eCommerce - Taking business a step forward

On Friday 25 September 2009 I was invited to speak at the above titled forum organised by the Malta Communications Authority. The aim of the forum was to highlight 3 local case studies and also launch e-commerce business guidelines for businesses in the Maltese Islands.

Having guidelines to assist local companies is a good initiative especially since a section on taxation and cross-border VAT implications for products and services for EU or Non-Eu clients was also addressed.

I was asked to speak about my business experience in setting up and launching ChooseMalta.com as our first website and eventually all of the other 'Choose' travel sites that we own and manage.

In sharing my experience I vividly recalled the obsession I had with three main areas:

1. How many people visited the site

2. If google had indexed us

3. Number of online orders

I'm writing this in this blog as anyone out there who launched a website can probably relate to these initial 'obsessions'. Reality is that years down the line, you still monitor the above 3 areas, yet not as frequently, as when you launch a new site! Nonetheless, what changes is that the analysis of these 3 areas becomes deeper and more complex.

Do you market online?

"Yes, I have a website", is what some people say.
Having a website is just the first of many steps of ensuring your brand is 'reachable' online.

A website should be supplemented by banners linking to the website, to help you reach as many new visitors as possible.  Unless your website is at the tip of everyone's tongue (EBay?), or unless you rank first on various search engines including the top ones, with all the keywords associated with your website content (which is practically impossible - and still, not a very safe bet, since you would probably like to entice new visitors who were not really looking at searching for your category of brand) - banner advertising is imperative.

Banners on the world wide web first appeared back in 1994, and since then, the banner industry has exploded.  Quite reasonable considering it took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users, TV 13, and internet a mere 5!

There are two types of positive banner outcomes, the first and most obvious is a click-through, where the viewer clicks the banner and follows through to the linked website, and the second is viewing the banner.  Whilst the second choice might seem rather passive and almost like the user is 'ignoring' the banner, this is not the case.  The brand is still gaining it's rightful exposure, and the user might visit the website once he is interested or in need of the product.

To make it simpler - what is the probability of you visiting a shop you have seen advertised on print, after viewing the advert on paper?

You might be interested in the advert, but you have to:
a) remember
b) find the time to visit the shop
...to say the least!

Now let's say you are online, browsing in the comfort of your home...you spot a banner with a product that interests you...and bam...you click, and find yourself browsing the company's website.  Busy?  No excuses:  hit ctrl+d and bookmark the page, and view it later ;-)

Therefore I consider web advertising much more effective than print advertising, and this is only one of the thousands of reasons I can think of off the top of my head!

Standard advertising options

The most commonly sold advert type is the banner; of which we have two different types - Skyscraper Banners (appear on right of page) and Island Banners (appear on left of page).

Listings in various categories are also commonly sought after, according to relevance and our restaurant listings are especially popular, having excellent  statistics.

For clients who wish to advertise on ChooseMalta.com and are not sure what type of advertising would work for them, we offer customised advertising tailored to suit your needs.  This ensures your product/service is promoted where applicable on the site in the best manner possible.  Packages with great prices are tailor-made to give the clients a positive advertising experience; my aim is to have clients to come back year after year and renew their campaign after all!

I am constantly brainstorming to come up with novel ideas, more soon!