WebpageFX Blog

Let’s face it - most companies love to see business referred through their web site.  When this occurs, it indicates that someone tried to solve a problem (need to find a plumber, need a new car, etc.) and that company’s web site seemed to provide an answer.  That person then chose to do business with the company.

The web site became an advertisement for the company.

I’m currently reading a great book by Andrew Griffiths titled, 101 Ways to Advertise Your Business.  In Section 1 of this book, Andrew offers up five important things everyone should know about advertising.  While reading, I realized that these points adapt quite well to the web, particularly web sites.

So what are these five important things you should know?  Instead of copying Andrew’s list verbatim, I’ll instead paraphrase his five points and tailor them to web sites:

1. Know what message you’re trying to deliver. Don’t confuse your potential customers with irrelevant information.  Be quick and to the point.
   
2. Know your target audience. Being too broad could mean losing business to a competitor.
   
3. Make your web site stand out. A great design that’s easy on the eyes does wonders for your company’s credibility.
   
4. Make sure people visit your web site. List your web site on all your advertisements and business cards.
   
5. Let your web site work over time. Don’t expect results overnight.

Back in the 1990’s, simply having a web site was good enough, and it showed.  Many businesses designed a simple one-page site with a phone number and uploaded it for the world to see.  In this day and age, those types of pages look old and out of date, and businesses using them come off as “behind the times”.  That perception could mean the difference between “new customer” and “no customer”.

Long story short - take your web presence seriously.

Mull over these five points and ask yourself - “Is my company’s web site advertising our business?  Or is it just going through the motions?”  If you answer with the latter, there’s no better day than today to change course.

“Global Business Services unveiled its new report, “The End of Advertising as We Know It,” forecasting greater disruption for the advertising industry in the next five years than occurred in the previous 50.To examine the factors influencing advertising and explore future scenarios, IBM surveyed more than 2,400 consumers and 80 advertising executives globally. The IBM report shows increasingly empowered consumers, more self-reliant advertisers and ever-evolving technologies are redefining how advertising is sold, created, consumed and tracked.

Traditional advertising players risk major revenue declines as budgets shift rapidly to new, interactive formats, which are expected to grow at nearly five times that of traditional advertising. To survive in this new reality, broadcasters must change their mass audience mind-set to cater to niche consumer segments, and distributors need to deliver targeted, interactive advertising for a range of multimedia devices. Advertising agencies must experiment creatively, become brokers of consumer insights, and guide allocation of advertising dollars amid exploding choices. All players must adapt to a world where advertising inventory is increasingly bought and sold in open exchanges vs. traditional channels.

Advertising Experts’ Expectations in Line with Global Consumer Trends
IBM’s research found that advertising experts recognize the changing nature of consumers and also anticipate dramatic changes on the horizon. More than half of ad professionals polled by IBM expect that in the next five years open advertising exchanges (currently led by companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL) will take 30 percent of current revenues now commanded by traditional broadcasters and media. Nearly half of the advertising survey respondents anticipate a significant (greater than 10%) revenue shift away from the 30-second spot within the next five years, and almost 10 percent of respondents thought there would be a dramatic (greater than 25 percent) shift. Two-thirds of advertising experts surveyed by IBM expect 20 percent of advertising revenue to move from impression-based to impact-based formats within three years.

Saul Berman, IBM Media & Entertainment Strategy and Change practice leader, said, “Advertising remains integral to pop culture and continues to fund a significant portion of entertainment around the world. But it needs to morph into new formats and offer more intrinsic value to consumers, who will have more choices. The wealth of new advertising outlets means consumer analytics will have a more prominent role than ever regardless of where you reside in the value chain. Young people in particular have grown accustomed to not paying for content. Despite greater consumer control over content and advertising, we envision a world where consumers will continue to prefer to view advertising rather than pay for content directly.”"

Click here to read the complete research report

Helm, Clay. “IBM Predicts the End of Advertising as We Know It.” IBM. 11 Nov. 2007 <http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22570.wss>.

With the release of Apple’s long anticipated iPhone on June 29^th, a flurry of conversations arose in the business community. The future of mobile web browsing all of sudden became the present, and we asked “Should we do something?” The truth is that the mobile Web has been around for awhile, but just not in such large distribution. I saw Vinton Cerf speak last evening at

Dickinson College about the future of the Internet, and more specifically the role Mobile phones will play in this future. Vint Cerf is the VP and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, as well as the “co-founder of the Internet”. He expressed his belief that cell phones, not personal computers, will propel the growth of the internet worldwide as countries like India and

China go mobile by the droves.

What does this mean for business? It means get ready! Mobile phones will always be much smaller than personal computers, and likely will vary in size for years to come. The user experience on an iPhone is drastically different from that of your PC. If you want mobile users to visit your website and most importantly, stay on it, you should start thinking about the mobile future now. My suggestion is to snatch up your .mobi address, and ask your web developer (maybe even me) to pare down your website for mobile users. Or even better, think of ways you can monetize on this trend and develop a new customer base. You can sit back and relax knowing you’re ahead of the iPhone curve!