How to Effectively Use Banner Advertising

Here is an article I found on how to effectively use banner advertising to sell your product. This article gives businesses easy tips on how to create banners and make them more appealing to consumers. There are easy steps a business can take such as efficiently using font sizes and colors and what to do when customizing your own banner. The article is linked below for people to read on how to use banner advertising to its fullest.

website:
http://buzdis.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/how-to-advertise-your-product
-effectively-using-banners/

AOL Instant Messenger Service

AIM is known as AOL Instant Messenger where it is a unique service that is all about helping people keep in touch with others whether it may be sending IMs, sending photos, or doing a voice chat. The service allows person-to-person communication all around the world in real time while letting people know what you are doing with status updates.

AOL Instant Messenger was created in May of 1997 and is an advertisement-supported proprietary instant messaging and presence computer program. It is a free downloadable service for consumers who have access to a computer and are register with the company.

The process that people have to go through in order to use the service is to first download the software and fill out an information form that allows a user to get their own screen name and password to use the service. Once a user has their screen name or password, they are able to start using the service right away but just need to acquire other buddies screen names to being talking to them.

AIM also has other services that individuals are able to use other than their traditional service. AIM offers AIM Express, AIM Pro, AIM for MAC, AIM for Linux, AIM mobile, and the Apple iChat.

AIM Express software is for people who are unable to download the software or do not have their own personal computer. The program runs in a pop-up browser window that allows people who are unwilling or unable to install a stand alone application. It has the similar features to the downloadable version, but does not offer advanced features like file transfer, audio chat, video conferencing, or Buddy Info.

AIM pro is for the professional business user that integrates Microsoft Outlook while easily showing presentations and web conferencing. AIM for Mac and AIM for Linux were developed specifically for Macintosh users and Linux users. They have the same capabilities as the other AIM programs and now offer their service in Spanish.

AIM mobile allows people to get instant messages directly to their phone. A person at their computer will type in an IM to the person by using their mobile phone number and the other person will receive an IM on their cell phone. The cell phone user is then able to communicate to a person on the computer in the same manner as they would using the traditional IMing service. This is an easy way for keeping in contact with people, but not having to be in front of a computer screen.

One of the newer AIM developments was the Apple iChat software was released and was the first AIM compatible program that allowed for audio and video conferencing using the AIM protocol. This is a unique feature that Mac user can use on their computers to talk to people across the world.

The company is constantly updating their service while offering new features, but America Online is still only offering free downloads of instant messenger. Some may think that offering a free service to consumers would affect profits and revenues, but AIM has found a way to make a profit.

In order to cash in on the personalization of AIM, AOL has introduced a year long and monthly subscription options to personalize your buddy list. They offer 7,000 buddy wallpapers, buddy sounds, smiley’s, and 2-D buddy icons that run from $1.95 to $9.95 and have “SuperBuddy” icons that are animated that are $1.95 per icon or $4.95 for a pack of three. This is a prime example of a cross-subsidies approach.

A cross-subsidies approach corresponds to free services that entice you to pay for something else. Aim does an efficient job in their technique as they allow consumers to download their product, but to personalize and make your buddy list more unique the company makes individuals pay for other products. Since AIM has over 100 million users they are able to generate a profit from their expressions technique.

The company also generates revenue from advertisements. By having people to display their advertisements in association with AIM they are able to generate a profit. This is known as the advertising model which allows for free content to be sponsored by advertisers.

Although this sounds like a great service to have because it is free and people can talk to other people in different parts of the country with each successful invention comes along with problems. Some problems that AIM has with its unique capabilities is that people can get viruses from other people that they are talking to. It also has security weaknesses that have enabled exploits to be created that use third-party software to perform malicious acts on users' computers. Some of these acts are as little as being kicked off of the Aim service or potentially dangerous acts such as harvesting IP addresses and sending viruses over a direct connection.

