This is an excellent book that just about anyone with a commercial Web site will find useful. On the Web, traffic is your stock in trade, and increasing it is priority number one. Equally true but less obvious is the fact that it's not enough to simply get lots of people coming to your site. You also need to encourage your visitors to buy something once they're there.
September 13, 1997
The first 5 chapters are about developing your Web strategy. In a new medium like the Web, it's quite common for people and companies just to jump in, with no clear idea of what they expect to get from their Web site. The book discusses different business models and different types of sites, and ways to minimize your initial investment. The advice here is quite good, and if heeded, will save a lot of time and money.
The next section is what you bought your ticket for: how to get lots and lots of those lovely hits! Helmstetter covers planning a promotional campaign, then discusses site traffic measurement. He explains access logs, traffic terminology, and some crude traffic measurement techniques. This is one of the few places where I have to take issue with the author. He describes some very crude measurement techniques, like page counters and multiple points-of-entry, and leaves the impression that only the largest sites need to use more sophisticated tools. I believe that any commercial site needs to have the best traffic measurement tools that it can afford. In fact, there are a number of shareware log analysis programs that can do quite a lot, but Helmstetter says little about them.
Chapter 8 is a very thorough discussion of directories and search engines, with several useful tips for submitting your site. Perhaps even more effective is the practice of obtaining links to your site from other related sites (reciprocal or otherwise). Helmstetter covers this matter in detail, with good tips on how to convince people to give you links, with emphasis on politeness and proper Netiquette. The chapter on online advertising is a little shorter, but serves as a good overview. The next chapter tells how to use traditional publicity vehicles, such as press releases, that many Web marketers overlook.
Now we come to a really ticklish subject: Promoting Your Site to Newsgroups Without Getting Napalmed, as the chapter is called. The word is: select only those newsgroups that are really pertinent to your subject, then research them before posting anything. Read the FAQ, and lurk for a while to see what kind of stuff is considered acceptable. Some newsgroups tolerate nothing that even resembles advertising or boosterism, while others welcome it. Helmstetter wisely points out that the success of your Web venture can be seriously imperiled through such breaches of Netiquette as inappropriate posting to newsgroups, or inconsiderate emailing. His advice on sending unsolicited email? DON'T DO IT.
Of course, it isn't enough to get lots of hits. Your site must be designed to encourage people to stay, come back, and buy! The third the book is called Designing Your Site to Make Money. Helmstetter emphasizes that the site should be built around your business model. If you're actually selling on the Web, then the site should make it easy for people to do so. If your site is designed to steer customers to more traditional distribution channels, then contact information must be presented in a logical, easy-to-find way. The importance of looking and acting professional is stressed, which is advice that more Web designers need to take. The amount of amateurish stuff on the Web is overwhelming. Not only the graphic design, but the logic and navigation of a site are critical to turning visitors into customers.
This book is both informative and well-written. Unlike so many books these days, it is comparatively well-edited, with few errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. Throughout the book, there are lots of useful URLs. There is also a Web site that goes with the book, at http://www.monsoon.org/book.
The first 5 chapters are about developing your Web strategy. In a new medium like the Web, it's quite common for people and companies just to jump in, with no clear idea of what they expect to get from their Web site. The book discusses different business models and different types of sites, and ways to minimize your initial investment. The advice here is quite good, and if heeded, will save a lot of time and money.