Page views, visits, uniques, bounce rate, etc. These are all good statistics to help you understand how your website is performing. However, more importantly is measuring how your website is obtaining your business goals. To do this you first need to come up with goals for your site. Occam’s Razor has a good post on key performance indicators (KPIs) to help measure the success of your website in terms of your business goals.
Sep
15
2008
How to Create an Internet Business Strategy – Introduction
One of the main services we provide to clients is creating an Internet Business Strategy. While I’d like to think there is a certain level of expertise to creating a formal Internet strategic plan, I do believe that every business owner can get into the mindset of thinking strategically. Even if you feel you’re not up to the task of creating your own Internet strategic plan, understanding what goes into creating one can help you think about ways to improve how you do business online.
At the heart of formal strategic planning is creating a strategic plan. While there are many different details that can go into a strategic plan, there are some basics that are important to think about:
- Executive Summary – Every formal report should have an executive summary which highlights the main findings. The summary should include all the top-level information that a CEO needs to know to make a decision (without reading the rest of the report). The trick is to keep the summary to only one page, so being concise is important.
- Methodologies – As part of the planning, think about who needs to be involved in the Internet strategy, how you’re going to plan the strategy, how to strategize, who is going to write the plan, and how to monitor the plan.
- Current Situation – Where does the company currently stand as far as web presence? What does the company stand for online? What do other people think of the company and products? What are your online competitors?
- Vision & Goals – What does the company want to accomplish online?
- Requirements – What are the requirements in order to meet the goals? These requirements need to incorporate all aspects of the company that are affected by the implementation.
- Implementation – How are you going to accomplish your goals? The plan needs to include milestones, budget, marketing, and, most importantly, how you will monitor for success.
This is the first in a series of posts discussing Internet Business Strategy. In the next set of posts, we’ll discuss these steps of an Internet strategic plan in more detail.
(photo by pshutterbug)
Related Posts:
- How to Create an Internet Business Strategy – Methodologies
- Internet Business Strategy – What is the Current Situation?
- Vision & Goals for your Internet Business Strategy
- What are the Requirements for your Internet Business Strategy to Succeed?
- Creating an Internet Business Strategy – Implementation
Technorati Tags: internet business strategy, internet strategy, internet strategic planning, internet strategic plan, internet strategy consulting, internet business consulting
Sep
15
2008
Strategies to Increase Your Audience
You have a website and a blog for your business. You have a loyal group of readers, but how do you increase your audience? ProBlogger has some good tips in 7 Strategies to Invite More People Into Your Audience. Even if you don’t have a blog for your business, these tips can be helpful for increasing traffic to your business website.
Sep
15
2008
Advertising Network Vibrant Launches Related Content Product
Vibrant, a leader in contextual advertising solutions, has launched a related content product. The related content system uses Vibrant’s patented contextual technology to automatically link to related articles, video, images, and audio on the website. Ad Operations Online has the full story.
Sep
11
2008
Interview with Jonathan Rivers, Executive VP of AdJuggler
AdJuggler (originally covered here) is an ad serving and management system which targets small and medium-sized publishers. Jonathan Rivers, Executive Vice President, took a few minutes to explain how AdJuggler is different from the big ad serving companies like DoubleClick and what the future holds for the company.
Sep
10
2008
Sazbean's Wordle
Jonathan Feinberg, Senior Software Researcher at IBM’s Watson Research Center has made an interesting contribution to the landscape of visual folksonomy: wordle.net. Wordle is an impressive and expressive twist on the ‘tag cloud’ idea popularized by web 2.0 sites as a quick visual tool for identifying patterns in frequency and distribution of tagged items like blog posts, songs, pictures, etc.
Of course, Jonathan wasn’t alone in his work. Still, it sparks the fires of creativity to see something this cool released to the public and I want to thank all involved. Projects like Wordle remind us that the persuit of a technical vocations need not prohibit us from the very human desire to contribute beauty to the world.
Sep
09
2008
5 PR Mistakes You Can Avoid
Many small and medium-sized business owners do their own PR and marketing. Even if you have an agency handling your marketing efforts, Web Analytics World has a good post on Top 5 PR Mistakes.
Sep
09
2008
Marketing Tips for Website Content
Writing your own content for your business website? Search Engine Guide has some great tips to keep in mind that will help with your marketing efforts. Remember, if you don’t provide the customer with the information they need and want when they come to your website, they’ll just go somewhere else. For more information on customer-centric design, check out Customer-Centric Sites and B2B Content – SEO vs. Customer-Centric Design.
Sep
08
2008
ANA cautions against Google, Yahoo deal
The WSJ is reporting on a letter, sent from the Association of National Advertisers to the Department of Justice, cautioning against the proposed deal between Google and Yahoo. The ANA is citing the usual suspects when objections to mergers, acquisitions and partnerships. The letter is short, so Ill post the pertinent half.
The letter, authorized by the ANA Board, notes that a Google-Yahoo partnership will control 90 percent of search advertising inventory and states ANA’s concerns that the partnership will likely diminish competition, increase concentration of market power, limit choices currently available and potentially raise prices to advertisers for high quality, affordable search advertising.
It is the last line that really rings true to the heart of the ANA’s issue with the deal. The ANA is worried that Google and Yahoo will be able to raise prices on the large percentage of online advertising inventory they control. It is a serious issue for the association, who represents institutional advertisers and who has a board made up of power brokers
ANA’s board, made up of well-known marketing executives including Brian Perkins, Johnson & Johnson‘s vice president of corporate affairs; Stephen Quinn, chief marketing officer at Wal-Mart Stores Inc; and Betsy Lazar, executive director of media and advertising for General Motors Corp., approved the group’s move. ~ WJS
I’m not a large Google or Yahoo advertiser and so I don’t have a good grasp on the merits of this raised objection. Clearly, when customers of a service speak out against something like this, especially one as well organized and connected as the ANA, the DOJ is likely to listen intently. In truth, there is the case to be made that Yahoo is threatened by the possibility of going out of business if this deal is not made. This would surely hurt competition and concentrate control within Google more than a partnership does. Microsoft has made similar arguments against the deal that the ANA is making. Those pleas have been largely ignored in the media as the cries of a competitor in the online ad market.
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