Thinking about creating a website?

If you’re thinking about making a website and marketing something online, then I would suggest being mindful of these five elements, the five I’s. The five I’s includes Interactivity, Intelligence, Individualisation, Integration and Independence of Location. Below are some examples of how these elements are put into practice from a website that I just started using called cycling weekly www.cyclingweekly.com.

Interactivity:

This element refers to when a customer is seeking information (pull). Cycling Weekly is a news forum where cycling enthusiasts can keep up to date with what’s happening in the world of cycling. Below are some examples of the websites interactivity to help customers get what they are looking for:

A search bar and connect with us option both provide further options for customers to interact and pull information.

Intelligence

Intelligence is an important aspect if your wanting a way to collect market research of customer perceptions, particularly through marketing because it's a low cost researching method.

Individualisation

As a news outlet for cycling, this is an area that I think Cycling Weekly could develop further. After reading the articles, it’s really upto the customer to navigate to the next point without influence. Perhaps utilising customer click data to promote ‘other articles you may like’ or ‘most popular articles’ would help engage the customer to continue reading more. This could all eventually lead to direct the customer to promotions or subscriptions.

Integration

Next up, Integration. This involves ensuring that your website has two things going for it, outbound internet based communications and inbound internet based communications. Outbound communication is marketing communication from the organisation (cycling weekly) to the customer. Cycling weekly do this well, the website is saturated with articles, latest news, reviews and shopping advertising deals for other websites.

Inbound communication involves communications from the customer to the organisation, which can be seen (two to left) in the example ‘connect with us’ and also below where you can contact Cycling Weekly directly. Combining the two (outbound and inbound) results with great two way communication.

Independence of Location

Our final element of website design is independence of location. The beauty of the internet is that your presence can be global! Well at least where ever someone has internet access. This gives you the opportunity to advertise, sell or service areas all around the global, so don’t restrict your market potential. One thing I’ve noticed with the Cycling Weekly site is that all the prices are advertised in pounds, which for me in Australia, can be quite confusing. A lot of websites will recognise the customers location, and will adjust the currency based on where they are from. This helps the customer understand the exact price and is a strong recommendation from me to you and Cycling Weekly.

Till next time, cheers.

Kris