Websites have become much more creative than being simply online catalogues. Now they promote products and try to create brand images, use sales promotions, and even sell products and services.
The number of websites keeps on increasing everyday. What if a company creates a website that nobody visits. It is like opening a show room that no prospective customer comes to. Another situation can be, those who enter the showroom are not the target customers.
They are not the ones who would buy the available merchandise. The number of websites is numerous and unless a company’s website is visited by the right customers, it amounts to having wasted the money in creating the website. Search engines cannot keep track of all the available websites.
Visits to websites are deliberate and initiated by the visitors who can be customers, suppliers, or competitors, looking for particular products or information of their interest. In case of mass media marketing communications, such as advertisements, there is no passive exposure.
What happens in case of traditional mass media marketing communications such as TV, or radio commercials, or outdoor media, people get exposed to them without really looking for such ads. In case of the Internet, the visitor initiative is very important.
The Internet marketers have to make their websites attractive to the right target audience so that, they are motivated to visit their specific websites. Developing and maintaining a website requires considerable effort to attract visitors to the site and encourage them to return again and again requires creativity, effective marketing and regularly updating the site.
Depending on the product category and the company’s marketing objectives for the Internet, a website can be just a simple source of information about the company and its products or a powerful tool to build brand image, a means to offer samples, or generating sales leads.
In general, the communication objectives may relate to creating awareness, generating customer interest, provide information, help in building a strong brand, a powerful image or stimulate product trial by consumers.