However, I would recommend this service even though it has its problems. It is a great way to get in contact with people all over the world and will save you money on phone calls. People are also able to see status updates of what individuals are doing and makes it easier for people to talk to others if they do not prefer to talk on the phone or in person. Individuals can make plans and work on project while also sending pictures or other files to people without ever having to pick up a phone and make a call or going to see a person. This free service has been very popular with computer use and will only continue to develop and get better with time making it a more effective and efficient process of getting in contact with people.

AIM company website: http://dashboard.aim.com/aim

AIM Express website: http://www.aim.com/aimexpress.adp

Web 2.0 and Online Brand Community

Here is an article that I found on online brand communities and how Web 2.0 can build a brand. For my groups online community, our company was Dove and this article explains how Dove has a "Campaign for Real Beauty" that challenges the image of real women. The article also gives tips on how a company can create an online community and the best way to gain an audience. The link is posted below so people can read this article and find helpful tips on online communities.

Article Link: "Reflected glory marketing: building brand with Web 2.0"
http://www.socialsignal.com/blog/alexandra-samuel-and-rob-cottingham/reflected-glory-marketing-building-brand-with-web-2-0

Search Engine Optimization

Here is an article that I found on search engine optimization and how company's websites lack proper programming to have them highly ranked in search engine results. This ties in with the material that we are learning in class on how to build traffic to a website.

News: Typical Websites Not Search Engine Optimized, Per Front Page PR Report

Phoenix, Arizona - (Website Hosting Directory) - March 27, 2006 - According to a recent study, more than 60% of websites lack the proper web programming to be ranked properly by Internet search engines.

According to the Front Page Public Relations report, websites, in many cases, do not contain the necessary titles, descriptions, keywords and other Meta tags required to be read and indexed properly by leading search engines, nor do they include the beneficial language in search results to entice customers to click through to their websites.

Robert Hoskins, President of Front Page Public Relations commented, ''Through working with Google's Beta Testing programs for the Google Adwords, Google Adsense, Google Analytics and Google Site Map Programs, and our client, the Broadband Wireless Exchange, our team learned a great deal on how to leverage keywords to improve search engine ranking as well as increase revenue from Google's Adsense programs. And it isn't just the ranking that companies should be focused on. Getting in the top 10 results is only half the battle. What a company's listing says in the search engine results is even more important. Search engine results should really be looked at with the same creative approach used in all advertising campaigns. If the message doesn't convince customers to click through to a company's website, adjustments need to be made until they do.''

Based in Gilbert, Arizona, Front Page Public Relations is a full service marketing communications firm that handles advertising, public relations, media relations, marketing, website design, website content development and Internet search engine optimization (SEO).

http://www.websitehostdirectory.com/news-typical-websites-not-search-engine-optimized-per-front-page-pr-report-301.html

Traffic Building Strategies of Sony

The Sony Corporation is a Japanese multinational conglomerate that is the leading manufacturer of electronics, video, communication, video game consoles, and information technology products. Sony uses a variety traffic building strategies and online marketing to attract consumers to their website and boost sales.

Sony’s website is designed primarily for the experiential user. Experiential users are the type of people whose activities revolve around using the internet for gaming, entertainment, social networking, and media creation purposes. The Sony website offers a variety of ways for customers to become involved. The site allows viewers to play video games, watch movie trailers, listen to songs, and shop for products. The company has a unique style and approach that targets experiential users that keeps customers loyal in coming back and visiting their site.

In order to have more experiential users visit Sony’s website, the company has created strategies to build traffic. The use of domain names, search engine marketing, mass media advertising, word of mouth, and site optimization are some ways in which Sony has decided to build traffic to their website.

A strong brand such as Sony has created an effective domain name. Sony’s domain name is www.sony.com. Customers can easily remember the name and even can guess the domain name if they are not sure because the domain name is the company’s brand name. A domain system that reflects how consumers view the brand such as sony.com is memorable and accessible to the web user.

When going to a variety of search engines such as google.com, yahoo.com, and ask.com I found that most of the Sony results were produced organically. Organic searches occur by a visitor going to a search engine and typing in a keyword and following one of the unpaid links to the site. This is a result of Sony’s use of strong content, high visibility, and search engine optimization.

However, the company did have a couple of paid search results. A paid search result is when a company pays for keyword advertising or purchasing sponsored links. Sony has a paid search result for Sony Style which is the company’s official website as well as having their Sony products linked within other company’s websites such as Dell.

Mass media can be an effective online traffic source. Sony builds traffic to their website through their advertisements in magazines, television, and online. By getting their brand name out to the public and showing off new products entices consumers to visit the company website and purchase products.

Word-of-mouth is also another way to get customers to visit a website. If a customer has a positive experience with either the company’s website or a product, they are inclined to tell another person about their positive experience. After hearing good news about a product or website, consumers are likely to visit Sony’s website and potentially buy a product from this brand. Word-of-mouth recommendations are considered the most credible information source a person will receive, consumers rely on this information to know if other consumers had a positive or negative experience with a product and whether they should buy from a company or not.

Site optimization increases traffic to a website through how the certain elements within the website are designed. Sony has increased their site optimization by using meta tags, title tags, and descriptive URLs. Meta tags embed additional information into the HTML code in order to index the site. The title tags generate quick differences in a websites ranking because the words that appear in the title tag are what appear in the clickable link of the search engine results. The title tags that Sony has for its company are Sony USA, Sony Style USA, Sony Pictures, and Playstation.com which lead consumers to their different web pages. Descriptive URLs provide unique path and file names that can help to locate information with in a site. The descriptive URLs of Sony bring consumers to areas within their website to buy different products such as the Sony VAIO notebook, digital cameras, televisions, music, and movies.

Overall, Sony does an effective job in trying to build traffic to their website. Through their use of marketing through advertisements and word-of-mouth Sony boosts and creates awareness of their brand. The use of their domain names, meta tags, title tags, and descriptive URLs increase traffic and search engine optimization. The experience that Sony has created within their website through their offering of online games, shopping, watching movie trailers, and listening to music offers a unique experience for consumers that keeps them coming back to visit their website.

Sony website links www.sony.com and www.sonystyle.com

Online Branding of Burton Snowboards

Burton Snowboards is a rider driven company that is dedicated to selling the best snowboard equipment. In 1977, Jake Burton founded a private company that specializes in a product line aimed at snowboarders and has become the world’s leading manufacturer in snowboards today. The company also sells hard goods, outerwear, and accessories.

Besides selling merchandise under the Burton brand, there are also sub-brands of the company. These sub-brands include Anon Optics (snowboard goggles and eyewear), R.E.D. Protection (helmets and body armor), Analog Outerwear, and Gravis Footwear. This makes the company a house of brands. A house of brands is where a company can market their own main brand and have separate brand names for their other companies. In this case, Burton has its own line of products on its website and has other websites set up for its sub-brand companies of Anon Optics, R.E.D Protection, Analog Outerwear, and Gravis Footwear.

The brand management of Burton prohibits retailers from selling their products online, which allows the company to have complete control over what is sold online and allows consumers to know that they are dealing directly with the company. This reinforces the fact that Burton is trying to control the image of their brand and they only have a small number of stores to create loyalty.

Burton manages their website for easy navigation to products for their customers. The URL choices for each domain name are unique. A domain name is an effective strategy for online branding as the company should choose a name that is unique and easy for people to remember and highlights the products in the ecommerce store. Burton Snowboards and its other sub-brands such as Gravis Footwear use the name of the brand in the web addresses (http://www.burton.com/ and http://www.gravisfootwear.com/). A simple web address that uses the company’s name allows viewers to guess the website name without looking it up. The visitor then simply knows the address and is able to type it into the browser.

Burton Snowboards does an effective job in selling its merchandise online. When customers enter the Burton website, they can select what category they would like to see such as women’s, men’s, boys, girls, or others. Under each of the categories the website has the specific products labeled making it easy for customers to choose what merchandise they would like to look at.

