Internet Planet Part I

 
Jun 02, 2004

by Judith Dinowitz

Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Hilton New York
New York City

I set out this afternoon for the first annual Internet Planet conference and expo (running today and tomorrow at the Hilton in Manhattan) not knowing exactly what to expect. My previous experiences at any conference labeled "Internet" was with Internet World, which had more of a feeling of "Gee, gosh, wow, what gadgets/technologies do we have coming out this year?" Internet Planet has a much more business-oriented approach. The conference does not focus on the nitty gritty of the technologies out there on the Web. Rather, it asks the question "How can we use the technology for marketing and commerce to help us profit more in our business?" This may be because the firm running the show is JupiterResearch, a company that helps clients develop and integrate business strategies for the Internet. It may also be that the Internet is finally "growing up" and the business world is only now beginning to understand how to use it effectively, paving the way for a conference like Internet Planet.

Whatever the case, Internet Planet's approach is informative and enjoyable for both marketing executives and technical programmers. While I couldn't attend the morning sessions for personal reasons (my son's nursery graduation), I came away from an afternoon at this full-day conference (about three hours of sessions) with a plethora of useful information on business strategy on the Internet. None of the sessions were highly technical, but they were not "marketing speak" either. They contained nuggets of ideas for ecommerce and marketing on the Internet based on statistics, research and case studies -- in other words, real data from the real world.

The conference was run on three tracks: "Web Operations & Technology," "Advertising, Marketing & Media" and "Practitioners: Best Practices." The tracks were all near each other, but not as well-marked as they could have been, and the program book did not have rooms listed on the tracks or a map to tell me where to go. These were relatively minor problems and easily solved.

Lead Your Users

David Card (Right), VP of JupiterResearch, gives some expert advice to one of the conference attendees.

My first session was "Programming a Network/Site to Drive Traffic Profitably" by David Card, Vice President and Research Director at JupiterResearch. Card spoke of a "triad" -- three tactics that one can use to drive users on your website to the areas that are profitable. These are:

  • Visual: How you present the information on your website
  • Topical: playing to people's interests, hobbies and habits
  • Temporal -- Time-based tactics that you can use based on day of the week, time of the day, and on special days or the season
He said that these tactics are like three cogs that make up a machine, while the search is the oil that greases the machine's wheels. By using a combination of the "triad," you can get your users to go where you want them to.

Card provided a visual image of his idea of the "Perfect Info-Site." This site would have:

  • 60% of the page design devoted to Programmed Content
  • 30% of the page for Marketing and promotional material
  • Navigation on only 10% of the page design

Card said that while navigation is important, most users take direction from other things as well, such as content and visual-audio cues. Each of the three elements (content, marketing/promotion and navigation) should be the private "real estate" of one part of the organization, which should have total control over that aspect of the site. These roles should be fixed.

Then Card showed 10 different well-known websites (Yahoo, About.com, MSN, Martha Stewart, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Cisco, Slate, Proctor and Gamble, and AOL) and explained how they use the "triad." Some examples stand out in my mind. MarthaStewart.com uses seasonal topics to unify their site thematically, and their site is, as Card says, "very graphical and not very cluttered." AOL.com uses two tactics that may help in driving a lot of traffic to their site. (They consistently outperform both MSNBC and CNN on their traffic metrics.) First, they allow their users to customize the Welcome screen, providing a choice of four different topic-based styles as well as the MYAOL Quickview option. They also put up polls and comments from their members in their news section, giving their members a voice and a sense of community and perhaps bringing them back to the site for return visits.

In the end, Card emphasized, you should look at the areas of your site that are most profitable to you and try to steer your users to those sections, using some of the methods that he illustrated.

I came away from this session with a greater understanding of site design and a clearer idea of the tools that I could use to bring end-users to the content that is most important to them. But this was just one of the sessions that I saw today, and we will be posting up more about this conference in the next few days. So stay tuned!

Judith Dinowitz is Editor-in-Chief of Fusion Authority, the House of Fusion Technical Magazine. She is well-known as the CFEditor, having worked on many articles and books for other publications.

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