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How Companies Analyze
Competition Online
How to Analyze Your Web Site Competition Analyze your
Competitors’ Web Sites: Accurate and timely information
is essential for any business to remain competitive.
Read their financial information, compare companies
on several different types of investment data.
It's much easier to obtain information
on companies that are publicly held because they must
report financial information to the Securities &
Exchange Commission. Therefore, the first step in
researching a company is determining whether it is
traded on the stock exchange.
Following are some sources for a
variety of information that your competitors don't
want you to know:
1. Check at http://www.hoovers.com for just about
any information you would want about a company; a
corporate description, financial information, key
officers, competitors, and more.
2. Corporate Information provides U.S. and international
Company’s information including research reports,
company profiles, earnings information and analyst
reports.
3. Business.com reveals news, research and contacts
for 10,000 public and 44,000 private companies.
4. You can research public opinion of a company and
its competitors by using Google's Usenet Service,
at http://groups. google.com. Silicon Investor's Stock
Talk, at http://www.silicon investor.com/index.gsp
and Raging Bull at http://ragingbull. lycos.com/cgi-bin/static.cgi/a=index.txt&d=mainpages.
CEO's Express, a business research
service is a wonderful site for gleaning information
on a company. Opportunities to profit from competitors'
mistakes: Read competitors' information and prices
at more than 2000 online shops; collect information
from any online store. Most services are free.
You can learn what good Web site
design is by looking at bad Web design. If your prospective
customer is bedazzled and confused by your Web site
home page, he/she will instantly leave. Your storefront
[index page, or home page] should have a graphic,
or logo, which acts as a sign over your storefront.
The site must be easy to navigate, and well organized.
The background color or texture must be truly a background
pattern, and should not interfere with the text, making
it difficult to read.
Too many graphics draw attention
away from the text because they are distracting. With
Web graphics there has to be a fine balance; just
enough to dazzle and entertain but not so much as
to annoy. Graphics don't have to be animated for the
most effect, they can be static--- i.e. the straight
line, either horizontal or vertical--- and still have
a strong dynamic power.
Line serves as a guideline for the
eye...but this depends on what audience you are targeting.
Sometimes more graphics are more effective.
The customer must be able to easily
contact you. Sign your page, make the E-mail address
prominent. Sometimes a customer may wish to contact
a live person so you need to connect with your customer
by having a place for name, address, phone number,
fax, and check-boxes for requesting information on
products or services.
Privacy: Does the competitor's site
have an effective privacy policy? Will the sensitive
data you enter during a purchase by encrypted? A 'layered'
security model, where internal assets are secured,
partitioned, and monitored is of the utmost importance.
For credit card numbers security,
you need to use the secure hashing algorithm (SHA-1)
in order to make a unique surrogate value that can
be referenced, but not used to charge against the
account. Advanced encryption should be used for credit
card numbers; at the least, a Triple-DES algorithm
with a 168-bit key and the use of a hardware device
or secure key storage system to store the keys. It's
important to frequently rotate the keys and to provide
physical control over who can acess them. Then when
the data is no longer needed, the disks must be physically
destroyed or destroyed by using a wipe algorithm.
If it doesn't need to be recovered, the key should
be destroyed.
Importance of finding other areas
for improvement: In order to succeed in E-marketing
it is an absolute must that a business have a reliable
Web site. This must be addressed first because choosing
a Web site host is one of the most important decisions
an E-marketer will ever make for her business. Without
it, your business will fail. The Web site must be
reliable, without frequent technical difficulties,
one that offers personal contact and available and
prompt service. The Web host will have to be able
to solve problems and answer questions, with 24-hour
staffing for maximum reliability.
It's important for the site to provide
industrial strength hosting if the E-marketer expects
to have a very high traffic site - it's important
to have a host with a large pipeline, mail, access
to the site's log files, and to have system programs.
Businesses need to reference programs in a cgi-bin
directory. Most Web hosts allow FTP access to a cgi-bin
directory but not Telnet access. So this can slow
down site programming. Without Telnet acess the E-marketer
cannot compile programs in C or C++, and technical
support to do it. Therefore it is imperative that
the host allow Telnet access to a cgi-bin directory.
Avoid being locked into a contract
where the E-marketer can't choose another Web hosting
ISP in case the first one that's chosen doesn't work
out. If the Web developer is listed as the Administrative
Contact, it may be difficult to change to a new developer
if need be. This can be checked out with http://rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/whois.
An Internet business must have mailing
list management programs available for newsletters,
as well as autoresponders for automatic responses
to e-mail messages. The Web host ISP must provide
access to the log files. SSL is needed for credit
card security and an ISP operating system that is
compatible with the system that the E-marketer uses
to maintain a database. The ISP's current customers
can be questioned for this information as it may be
difficult to get the information from the ISP host.
