Web Strategies

I recently was looking at KONECTO planks and tile samples at a distributors warehouse. I also got to see it installed in 2 different office rooms. I was amazed at how realistic this luxury vinyl flooring appeared in style, texture and color. I know there are other manufacturers that also have extremely realistic luxury vinyl planks and tiles that have terrific visuals.

These products help re-enforce my belief that as great as the Internet has become for consumers to explore their flooring options there is no way we can replace actually seeing the real thing. Products like these need to be seen to be appreciated. Web site photos are 72 dpi (dots-per-inch) and cannot come close to showing off the realistic look and feel of these products. Even as nice as the brochures are I don't feel a consumer really gets the realism of these floors without seeing them first hand.

If I were a manufacturer of these products I would be thinking of using the Internet to try to get a sample of these floors in any consumer visiting my web site along with the address of 1 or 2 local flooring stores that carry your products. Seeing is believing.

Manufacturers targeting flooring dealers need to remember that retailers have different needs and reasons for clicking on your banner advertisements than consumers. Sending flooring retailers to the home page of your consumer concentric web site makes little sense.

Before you create a online dealer advertising campaign try to consider what will compel dealers to click on your banner advertisement and what the dealer's needs are so you can help fulfill them. Retailers are more interested in profits, ROI, better sales mix, displays, exclusivity, competitive advantages, delivery, training, service, samples and much more. These are not things consumers care about. So why treat potential flooring resellers as you would consumers?

This can be done cost-effectively, with 1-2 landing pages that connect your banner advertisement to your specially designed landing pages. Instead of sending retailers to you home page, create a unique landing page to try to peek their attention and get them to interact with you. The landing page(s) is also easier to measure the results for and determine the success of your advertising campaign. Plus, it is easier to modify if somethings doesn't appear to work. Learn to use the web wisely and you will see better results.

This YouTube video says it all. The song used is "We Love Brett Favre" by Elroy & the Diehards available at www.packersongs.com

A lot of flooring people don't have any clue if their web site is successful or not. They had a site created for them and thought that is all they needed to do. But today, with thousands of web sites competing for consumer's attention and consumers being more web savvy you need to know if your web site is actually helping drive sales. Rather than making this complicated I will keep it simple to help flooring owners understand some things they can do to measure a web site's success.

There are several good web site analytic tools available to help track web site visitors. My favorite is Google Analytics and it is free. To use it we have to install and small Javascript code snippet at the bottom of every page the web site. After that Google Analytics will begin tracking both where visitors came from, the keywords they used at search engines, and what pages the users visited on your web site. We can even periodically email reports to help you monitor and review your web site's success.

We can also set up goals in Google Analytics. Goals tell us which visitors have followed through with actions we wanted them too take.

 As examples:

• A manufacturer's goal might be tracking the store locator. When someone types in a zip code and clicks submit they go to a page listing retailers that sell their products. That would be a goal we would want to measure. How many people actually used the store locator versus just went to the web site.
• A e-retailer's goal is usually the final step in the checkout process. How many people bought versus total web site visitors. How many people abandoned the checkout? Along with that, those who did buy where did they come from and what keywords did they use.
• A retailer may want to measure how many people went to the sales page or how many people filled out a Shop At Home Form on their web site.

These metrics can help you better evaluate what works and doesn't work. By constant monitoring your site traffic and goals you can begin to build a more successful marketing program to drive traffic and sales.

A lot of manufacturers make their web sites duo-purpose. They target both end-users and potential resellers with the same web site and web pages. Is this a mistake to do? I believe so. After all, would you run the same print ad in a consumer magazine and an industry trade publication? I would hope not. Consumers have different needs, time-constraints and online tasks than do retailers looking for new products to sell. Using your advertising dollars to send both consumers and retailers to the same landing pages (ie: your home page) seems to me to be a waste of precious ad dollars. End-users have different needs than retailers, they require entirely different call to actions, keywords, content, navigation, etc..

Having a consumer web site to build brand awareness, explore product offerings, as well as help consumers find their local resellers makes perfect sense. Creating a separate web site specifically aimed at retailers makes perfect sense too, and can help provide 24/7 support, acquire new reseller leads, and improve display penetration. Obviously, you can see the two web sites have entirely different focus and goals. By separating the two web sites it will also make it easier to measure the results and determine what works and doesn't work. Plus, if you want to show your product catalog on both sites keep your products in one central database which makes it much easier to administer and less costly to build.

In 2008, if you are running advertising campaigns on industry web portals to capture new resellers try creating a separate web site with specially designed landing pages. Use well-thought out call to actions on every page and make the pages to the point to get your web audience quickly to your objectives. Don't forget to measure your web page results, you may be presently surprised.

So often I see foreign companies that want to sell in the USA by sending out spam-like emails to USA based companies and web sites. I often receive emails wanting to do business with me through www.FloorFacts.com. They all seem to refer to themselves as the World's largest or best supplier of hardwood floors, tile, carpet or laminate flooring. Their web sites are less than appealing to the targeted email customers and lack any strong and compelling reasons to buy from them. Plus, their web sites also lack the right keywords phrases that would help them get found if doing a search for flooring manufacturers. So I guess that's why they blast out the emails to potential customers they find on the Internet.

I would really recommend that these foreign companies sit back and examine their goals, define their target audience and then create a sound web strategy before deploying any thing online. Make their web site appealing to their targeted audience by trying to fulfill their audience's needs, use the best keyword phrases intermixed in their web pages and page titles, create some strong call to actions to get visitors to interact with them, get incoming links from other relevant flooring sites and directories, and lastly, continually measure the success of their web site. Add to this advertising in the flooring trade publications off-line and online to help drive targeted potential customers to their web sites. This would undoubtedly help the foreign manufacturers have a better chance of selling products in the USA marketplace and we could avoid having to delete (without reading) these poorly-written spam-like emails.

Wow! What a big jolt! I read this morning that  Microsoft has said they have offered to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion in cash and stocks at $31 per share". See the WSJ article or CNNMoney article for complete details.

Google is by far the No.#1 most used search engine. If this acquisition would take place it would mean the #2 most popular search engine (Yahoo) and the #3 search engine (MSN) would become a strong number #2 contender for most used search engine. This could eventually effect the prices for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. Less major search engines could drive prices higher for advertisers.

Landing pages are special web pages generally used with paid search advertising. When a person clicks on your paid advertisement they are sent through to your web site. Rather then sending them to an existing web page within your web site it is best to land them on a specially created page that is designed to motivate the person to complete the desired action that got them to click through to your landing page. Using your home page or other existing pages on your web site will probably distract the person and cause them to loose their interest or motivation to proceed.

As example; creating a carpet sale advertisement and sending the potential web shoppers to your home page will undoubtedly cause a lot of people to quickly leave and never interact with you online or visit your store. By creating a specially designed carpet sale page that quickly gives shoppers that click through from your ad all the sales details, along with your store information, store hours, contact information, etc.. will give you a much better chance of making them into solid sales lead. Plus, you will get a better return from the monies you spend on paid search.

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GO PACKERS!!!!

I recently read an article that said there was over 12 million new web sites added to the Internet in 2007. With so many web sites and billions of web pages it is becoming increasingly more difficult for anyone to find anything online.  With the vast sea of web pages today, doing no marketing to promote your web site will undoubtedly lead to failure.

Having a presence on the web is no longer enough to spell success. You really need to begin to look at various marketing strategies to help build targeted traffic to your web site. Combining traditional media advertising and web site marketing strategies you gain a much better chance of building targeted traffic to your web site.

Look later this month for more detailed information to be posted here to help flooring companies increase web site traffic.