Thinking Australia’s Internet Management Newsletter takes a look at issues that go beyond the web page. If you would like to subscribe or unsubscribe see the instructions at the end of the important information that follows.

In this issue
1. Internet Brand Protection
   1.1 Build it and they may not come.
 
2. Audience Management
   2.1 Being invisible is for ghosts.
        You can’t make a buck out of being invisible.
   2.2 Do we put the customer. last on the internet?
   2.3 Come back, please come back.
 
3. Brand Experiences Your brand is your people. Teach them well.
 
4. Offer of the Month
   4.1 WebWorthy Report. 10% off.
 
 
1 Internet Brand Protection
1.1 Build it and they may not come.
Yes, we’ve heard all the figures of the millions of people on the internet. According to Iconocast, there are over 150 million. These are amazing, phenomenal, stupendous figures that are stupefying and blinding a whole range of normally intelligent and logical minds.
 
The thinking goes that if all these people are out there, they will find your corner of the internet. Build it and they will come. Complete with their bulging wallets and eyes glazed ready to buy, buy, buy. In the early days, your site would have been part of an easily navigable constellation of clearly identifiable stars.
 
These days, your site is a small part of an every expanding and highly complex milky way. Despite this, there seems to be this new belief, that just because you have an internet site, you suddenly have an audience of over 100 million. You don’t have to attract an audience as you have to do in any other marketing function. They’re all your doorstep. And this thinking is replicated in the way that companies are spending on their websites.
 
As Joe Di Stefano recollects, “In my time in advertising, clients would spend a small portion of their budget on the production of the message. The largest portion - between 80 -95% would be spent on delivering the message to an audience. On the internet, it’s a different story. Companies spend their budget on building the site.
 
Attracting or communicating to the audience is hardly ever considered. The talk is about compliance - “Great, we now have a web site” - it’s about the technology, and about the graphics and look and feel of the buttons or the colours.” Who are you communicating with, other web developers or your target market?
 
An internet presence is only as good and as valuable as the audience you attract.
 
If you don’t know how to attract an audience, then your site is invisible.
 
If you don’t know how to quickly answer a customer’s needs when they arrive, then you’ll instantly become invisible to them when they leave.
 
If you have no mechanism to retain an audience and constantly bring them back, you’ll be forgotten faster than yesterday’s … (I forgot).
 
If you want to learn more about how Thinking can build your online audience, contact myaudience@thinking.com.au.
 
 
2. Audience Management
2.1 Being invisible is for ghosts. You can’t make a buck out of being invisible.
The most effective way to be found is through search engines such as Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, Looksmart, etc. After email, search engines are the second most used facility on the internet.
 
Around 58% of internet users start here in their search to find you. It’s probably why search engines are twice as effective as any other promotion.
 
How do you fare here? Put your name in the search engines and see how visible or invisible you are. To really test your share of voice, search for the category in which your company does business in (eg: air conditioning, accounting, insurance, bill paying etc).
 
Now how do you fare? Frightening, isn’t it? Recently, a large organisation contracted Thinking to raise their profile within the search engines. We were able to take them from around 36% share, up to a 56% share in two weeks of concentrated work.
 
And just in case you think it’s simply a matter of going to one search engine, Thinking monitors the 7 most used engines by Australian users. These include both Australian and US datasets. The reason for this is that engines such as Yahoo, AltaVista and Excite actually get more Australian traffic going to their US sites than to their Australian sites.
 
2.2 Do we put the customer last on the internet?
We’ve all grown up with the belief that when it comes to service “the customer is always right”. On the internet, this can be changed to the “customer is always neglected”. It is estimated that 57% of shopping experiences are abandoned out of sheer navigational frustration.
 
One case we’ve seen asks the user to navigate through 12 pages before a transaction is complete.
 
This is the same as driving customers out of your stores because of a bad experience. Sit down with your website and act like a customer. Forget the buttons, the graphics, the picture of your board. If website is about communication, how well does it do this against the following criteria:
 
a) Does it download quickly. If you find it slow, your customers will find it tortuously slow. The No1 irritant on the internet is slow download times. And not surprisingly, it’s also the one element that according to research gives the impression of an untrustworthy company.
 
b) Read the content: does it ramble? Does it feel written by someone lounging comfortably in front of an open fire, tugging on a pipe and wearing a smoking jacket. Get to the point and get there fast, you have between 2 to 7 minutes with your customer. So, get a move on.
 
c) Is the navigation clear? Don’t hide navigation elements, they are as good as invisible. Thinking recently evaluated a site that expects the customer to go down at least three levels before getting to the information. In some cases, you have to navigate as far down as 16 levels to get to information. It’s not surprising that sites that are difficult to navigate also give the impression of an untrustworthy company.
 
d) The new world is not a paperless society. More often than not we find information at an internet site we want to show the board, or take to a meeting, or a holiday offer we need to show our spouse, or a fantastic recipe we want to use. To do this, we print the page. Try this with your site. Hit the print button, along the top tool bar. If what prints out doesn’t look like what is on screen, or it loses all branding, then you’re not maximising your internet presence.
 
Feel like a little web therapy? Thinking can lighten your load, contact webtherapy@thinking.com.au.
 
2.3 Come back. Please come back.
In the real world, we try our hardest to bring customers back to our brand. On the internet, it seems we’re just thankful to have a site that’s open for business.
 
Here’s some sobering news. On average, around 75% of all your internet visitors leave and never return. Less than 10% ever visit more than five times. This is where you need a powerful magnet that is a combination of the previous two elements and a third.
 
Start an online community. Allow your customers to belong. Start an email newsletter. Begin a dialogue with them that is of interest and ongoing. One that continually brings them back to your site.
 
For our client Falls Creek, we found that around 20-25% of first time visitors were subscribing to an online weekly newsletter. Against all trends, 50% of visitors return between 2 - 50 times, 25% return between 50 - 100 times. Audience attrition is less than 5%.
 
On the internet, people want to belong.
 
To see how your customers can become sticky, contact stickycustomers@thinking.com.au.
 
 
3. Brand Experiences
3.1 Your brand is your people. Teach them well.
When it comes to the internet, companies often neglect their most important assets - their staff.
 
Internal marketing of the website and intranet can often produce amazing results.
 
I’m sure we can all remember the trepidation with which we moved from a typewriter to a personal computer. Yet, a little training took away much of the fear and introduced us to a new, more efficient world.
 
The new media - the internet, intranet, extranet - is the latest addition to that world and it introduces a whole new way of interacting with the organisations we work for and the people we work with.
 
At Thinking, we’re putting together new ways to help companies make that crossover into the new media. We can show that when handled correctly, such guidance can expand and extend a company’s horizons. Not just for the corporation but for each member of the organisation.
 
For more information, contact teachthemwell@thinking.com.au.
 
 
4. Offer of the Month - 10% off WebWorthy Report
Thinking Internet Management Services can attend to all of the issues covered in this newsletter. One of the first starting points we recommend is a WebWorthy Report.
 
It provides your company with a quantifiable and comprehensive benchmark of your internet presence. And importantly, it does this from your audience’s point-of-view.
 
It looks at such issues as your share of voice, reach, brand stature online, competitive activity, WaitLoss, potential brand risks, process and procedure, and recommendations.
 
Due to popular demand, Thinking is extending its July offer into September and October.
 
During these months, Thinking is offering 10% off a full WebWorthy Report. If you would like more information, please contact webworthy@thinking.com.au.
 
Offer closes 15 October, 1999.
 
 
 
THINK MAIL is Thinking Australia’s Internet Management Newsletter. It is compiled and written by Mark Bergin and Joe Di Stefano. For further information contact Thinking Australia.
 
Thinking’s mission is to help our clients establish, develop and maintain successful internet brands. We help them complete the transition from mere internet presence of their brand to the more important phase of internet brand management which covers the management of their “voice”, “experience” and “audience”.
 
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Thinking Australia
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Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia
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Email: info@thinking.com.au
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