What Is A Brochure Site?

When you look around and research what people think the purpose of a brochure is you find suggestions such as:

“The first question you need to ask yourself is ‘What does my company want this brochure to do?’ or ‘What purpose will the brochure serve?’ and ‘What target audience is it intended to reach?’”

When you then research what the answers to these questions are you get things like: ‘to provide information’; ‘to enhance our image’; ‘as a PR tool’; ‘to provide product information’.

Then when you Google ‘WHAT IS A BROCHURE SITE?’ this is the answer you get: “A small web site consisting of the basic information about an organisation. This would be similar in content to a flyer or leaflet.”

Made us think.

And what we thought was that all the definitions are pretty mealy mouthed and miss the point.

The point being that the purpose is surely to MARKET [i.e. engage in the commercial promotion, sale, or distribution of Z] or SELL [i.e. deal: do business].

If it isn’t then why would any business add to costs by producing said brochure?

[Back to mealy mouthed answers there!]

Does it not follow then that a “brochure site” must also market or sell? Yet, when there are over 500,000 business websites in the UK, only about 26,000 of them are ‘trading online’. What does that say about the other 474,000?

All this at a time when internet shopping has, according to IMRG, reached 10% of retail sales in the UK and £80 billion of consumer spending is on or influenced by the internet, of which:

1. £30 billion of RETAIL spending is online

2. £20 billion of OTHER CONSUMER spending is online

3. a further £30 billion of OFFLINE RETAIL sales is impacted by internet information, research or stimuli

4. 10% of retail sales now take place online

5. e-retail sales have grown at an average year-on-year rate of 45% for the past 6 months

6. e-retail sales have grown 2,000% in 6 years

7. 44% of shoppers polled expect their online shopping to increase in the next 12 months

8. 90% had researched goods online then bought them offline

9. 52% of consumers plan to reduce their high street spending in 2006

All this when a really good shopping cart costs less than £400 [yes, we sell them] and organizations such as Business West allow you to claim up to £500 worth of website development funding from IT @ Work Online. [Which we, of course, can help with!]

The world sometimes seems very strange!

Ever Thought of Running a Poker Website?

Running your own poker website can be very profitable and a lot of fun. In the current climate of uncertainty in the employment market, starting and running your own poker web site offers a realistic way to make a very good monthly income that is both sustainable and constantly increasing.

These days more and more people are turning towards the internet to find ways of making extra cash or even to make a full time income and one of the best is to start a poker information website.

There are numerous advantages to starting a poker website; an enormous customer base, flexibility, the fact that you can start with virtually no money at all, and best of all - the chance to make a really good income online.

Now there are some truly awful poker sites out there but that is in fact a great advantage for you if you decide to build your own poker site. The fact that so many poker websites are of very poor quality means that you can build up a strong and loyal following just by offering a service that is better than the majority of the rubbish out there.

People search the internet for one thing above all others, and that of course is information. If they are looking on the web to learn more about their favorite poker player they want to go to a site where there is some decent, well written content. If they find what they are looking for then they will come back again and you will have gained a loyal customer.

If on the other hand they are taken to a page where there's nothing of interest and all the site is doing is trying to sell them something, they will leave quickly and probably never return.

Once you have enticed your visitors in to look at your site and they have found valuable information, they will be in a mood that is more predisposed towards buying so if you do have something to sell, you are far more likely to buy it.

So provide valuable information for your visitors and you will be miles ahead of all the other junk and spam poker sites out there.

A Good Web Site Is a Web Site That Works!

How can you know if your web site is a good website, or what is a good website?

A good website is a website that works, if you have created your website to sell some products, you can say that your website is a good website if it does sell products.

   * But are you selling as many products as a good website sells, or you are only selling a few products now and then?
   * Are your sales pages good enouth to consider your website a good website?
   * Do you have enough visitors to your website to consider it a good website?
   * Do you have enough return traffic or all your visitors are first time visitors?
   * Do your visitors stay enough time to consider your website a good website?
   * How can you know for sure if your website is a good website?
   * What kind of questions should you be making to yourself to know if your webite is a good website

ASK YOURSELF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS TO KNOW IF YOUR WEBSITE IS A GOOD WEBSITE

   *  Who cares?
   *  What are you looking for?
   *  What kind of visitors do you have?
   *  Which is your priority?
   *  How should you mesure your success?

 WHO CARES?

If the website belongs to a company, then the web pages don´t belong to a single person, there´s not only one person that can say if you have a good website, so you will have to round up the people that are vitally interested

You will find the techno-geeks, the sales people, the public relations people, etc. etc. and everyone of them will have their own idea of what is a good website.

But once again as the website belongs to ALL the company, the people on your company who care enough to judge the website, should be asked to join the team and take some responsability about the design of the website.

 WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

Every one of the people who cares about the website will have their own idea of what they want out of a good website. Many of them will just be talking on behalf of their own departments, but you must force them to think on behalf of the company.

Every department can have their own objetives, goals and aspirations, every one has his own idea about what is a good website, but they need to think as a company, and the conclusion must satisfy most of them, and if you can, your must create a good webpage for all of them.

WHAT KIND OF VISITORS DO YOU HAVE?

Every website has first time visitors, returning visitors, curious, buyers, people that arrived by mistake, people that spend a short time at the website, people that spend a long time at the website, etc.

What kind of visitors do you want, the ones that show more often, the ones that read the most pages, buys more stuff, buys more frequently or spend the most money?

Which are the most important visitors for your company, to think that you have a good website?

Once you get them you can be satisfied that your site is a good website

 WHICH IS YOUR PRIORITY?

Once you know what everybody wants, you will have to prioritize everybody´s goals.

Will you go after increasing visits, selling more products per visit, provide more information about the company and it´s products, improving customer satisfaction.

After a discussion that will depend on how many people is giving their own opinion about what cares most, you´ll end up with your own list of priorities, and the ones that will not be satisfied with their request, at leas will know why.

 HOW SHOULD YOU MESURE YOUR SUCCESS?

How can you be sure that the numbers that you are getting are telling you that your site is a good website, It depends...

   * If your main priority is to get visitors, then www.Alexa.com and it´s ranking can help you on that, but you can also use some javacript and or cookies.
   * If your main goal is revenue then the sales will have the leading voice.
   * If you are going after customer satisfaction then you must agree with the other members of your company how will you gather satisfaction data and how will you weigh it.

All the information that you gather must help you take business decisions. It´s not a matter of getting as much information as you can, because too much information can be as bad as not enough information.

Make sure that you keep on measuring your success, make it part of a constant improvement process, because the web changes month after month.

Then you´ll really be able to tell if your website is a good website

Written by Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi