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A visit is definitely not the same as a purchase but without the visit by the e-Shopper there is no chance of anything being bought. Thus the e-Business needs a carefully formulated strategy, which will bring in e-Shoppers to the website and ultimately convert them to e-Buyers. Fortunately extensive, costly, repetitive, high-density, broadly aimed advertising is not the only way of attracting e-Shoppers. There are alternative strategies for getting one’s business name about in the right places.
The followings are the six suggested significantly important ways to attract e-Shoppers to a website:
1. Professional advice (or historical and background information)
Sites such as the RAC depend on offering professional advice as a key attractor. BCG.Com and MySap.Com are other examples of professional advice delivering sites. A virtual museum displaying the history of the product, service or organisation can also be an attractor to e-Shoppers. The Ford Motor library of photos, Boeing’s information on the aircraft industry, and Sainsbury’s history of how the grocery shop and supermarket developed are good examples.
2. Calculators
Calculators can be an effective way to attract e-Shoppers. Such Websites include SeaFrance, which offers an instant fare calculate and the AA, which allows visitors to calculate the distance between two places. Moneygator.co.uk will calculate mortgage interest and repayment schedules. Pap.fr allows visitors to value their own home on-line. These websites need to supply immediate information and offer a solution to a problem.
3. Sponsorship
Sponsoring an event such as a chat show or a rock concert, which will be held on a website can be a powerful attractor. Events will produce high traffic to the website for a limited period of time. Examples of such sites are IBM who sponsored the Sydney 2000 Olympics and Texaco, which publishes the radio schedule for the Metropolitan Opera in New York on public radio. Mars Confectionery uses their Snickers product to attract large numbers of visitors due to their sponsorship of football. Other organisations that use sponsorship effectively include Johnson & Johnson, The Coca-Cola Co., and Hewlett-Packard etc.
4. Conferences
Hosting a prominent speaker or group of speakers on a topical subject is a useful attractor. This allows people to interact with individuals they would not otherwise be in a position to meet. This can increase an organisations’ credibility in the industry by providing access to experts. An example of this is the Financial Times’ business chat-room or the on-line conferences hosted by the Open University.
5. Free gifts
The giving of free gifts and samples can be an effective attractor. Of course, digital gifts are the easiest to deliver. Guinness.com offers free screen savers. A number of gambling sites are offering $25 of free chips to visit their website. Another aspect of this type of marketing is web-based loyalty schemes of which there are a growing number. Probably the best-known is the Beenz points programme where these points may be traded in for goods. There is also Free-PC.com, which periodically gives away computers for completing lengthy customer surveys.
6. Entertainment – games and contests
Some websites use entertainment as an attractor by means of games and contests to help promote a product or service. Examples of such websites are GTE Laboratories Fun Stuff.com, Guinness.com and Barbie.com. These websites need to be interactive, recreational and challenging. They need to promote an image of a dynamic, exciting and friendly organisation, which in turn will bring e-Shoppers.
Different web-site situations will be able to take advantage of different methods of attracting visitors and the method is likely to change over time in order to maintain a degree of intrigue to attract visitors back to the site.
Being able to devise and implement a strategy that gets e-Shoppers to your site is central to e-Business success. Unless this is successful it doesn’t matter how smart the business model is or how good the product or service is. The success of the e-Business first and foremost revolves around being able to attract e-Shoppers and this needs to be handled efficiently and effectively.
Good Luck then!!!
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