"High Spot" Reviews
Peter Kent's "High-Spot"
Web-Site Strategy Review provides a very quick way
for you to plan your
online activities, by providing an understanding of where your
company stands online and where it can go.
The following outlines the process used in this review.
Step 1: Domain Name Review
Many companies have serious domain-name problems that they
may not have even considered—the use of .org or .net domain
names when the .com version is owned by another company,
oft-misspelled names used as the domain name without the
matching misspellings being registered, domain names written
improperly on marketing documents, domain names that won’t work
without www. preceding them, and so on.
Kent will quickly check your names for problems and, if
necessary, recommend changes, including a review of possible
names in the new domains, such as the .biz, .name, .info, and
.museum names.
Step 2: Initial Site Review
If you already have a functioning Web site, Kent will take a
quick look for areas of weakness and opportunity, before meeting
with you.
Step 3: Customer Review & Brainstorming
Session
Kent will meet with your staff to discuss what the company wants
to achieve, and how Internet marketing can be integrated into
your current marketing programs. This is an interactive process
that uses Kent's knowledge as a catalyst to stimulate ideas, while Kent also gathers information about your business
that will help Kent develop ideas about the best strategy for
your company.
Step 4: Research Process
Kent will research the Internet “landscape” to see where your
site fits, gathering information about competitors, potential
partners, PR targets (Web site, e-mail newsletters, discussion
groups, etc.), search-engine rankings of similar companies, and
so on. Peter Kent use this information in his planning, but also makes it available to you in the final report.
Step 5: Report
Information provided in the final report will vary depending
on the most appropriate strategy for your business, but may
include the following:
- Overall Strategy—A discussion
of the recommended overall strategy for your Web site
- Hosting--Are you hosted with
the right company, in the right sort of account? Many
companies are paying too much, yet getting poor and unreliable
service, along with slow connections to their site.
- Emergency Recovery--If your
hosting company went out of business, how quickly could you
recover your site? Gain control of your domain name?
- Challenges—What problems is
your company likely to run into online?
- Opportunities—Kent will point
out particular opportunities available to you
- Product/Advertising Tie-ins—Suggestions
for ways in which you can use your current advertising and
product packaging as a free promotional tool for the Web site
- Web-site Utilities—Recommendations
for utilities that may help you, such as interactive
customer-service tools, registration and feedback forms, chat
rooms, etc., and how such utilities could be integrated into
your business operations
- Offline PR—Suggestions for
places in non-Internet media to promote your site
- Online PR—The use of media
lists and online PR services to promote your site
- Competing Web Sites—What does
the competition look like, and how does your site compare?
- Partnerships—A list of
potential partners for your site, for links, banner ads,
giveaways, etc.
- Pay-per-Click—A review of
possible pay-per-click/pay-for-position strategies to bring
traffic to your site quickly
- Search-engine Strategy—Suggestions
for attracting traffic through search engines and directories,
including company and specialty directories
- “Branding” opportunities—If
appropriate, advertising placements that may be used in a
branding strategy
- Online Advertising—Recommendations
on if/how you should approach online advertising
- Newsletter Promotions—E-mail
newsletters that you could promote to, and how to work with
them
- Discussion Group Promotions—Discussion
groups of various kinds, and a strategy for working with them.
- Site Announcements—Services
that will announce your site for free
- Newsletter Publishing—How a
periodic newsletter could help your site
- Affiliate Marketing—How you
can use affiliate marketing to bring customers to your site
- WebClipping & Hit Logs—How to
track the effect of your efforts, and to use Hit Logs (in
particular the Referrer Report)
- The Next Step—Suggestions for
how to integrate Internet operations into your organization;
who should handle it, what technologies are appropriate
Step 6: Consultation
After you’ve had a chance to review the report, Kent will
talk with you to clarify any points you may be unclear about,
and to discuss your options for implementation, such as
identifying an employee as a suitable candidate, hiring a new
staff member, or out-sourcing the work.