Success in E-marketing will go to
the site that offers unique services, superior service,
enough resources to support your clients to their
satisfaction, i.e. customer interaction and feedback
resources.
To evaluate whether it is wise to
trade with companies that merge through acquisitions
we must be mindful that their capabilities diminish
with a merger. In order for companies to create and
maintain service, it takes time, and the value of
these acquisitions cannot be determined at the outset.
These newly merged companies face many challenges
and many of them do not succeed. Read their financial
information, compare information, on several different
types of investment data; graphs and charts, on financial
performance, review annual reports.
"Promotion Stat" provides
solutions to helpWeb owners evaluate the effectiveness
of their advertising and promotion campaigns. It tracks
sites visitors that are referred to your page from
individual links and ads and tracks the visitors'
behavior while on your site. Evaluate the quality
of your competitor's sites, their sales promotions
and pricing - look for sales and discounts, and customer
feedback facilities.
A simple domain name, easy site navigation
and use, working links, a prominent efficient privacy
policy and an easy-to-find E-mail address are important
features to consider. These can make a difference
between your site succeeding or failing. Focus on
your niche and the content of your first page will
be more credible. Web sites that focus on a very narrow
theme will create visitors of greater interest who
are more willing to buy.
People don't have time to search
for what they want. If your site visitors are confronted
by too many things, they will do nothing. Don't overwhelm
them. Your business Web site should not take over
30 seconds to load or your potential customer will
not wait and simply surf elsewhere; download speed
has to be a prime consideration as it is of the most
benefit.
A company should concentrate on the
ability to pay a bill online. This aspect has transformed
home-based, start-up companies to Fortune 100 companies.
You can accept checks over the phone or Internet,
handle credit card transactions online, transfer funds,
with http://www.paybyweb.com. This program uses live
people; it is not an automated system. Because they
use people to verify your data instead of machines
they can often 'fix' an account where the banking
information has been entered incorrectly. They do
credit card processing, check processing, and electronic
funds transfers. You can do all your banking using
your computer, phone, notebook computer, cell phone,
or fax. There are no monthly fees, transaction fees,
or recurring charges.
Assess the added value resulting
from this analysis by: Monitoring your company's competition
in the search engines or directory listings, the number
of links they have pointing back to their Web site
or what their business reputation is in the usenet/newsgroup
community, as well as yours, and the number of third
party links pointing back to yourWeb site.
You can use tools such as LinkBank
at http://webpronews.com/rd/smithrenaud.html. This
enables you to understand how to maximise your marketing
dollars by learning where you need more of an online
presence. The alternative to this program is to do
the monitoring by hand, which is time consuming but
worth the effort - if you have lots of time.
Do others' sites trade links with
yours? Spy-BOT, a reciprocal link tracker will check
those sites linking to yours. Spy-BOT is affiliated
with The DevWeb.
Targeting a niche market: Because
you can't be everything to everybody, to be successful
on the Web you normally have to have very specific
products or services that target a niche market. Your
site must be as personal as possible, as if you're
face-to-face with a customer. Visitors should get
the idea that your site is the premier source of ideas
and information on whatever your web site specialty.
What aspects of a competitor's online
activity should a company concentrate in order to
gain the most benefit? One opinion has it that because
general presentation is foremost, you must avoid those
ads that mention 'free Web space'; that you'll give
away more business to the advertisers that the hosting
company will post all over your Web page than it would
cost you to pay for Web hosting; that these ads are
designed to give your visitor an opportunity to click
out of your site before getting the first words of
your presentation, because they are usually placed
at the top of the site.
Free hosting services sometimes become
over-crowded so that half the time your Web site won't
come up. When this happens, your business is closed.
Bravenet free Web hosting is listed first on the list
of top ten free Web hosts, is reliable, the banner
is unobtrusive, and they offer a shortened URL subdomain.
This is all recognized by Google and the other top
search engines. At the least, this is very good for
starting out. Another good free Web host is Tripod,
as well as GeoCities, and these are given high priority
with Google, the top-rated search engine.
It is generally believed that with
your own hosting and domain name, your visitors have
more confidence in you and are more willing to do
business with you. This has to be a personal choice.
How are companies already analyzing
competition online? By examining sales copy and headlines,
by how quickly pages are displayed with a variety
of modems and how they look in different browsers;
by checking the search engines for high placements;
the first impression of a business can make or a business.
