top ten spot on a major search engine," he said. "This is difficult to guarantee. What we can do is use techniques that improve your chances of good positioning."

A Web site doesn't have to be "boring or ugly" to be search engine friendly, said Adam Orand, principal at Orajen in Omaha.

"The structure and programming of the site can make it readable by search engines, yet still attractive to the visitor," he said. "The frequency of the use of key words and the number of other sites linking to yours are the most important aspects."

For example, if your partners, vendors or even popular bloggers crosslink to your site, this will improve your search engine optimization, he said.

"In a relatively short time, the Internet has become the primary research vehicle for consumers," said Erik Betz, CEO of Guru Alliance in Omaha. "It is absolutely the norm today. Very nearly all consumers head for the Web when they want to know about a company or its products."

It's not just a business to consumer vehicle, but a business to business marketing tool, he said.

"It is where you make the most impression for the dollar," Betz said.

Given its importance, businesses should define what they want their Web site to do: facilitate sales transactions with the shopping cart approach, provide information about the company or product, or create or reinforce brand support without direct sale, Betz said.

"The Internet has helped level the playing field among small and large businesses," said Jim Hoing, co-owner of WhettStone Business Solutions in Omaha. A large company may be able to afford a few more bells and whistles when creating a site, "but the information and the way it is portrayed are similar. The small business can look more like the big guy."

Web sites can be tailored to reach not only customers, but employees and vendors in an economical fashion, he said.

"It is a tool," Hoing said. "If it doesn't make you money or save you money, it just costs you money."

Hoing and the firm's co-owner, Michelle Weiss, know how important Internet marketing is from personal experience.

"When we started the company, we wanted to call it Whetstone Business Solutions, because a whetstone is an instrument for honing tools, and we saw a relationship between that and providing cutting edge services." He said. "However, the Whetstone URL was already taken. So we misspelled whetstone as WhettStone."

Search engines scan sites for verbal content, not audiovisual features or graphics, the experts say.

"The search engines spiders (or robots) look for and index key words, mixed throughout the pages": Hoing said.

Alt tags and meta tags, hidden words generally unseen by the site visitor but sensed by the search engine robots, are other factors that can improve your placement on the search engine, Orand said.

Consumers expect sites to be up to date, and a poorly managed site lowers credibility, Petersen said. His Firm developed Gravel, management software that, among other features, facilitates quick and easy updating of content.

Your Web site should be fresh as well as current, Hoing said.

"You need to change what's on the site to entice people to come back," he said.

WhettStone Business Solutions has an e-mail broadcast service which distributes clients' e-newsletters to a select market. The newsletters can carry links back to the clients' site.

Consultants say navigability is a site's most important aspects of navigability, Petersen said. "People are impatient and want to be able to get the information they want quickly, without clicking through a lot of clutter," he said.

To some extent, a standard has developed with which consumers have become familiar, Betz said.

"Consumers don't like it if your site is too different in some goofy way," he said.