Online Communication

Where to go? What to do? Web sites are a major problem to companies. The medium is no longer new, yet it’s getter newer by the day! Innovations in Web site structures, particularly with portal and content management systems, seems to make that which was up-to-date yesterday woefully obsolete today. Remember Flash? Just a couple of years ago, many large companies invested considerable resources in sites that used Flash front-ends before the visitor could get to the all-too-often stale content.

Today, small- and medium-sized companies struggle with the problems and contradictions presented them by the World-Wide Web. Most companies need to present themselves to potential customers on the Web. Web sites can, and often do, eat far more resources than they seem to deliver in return. A primary problem is that of monetizing your Web site: How do you encourage people to buy directly from your site, by purchasing products, ordering services, or simply by subscribing to read the content you offer? Some things to consider are:

• Every Web site is built upon a plan, whether the plan has been planned or not.The site owner communicates his goals—business or personal—through his Web site.
  • The first thing I ask is: “How does your Web site support your business plan?” Before I can identify the criteria to measure the efficacy of a site to its purposes, I need to identify those purposes. It’s very difficult to earn money directly from your Web site; you need a business plan to direct the use of this medium.
• “Who will read this?”is crucial to a Web site.
  • In most cases, especially if you want to earn money from your site, you have to put a considerable effort into identifying your target audience and their probable needs. For one thing, forget about making the site more convenient for yourself. If it’s too much trouble to add and update content on your site, you’ll find visitation drop off considerably and quickly. And, it will be extremely hard to attract new visitors.

Who Uses the World-Wide Web?

Current data indicate that 78% of those who live in North America use the Internet. That comes to about 270 million people. If you look at that number as a macro-market, well, it’s possible. But, it really only represents the scale of Internet use on our continent, not the number of individuals who could be paying you for your content, products, or services. The average (estimated) Internet user:

• Spends approximately 30 seconds on any given Web site
• Uses one of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) to find information
• Doesn’t purchase products online (only about 8% of adult users did in 2009 on a daily basis)
• Doesn't often research services or products (only 20% did in 2009 on a daily basis)
• Spends more time on social networking sites, but is fickle about it
• Is very fickle:
  • By 2006, MySpace dominated social networks
  • Today, Facebook overwhelmingly dominates social networking while MySpace usage has shrunk dramatically
• Tends not to pay for content (subscriptions)
  • Newspapers that attempted to charge for content failed to realize profits in the 1990s
  • Some news organizations plan to roll-out new subscription sites in 2011

The key to online communication is to remember that, as with other media, it truly is a two-way street. People will visit, but they may not visit again, or visit often. Visitors don’t care what you or I want in a Web site; they want what they want. If they don’t find it, they move on to another site.