Global e-Commerce Marketing

Without effective marketing the most advanced and technically superb e-commerce web site will only be a cash drain. It's not the purpose of this web site or our newsletter to duplicate the voluminous amount of information available about marketing a web site -- nor about marketing to residents of other countries. However, because of the critical importance of marketing an ecommerce web site, we will provide some very selective comments and resource links for those who have not seriously considered the marketing dimension already. Hopefully, this information will encourage you to do that as soon as possible and will help to speed up your learning curve. For those who are already experts on Internet marketing, we would welcome your suggestions for any significant omissions or any issues with which you disagree.

As of yet, we have seen little information about marketing via e-commerce to a global market. There is a lot of Information available about global trade and import/export issues. And there is a lot of information available about marketing an e-commerce web site, some of which is referenced below. 

Marketing a web site is a combination of basic marketing and some marketing methods that are unique to the medium. If you want customers to place orders on your web site, you need to promote the web site offline as aggressively as you promote any other offline product or service. The entire spectrum of advertising is available such as magazines, newspapers, direct mail, radio, television, trade shows, catalogs, tele-marketing, seminars, bingo cards, advertising premiums, billboards, personal selling and networking. In every medium that you use to promote your products or services, you should also be promoting your web site. This assumes of course, that you have taken the time to make some "bet your business" decisions about such matters as competing with your distribution channel partners or using your web site to support their efforts. 

There are also some online marketing techniques that are unique to the medium. 

Design of the Web Page

The design of the web pages will have a major impact on the marketing of the web site through  listings in search engines. The design element includes the choice of a document name. For example, in our first web site, a document on living trusts was called www.rpifs.com/rpifs/ap9309.htm. We have revised that document name to be www.rpifs.com/rpifs/livingtrust.htm.  Another factor is the choice of a domain name. Our present domain name is based on the initials of the company (RPI for Research Press, Inc.) but that was taken in 1996 when we signed up for a domain name. So we added Financial Solutions to the name and called the web site rpifs.com. We have since reserved the name OffshorePress because it's a better descrition of what we do and because it was available as a domain name. In the near future, we will convert the rpifs.com web documents into offshorepress.com. If you haven't already made these common mistakes, you will save time and money and get better results to avoid them. 

In each web page, there should be a description of the document that has some sales sizzle. Instead of letting a technician name the documents, a sales copy writer should be involved. The heading is an important factor, as is the introductory description of the document. A web page document can include comments called "meta tags" that are for the benefit of the search engines. These "tags" tell the search engine the critical information some of the search engines need for classification. To a large extent, the meta tags may be a duplication of the material in the document, but they are important to some of the top search engines. 

A web page without any text isn't going to be picked up by the search engines. Designing a web page is a lot like writing advertising copy. The text is far more important than the graphics. The placement of the graphics can affect the way the page is ranked by search engines. 

Although frames make it easier for the reader to navigate through a large web site, they make it difficult for search engines to locate the pages. If you feel you must use frames, you need to create duplicate non-frame pages. This isn't just for the convenience of people wiith old browsers. It's critical to get your documents into the search engines. Either use a non-frames web site or be prepared to create two versions of every page.

Key words are perhaps the most important element of a web page and should be used within the text as well as within the headlines. Use both single words and phrases. Single words should be in the plural to include both singular and plural in the pages the search engines find. Put some text on every web page.  Use a page editor that prompts you for key words or find another one or learn how to insert them with a basic text editor. 

To be continued .......