Ellsworth and Ellsworth (1996) argue that marketing and sales promotion,
both business to business and direct to customers, have been revolutionalized
by the WWW. A good Web site can be used for advertising, corporate visibility,
brand name recognition, public relations, press releases, corporate sponsorship,
direct sales, customer support and technical assistance. The key to achieving
these benefits is a well designed site and effective marketing of the site to ensure
a large number of “hits”. Successful business Web sites, according to the
authors, have a number of common characteristics including: information-rich
and regular updating to encourage repeat visits; clear navigation paths to allow
smooth movement around the site; the provision of value-added to the user in
the form of real information and services rather than just a place for marketing
and sales; interactivity and responsiveness to user feedback; the site should be
designed to allow the gathering of information about users; integration of the
site with other marketing channels used by the company; and institutional
support, i.e. the site should have its own budget and be supported by the whole
organization rather than being the responsibility of a small group of “techies”.
Finally, the site needs to be marketed properly in order to ensure high access.
This can be done in various ways including registering the site with all of the
online search engines; establishing reciprocal cross-linkages to other sites; and
ensuring that the URL address is used in all company correspondence etc.
Similar advice concerning the design and marketing of company Web sites is
provided by Sterne (1995).
The need for new international marketing paradigms