Ads must not be duplicates of others but must be different
- unique, to make real money; by discerning who the
business' affiliates are, and whether they offer products
that meet the needs of their potential customers;
by determining whether the affiliates' products are
of high quality and whether they provide good customer
service; by checking with the Better Business Bureau;
by checking a competitors' log files; and noting who
the sponsors are.
One way to tell if a site isn't getting
any advertisers is to note how many banners advertise
their own site. Either they aren't getting anyone
to buy their banner space, or the rates are so low
it is more profitable to advertise the company's own
products.
Possibility to find a complementary
service to partner with: Webrings allow Web users
to link similar sites and to form rings of sites on
any topic of interest. Link to other sites like yours
to increase traffic to your site by joining a Web
ring, such as http://dir.webring.yahoo.com/rw. It
is an alternative to the monopolistic and hierarchical
nature of search engines, providing an avenue for
linking common Web-based interests.
There are some large ad networks
that bring thousands of Web sites together. These
are very attractive to advertisers and big companies.
TheAdStop.com can get you started, they include how-to
advice and a host of reviewed ad networks. ValueClick
delivers ads to a global audience, including over
30% of Internet users in the U.S. Banners range over
10,200 sites before 14-million people.
A large corporation may need a more
extensive campaign designed by an ad agency. Work
with fellow marketers by attending seminars and trade
shows. Advertise on radio, TV shows, list with a directory.
Partner with an e-business consultancy such as E-marketing.com
that offers a wide range of strategic, design, technical
and marketing skills. They help you develop an e-business
strategy, build digital brands, generate online revenue
and build personalized relationships with customers
by e-mail campaigns and viral marketing online ad
campaigns. They help collect data about customers
and prospects related to their buying habits and Web
behavior. This enables companies to begin a dialogue
with their customers in order to earn their loyalty
and repeat-business.
##########
Resources: "E-Marketing Digital
Business Guide to Online Marketing" 93 Newman
Street, Soho, London WIT 3EZ UK
info@e-marketing (8 Jul. 2001)
Flanagan, Debbie "Researching Companies on the
Internet-A Tutorial"
6/11/01 http://home.sprintmail.com/~debflanagan/financial.html
[1 Jul. 2001]
My Simon "My Simon" http://www.mysimon.com
[4 Jul. 2001]
Flanders, Vincent "Web Pages That Suck"
(4 Jul. 2001)
Flanders, Vincent "Fixing Your Web Site"
http://www.fixingyourwebsite.com/ top10/intranet.html
[4 Jul. 2001]
Arnold, Tom "An Electronic Citadel" 5/01
www.siia.net/sharedcontent/divisions/ebus/citadel.pdf
[1 Jul. 2001]
Sterne, Jim "Target Marketing of Santa Barbara"
3d Edition http://www.targetingcom/book1chap1-3.html
[4 Jul. 2001]
Dr. Wilson, Ralph "Web Marketing Today"
Issue 27 http://www.wilsonweb.com 1/6/97 [7/7/2001]
Stamford, CT. Research "The e-business consulting
market evolves: Buyer beware" www.techrepublic.com/articl.jhtml?id=r00720010704ggp01.htm
[4 Jul. 2001]
PromotionStat System "General Information"
www.promotionstat.com/whati_sinfo.shtml [4 Jul. 2001]
Weiss, David "Welcome to Paybyweb.com" 01/15/01
http://www.paybyweb.com [4 Jul. 2001]
http://www.link-spy.com (4 Jul. 2001) The Dev Web
http://www.thedevweb.com [4 Jul. 2001]
http://webpronews.com/rd/smithrenaud.html [4 Jul.
2001] "Image Cafe" http://imagecafe.com
[7 Jul. 2001]
Purdue, Candice "Web Design Weekly" Online
Success Internet Business 115 Chesterfield Hwy Cheraw
SC 29520 support@onlinesuccesstips.com [8 Jul. 2001]
Heywood, Pamela http://www.iboost.com/index.html [8
Jul. 2001]
Elmer, Greg "Web Rings As Computer-Mediated Communication"
CMC Magazine [Jan 1999]
http://www.december.com/cmc/mg/1999/jan/e/mer.html
[8 Jul. 2001]
Nunley, Kevin "iBoost Journal" http://www.iboost.com/profit/advertising/getting_started/3007.htm
[8 Jul. 2001]
"eMarketing Association" http://www.emarketingassociations.com/benefits.htm
[7/8/01]
*********************
For Additional Information, Please
Contact:
Margot B
E-mail: margotb@margotbwritersforum.com
http://margotbwritersforum.com
http://margotbworldnews.com
About the Author Margot
B [Margotsweb Designs]
http://margotbwritersforum.com
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