Successful Web Sites
Summer, 2002
What makes a successful web site? Is it online sales? Page
hits? Ad revenue?
Realistically, there is only one way to gauge a web site's
worth, and it has everything to do with how well it meets the
needs of its users. But, that's a pretty broad statement — it's
impossible to use the same metrics to measure the success of a
business to consumer/retail site with that of a site providing
health information. Differing goals and audiences require
different benchmarks. On the web, there is no single design or
marketing strategy that suits all types of business or
organizations. Learn from the most successful sites
So, how does one create a successful web site? Our Summer,
2002 topic begins a brief survey and analysis on the
most successful web sites by their category. In each category,
different measures are used to define success-in some cases,
it is site traffic; in other cases it is sales, or repeat
visitors. This quarter, we focus on the Consumer/E-business
and Religion categories. The Health/Medical, Community/Portal,
Government and Charitable/Non-Profit categories will be
discussed in our Autumn, 2002 topic.
Applying the valuable site design tips, content creation,
online tools and marketing strategies from these best-of-breed
sites to your own web site development can help you create an
online presence that actually produces results for your
business or organization. Contact us for more
information on any of the research presented here.
Consumer/E-business Sites
The top four categories for consumer products/services and
e-business are evaluated here. In addition to these four
product/service sets, other favorite consumer online purchases
include general travel, personal computers and computer
software, CDs, movies and videos.
AIRLINE RESERVATIONS
The top category for consumer product/service sales, the
airline industry is moving to a marketing-oriented, customer
approach, rather than counting simple site traffic as a
measure of a successful web site. Instead of site traffic, an
evolving measurement system includes tracking unique visitors,
the frequency of site use by those visitors, visitor loyalty,
online sales and online growth. Using these metrics, the most
popular airline reservations sites are: Southwest Airlines
A fast and convenient online scheduling and reservations tool
makes the Southwest Airlines web site a top performer in
online ticket sales. Site design and visual elements are very
simple and utilitarian, with nothing to slow the user down.
Southwest Airlines, a regional air carrier, knows their
customer is there to make an airline reservation and has
designed their site to make that transaction extremely simple.
Online tools for Car and Hotel reservations are also included.
American Airlines
As one of the biggest airlines, it is no surprise that
American Airlines scores very high in the loyalty and online
sales areas. More accoutrements and online tools than the
Southwest Airline site provides more reasons for the user to
return to the American Airlines for their air travel needs.
Jet Blue Airlines
Another regional carrier, Jet Blue's popularity is most likely
rooted in its overall business strategy of low fares, great
customer service and reliable equipment. Its web site
customers rank the highest in loyalty, preferring to book
their tickets online directly with Jet Blue, rather than using
other travel web sites or travel agents. Jet Blue is selective
with the services and tools they provide to other sites,
preferring to keep some items exclusive to their web site.
BOOKS
Books are the second most popular online consumer spending
category, capturing 40% of total adult online shoppers. The
combination of megachain bookstores and the web has put
enormous pressure on independent bookstores, but consumers
still want the ability to walk into a neighborhood bookstore.
In fact, a creative web strategy helped an independent
bookstore, Powell's Books, in Portland, Oregon to compete and
even grow their business. Amazon
Along with Ebay, Amazon is probably the most recognizable
e-business to survive the dot com crash. Amazon set the
standard for user-friendly web design years before most
business understood the difference between a web site versus a
catalog or retail store. An expert on using site design,
online features and functionality to merchandise their
products, Amazon rapidly expanded to include items other than
books on their site. Amazon's growth strategy did not include
opening retail stores. Instead they created partnerships with
merchants selling non-competing products to augment their
sales. Barnes and Noble
Barnes and Noble is the second most popular book site, and is
proof positive that being first is not always desirable.
Ridiculed early on for ignoring the web and relying on their
well-founded retail stores, Barnes and Noble took their time
developing a good web strategy and a good web site to easily
extend their brand online.
CLOTHING
At an estimated $368 million dollars in sales during 2001,
clothing is the third largest online shopping category.
Overall, online retail clothing sales make up a fraction of
the entire retail clothing market. In the list of the top 20
retail apparel sites, 17 are the web sites of established
retail stores or catalog merchants. In most cases, successful
retail clothing web sites carry men's, women's and children's
items. Old Navy
Taking the top spot, Old Navy presents a very intuitive
interface and design, enabling their users to find what they
want quickly. In fact, their site has the fastest reported
product search time of all retail sites. A thoughtful
integration of their retail stores and offline services, such
as gift cards and in-store credit card creates a very
consistent brand and shopping experience for their site's
users. Gap
Retailer Gap successfully addresses one of the key concerns
consumers have about online purchasing-product returns.
Gap.com allows online purchases to be returned to any Gap
retail store and even provides the user with a convenient
store finder to make the return process even easier.
Victoria's Secret
A well-known catalog merchant of women's specialty lingerie,
Victoria's Secret pursued an aggressive expansion to offer
clothing and swimwear in their catalog, online, and in their
retail stores. A comprehensive branding and marketing
strategy, including broadcasting lingerie fashion shows on
their web site via streaming media caught the media's
attention and made the company a household name.
AUTOMOTIVE
As the fourth most popular online shopping category, consumers
are using the web to conduct detailed automotive product
research, including basic information, consumer ratings and
reviews, as well as comparisons between automotive brands,
models and dealerships. When using the web to purchase a new
car, consumers are ultimately interested in reducing the
amount of time they spend shopping in automobile dealerships.
Kelley Blue Book
Kelley Blue Book successfully uses their established brand as
The Trusted Resource in their information-packed online
presence. Their navigation structure reflects a deep
understanding of their audience and their information needs. A
consumer-focus is also apparent, in the lightweight visual
design that allows users on ordinary dial-up internet
connections to download pages in less than 30 seconds. Kbb.com
also recognizes the importance of search engines, using their
document titles, keywords and page copy to appear in the
number one search result position for phrases such as "car
prices" and "used car values." Carpoint
An online service of the Microsoft Network, Carpoint has the
advantage of being the automotive web site linked at the
msn.com web portal/search engine. Msn.com is consistently in
the top three most popular sites nationwide. While slower in
download performance than Kbb.com, its content is quite
comprehensive and has licensed Kelley Blue Book data for its
used car valuations. It is likely that this site's overall
popularity is due to its ease of availability to the average
63 million people who visit a Microsoft-owned site each
month. Autotrader
Autotrader.com also downloads in less than 30 seconds on a
dial-up internet connection, and presents an visual
design/user interface similar to that of Kelley Blue Book.
Rich in content and search capabilities, Autotrader.com also
partners in an online automobile marketplace with Ebay.
Religion Sites
Nearly one-quarter of Internet users report having used the
Internet for religious and spiritual information. People
predominantly use the Internet for religious to find reference
and study information on their own faith, or another faith.
Connecting with people and their faith is also important to
web users. Given the diversity of faiths in the United States,
there are no top religion web sites, but there are three
features across all religious/spiritual sites that web users
report as elements to why they prefer particular web sites.
These features are:
- Information about their own faith or religion
- Information about social issues important to people who share
their faith
- Guided meditations, devotions, or other material for personal
prayer
Traffic to religious web sites does increase during the
spiritual holidays. During the Passover and Easter season of
2002, large traffic increases were reported on the religious
and spiritual information and services sites shown here.
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