If you build it, will they come?

The old adage on the Web used to be that if you built a good Web site it got traffic by default. At that stage there were so few good sites that any site with content soon found its way into search engines, got added to favourites and sent to all and sundry.

The failure of some sites to garner enough support to survive points to a change in trends on the Internet.

That no longer holds true in today`s market with the millions of Web sites, portals, shopping malls and sophisticated search engines to deliver more than enough content for anyone to spend a lifetime browsing.

The failure of some sites to garner enough support to survive points to a change in trends on the Internet. One would think that with over 100 million online users around the world, a good site would be swamped with hits. For content sites that make their money through advertising this is important, but for online commerce sites this is critical. Any retailer who runs a physical store can tell you that if you don`t have people through the doors, you can`t make sales.

So what do we do about it? Obviously you can`t just build a good site and expect it to get traffic. You need to go back to good old marketing principles, ie you need to drive interest to get the contact and then you have to sell the person to stay and buy from you. In any sales operation, whether online or physical, there are three phases to a sale: engage, transact and analyse. Most often it is the engage process which is weak and the analyse phase non-existent.

There are really only two mechanisms to drive traffic to your site: offline marketing (print, radio, TV, direct) and online marketing (search, banners, links). It is rather ironic that in this age of electronic marketing, some of the most successful campaigns to drive online traffic have come from offline marketing! Two of our local big portals, 24.com and iafrica.com, have both conducted huge media campaigns over radio, TV, direct mail and print.

One must not underestimate the role offline advertising can play in driving traffic to a Web site, just look at how many commercials and print ads now end with a URL being shown. There have been some unique ways of showing the URL in the last few weeks that really brought home to me how far this has gone. One that really grabbed my attention was used during Formula 1 racing. One of the drivers, Alexander Wurz, has his own Web site URL (http://www.wurz.com) across the front of his helmet so any pre-race shots of him in the car advertise this URL.

All this offline marketing needs to be supported by online marketing as well. This is where online competitions, surveys, banner ads, search engines and such play a role. They typically show a higher response than offline advertising, and you can get it shown to a huge number of people, but it is really just hitting a small piece of the total market.

The other side of driving sales on an online site is the process of selling to the customer. How often is it forgotten that on the other end of the wire is a real customer, who has the same needs, wants and concerns as somebody in a physical store? The normal approach is just to list all the products and then expect a person to buy. Out of the window has gone all the lessons learned from the physical world of merchandising, cross-selling, up-selling, promotions, specials, discounts, loyalty programmes, etc.

Remember that in an online world, your customer can`t see or touch the goods so you are going to have to cater for that somehow in the layout. Some of this is easy to correct by building a site that is easy to use, friendly and displays the products with pictures and good descriptions. The second part is to make a site that is easy to buy from as nobody likes dealing with a site that has a poor shopping basket and complicated order forms.

We also must not forget that we need to sell to the customer. Even with all the right things done to market the products and get the customer to look at the item, if they aren`t given the motivation to buy it at that time then they might well "walk" away. In a physical store we are usually approached by a salesperson who tells us that the item is on special, they will discount it, buy one and get something else free, or some other reason why we should go through with the purchase. In a virtual world the same applies. Some online stores are experimenting with live sales people connected to the site with an ability to view the current shoppers, and to make on the fly suggestions, advice and changes to help make the sale.

The one single piece of advice I would give any prospective merchant moving from a retail-type store to an online one, is not to forget all the lessons learned in running a retail business. Because it is the Web does not mean that all the good retail marketing principles don`t apply. You are at the end of the day still dealing with a fickle consumer.