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"Monetizing a Company's Web Site"

by Dave Hertner © Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved

Do you know that most corporate web sites make NO money for companies that own them? They simply set up this elaborate whiz-bang site that is intended to provide information to public about products or services they offer.

What a bunch of phooey!!

A web site should not exist if its sole purpose is anything other than to make money for entity that owns it.

I don't know whether or not you noticed or not but for me there were costs involved in creation and maintenance of my web site.

I work for a large company that receives about 35,000 visits to its website per year. They have a web master who gets paid about $50,000 per year and he does a beautiful job in maintaining a beautiful web site. This translates into a cost of $1.43 per visit. How long would you and I last in business if we had to pay $1.43 to each person who visited our site?

One day I went to president of company and asked him how much web site was earning firm. He just sort of blinked. "The web site isn't a revenue generator" he said. I asked him if he knew what an 'Unrealized Asset' was. I got a blank stare and 'a you are starting to waste my time' look.

This is a VERY common occurrence!! You would think that in this day in age people running these large companies would be utilizing every mechanism within company to generate additional revenue. This is just not case.

Here is an OPPORTUNITY!!! Take note please!! If you have even modest skill with computer you will be able to go into a company and turn their web site into a revenue generator.

Here are steps:

We are clearly well past innocent "golden age" of Internet - Darwinian economics have become order of day today. Any company worth their salt must maintain a web site as an information resource and/or to generate incremental ecommerce revenue. Qualified traffic is name of game, as it's oxygen that keeps a good ecommerce web site thriving. Consequently, it's very important to have an understanding of your web site traffic or visitor activity; i.e. baseline information that includes number of visitors during specific time periods, originating location (domain), where visitors went on a site and how long they stayed on specific sections or pages of a web site. The de facto industry standard traffic analysis tool application is Web Trends, manufactured/supported by netiQ, Inc., which we will focus on in this article.

Fundamentals and Jargon Watch

All traffic analysis tools rely primarily upon information that is extracted from log files; i.e. files that are maintained on your server which show where a visitor came from, what keyword(s) they used to find your site (if applicable), what Operating System and Browser versions they are using, etc. There are literally hundreds of excellent log file analysis tools that can be located via CNet's Download.com or TuCows - both sites are excellent resources for software and information.

It's critical in today's bottom line business environment to have ability to analyze web traffic (visitors) and patterns and then integrate this knowledge with your overall business processes - what do you pay for traffic, is it converting (people are buying your goods and services), how long are people staying on specific sections or pages of your web site, what marketing expenditures are working and which aren't!

You know your entering reality distortion field (we marketing types need to justify our fees & services) and need to raise your jargon filters to stun level when you here and/or see these keywords; i.e. clickstream traffic (fancy way of saying traffic or visitors delivered via mouse clicks to your web site), ebusiness solutions (meaning - selling your products/services via an ecommerce site) or my all-time personal favorite, "ebusiness intelligence" (what's ebusiness and what determines if it's "intelligent").

Traffic Counter Applications

First and foremost, do you really need a comprehensive product like Web Trends (more on different applications later) or can you get by with a click (traffic) counter application like Hit Box? The latter company provides a free plain vanilla traffic counter which can be easily set up in minutes via your web site. Hit Box is a great product and used by hundreds of thousands of web sites, so it may be sufficient for your business, if you just want very basic info ("Page Views and Daily Unique Visitors) and don't mind advertising for another company via your web site.

But, there are some downsides to utilizing Hit Box, you must install their "button" on your Index (home) page and it only provides you with basic traffic information (how much per day with a forecast based on these numbers). You can upgrade to their HitBox Professional which is very similar to Web Trends basic application ("Web Trends Log Analyzer") - but, you have to pay for this service on a traffic basis which can get expensive, depending on your overall traffic.

Web Trends Applications and Interface