Internet - The World Wide Web
Relationship Marketing Web Sites

What You Need to Succeed

The focus of this section is the five sets of skills necessary to succeed in satisfying your customers at each stage of the customer development cycle. These include:

Information

E-mail

Promoting

Technology

Design

Identifying and developing information
Information, not graphic design, catchy phrases, or gratuitous use of technology, forms the basis of your relationship marketing initiative on the Web. Success is based on your ability to provide the right information to Web site visitors, customers, and prospects as they advance through each stage of the customer development cycle.

To succeed, information must be credible, meaningful, and relevant. Your customers, prospects, and Web site visitors desire information, not advertising. Brag and boast claims are not enough. Your marketing message must be presented in a way that satisfies your market’s needs rather than “we’re better” claims.

Success comes from determining your market’s information needs. This can be done by interviewing customers, reviewing sales encounters, or writing scenarios that detail the goals of typical visitors to your Web site.

The strategic use of e-mail
Your relationship market Web site strategy is based on a consistent and concise e-mail program.

Concise. Your e-mail must be short and to the point. Your “selling” must begin in the subject heading of your e-mail, which must promise recipients a reason to click on your message and begin reading it. The first screen of your e-mail message must contain numerous benefits that will motivate the reader to continue reading or visit the relevant page of your Web site.

Consistent. An on-again, off-again e-mail program is certain to fail. If you promise to send an e-mail newsletter on the first Monday of each month, your relationship marketing Web strategy begins to unravel the first time you miss sending a scheduled issue. Consistency, retaining awareness in your customer’s and prospect’s mind, is the key to success.

Promoting your Web site
Although search engines will send a certain number of visitors to your Web site, one of the biggest challenges you face is promoting your Web site offline to customers and prospects who have not yet visited your Web site. You have to develop a program that will motivate visitors to your office or store to become familiar with your Web site and visit it frequently.

Your Web site address should appear on every piece of paper your firm’s name, address, and phone number appears on. Your customers and prospects should become as familiar with your Web site as they are with your office or store.

Technology
Putting together even the simplest Web site involves an understanding of technology. It’s a rare business that can afford to say to an outside designer or Internet service provider, “Do it!” An understanding of the underlying technology is needed so that the right choices can be made. Although you, as business owner or manager, do not need to know how to create HTML pages or set up an e-mail database, you need to know what needs to be done, who is most capable of doing it, and judge the quality of the work.

Equally important, an understanding of today’s fast-moving Internet technology is necessary to take advantage of sound, video, animation, and virtual reality modeling as appropriate. As the convergence between the Internet and television gets closer, more is going to be expected.

You have to keep up with your visitors and you have to keep up with your competitors. Visitors who were once content with static text on pages are being trained by hours of watching television to expect animated text. And, if your competitor’s Web site is capable of presenting a virtual tour through a simulated home environment and your site isn’t, which site do you think will attract the most attention and make the most sales?

Most important, an understanding of technology is necessary for you to be able to identify new opportunities as they occur. By better understanding the structure of information exchange over the Web, you might be able to uncover ways to reduce the costs of doing business by using the Web to reduce administrative or ordering expenses or identify other ways to use the Web to reduce operating costs.

Design
Customers and prospects form an immediate opinion of your firm from the appearance of your Web site. It’s important that you, as business owner or manager, can recognize the difference between good and bad design and direct the activities of those responsible for creating your Web site.

Designers often err in the direction of decoration—of adding color, text, and background elements for their own sake. Simple is always better. The design of your Web site should be as simple as possible in order to allow your message—not the medium—to attract your Web site visitor’s attention. Graphic elements that distract from your message undermine the effectiveness of your Web site.

* Source - Streetwise Relationship Marketing On The Internet
              Create one on one bonds with prospects
              and customers and keep them forever