Burton Snowboards uses a unique approach in how the merchandise is set up to view. For example, when looking at the snowboards in the website they have all the boards displayed next to each other but when the mouse scrolls over them the one selected pops out of the line of snowboards and tells you how well the board handles in certain types of snow and when you are doing tricks. The site tells customers how well a certain type of snowboard handles in the snow by using a meter that has a line that goes up and down on certain categories for each snowboard. The technique is also used with the support of Burton Snowboard boots. The company also had dollar signs above the line of snowboards to tell customers which end of the line of snowboards was more or less expensive.

Burton’s strengths include the website design of the company and easily navigation of their website to find products. The Burton Company has created a unique online experience for shopping for snowboards and other accessories and apparel. They use colors that compliment each other, make it easy to find the products that a customer may want, and use features that show the support and quality of the specific products.

The meter support and quality for their snowboard and boots line differentiates their product from other competitors and strengthens their online branding. The website uses special scrolling options for seeing apparel by clicking on a type of apparel style to see the apparel choices.

Logos are another effective strategy in Burton Snowboards online branding. Having a logo that appeals to your audience, creates a lasting impression in the mind of the consumer, and has a global appeal is a meaningful and helpful way of online branding. Burton Snowboards has used its logo to make communication easier as viewers easily relate to these images.

On Burton’s website, they use their logo in their “Learn to Ride” section of the website. They use different colors for their logo for viewers to click on whether they are a man, woman, or kid. With this specific page, Burton’s support of their logo has an additional effect on the viewer as they remember the logo and it creates brand recognition.

There were minimal weaknesses that I found with Burton Snowboards website and their online branding efforts. I found that after clicking on a specific category to see snowboarding merchandise and viewing the available products when I wanted to go back to the list of the accessories available it would not bring me back to that page but to the main website page. This then made me have to go through the process of picking the merchandise again and could create frustration for consumers. If consumers become frustrated with the functionality of a website, they may be inclined to shop elsewhere or give up on buying a certain product. Another weakness that I found was that Burton Snowboards website did not have any links to any of their other sub-brands. Since Burton Snowboards does not have any links to their other brands, customers may not realize that Burton Snowboards is associated with Anon Optics, R.E.D Protection, Analog Outerwear, or Gravis Footwear. If the company had links associated with its sub-brands they may be able to increase profitability and increase the amount of traffic coming to their site.

Overall, I found that Burton Snowboards was effective in their online branding. By using unique features such as a meter to tell how much support or traction a specific product would give was different approach for Burton Snowboards to take. This style strengthened their credibility on how much they know about snowboarding equipment. By organizing the company products in categories and using a memorable domain name helps customers easily navigate and remember Burton Snowboards website. However, by changing the feature that does not take customers back to the merchandise list but to the homepage and adding links to its sub-brands website may help Burton Snowboards online branding strategy in the long run. Burton Snowboards has created a strong brand image and brand recognition. When people see the Burton logo or hear the name Burton Snowboards, people automatically connect the brand to a company that is knowledgeable in their field and is of superior quality.

Mass Customization of Nike and Puma Shoe Designs

Nike and Puma companies are two competitors that are fighting for consumer’s attention. Both companies have different design styles and marketing strategies that target their products to customers, but have come up with similar design tactics for attracting consumers with a creative knack. NikeID and Puma Mongolian Shoe BBQ are two websites that allow consumers to design and build their own customized shoes. Each website has a distinct and unique layout that make the websites interesting and fun to visit where they both use the mass customization process in creating individual shoe designs.

Mass customization is the process of producing goods efficiently in large quantities, but tailored to fit an individuals needs. With this process, Nike and Puma have allowed consumers to design their own shoes that fit individual personalities and styles at reasonable prices while improving performance. These two competitors are taking shoe designing to the next level by letting consumers have an online experience that allows them to feel like a designer while having a fun experience and inventing one of a kind shoes.

After visiting the two websites, NikeID and Puma Mongolian Shoe BBQ, the two approaches that the companies took in offering customized athletic shoes had similarities and differences that make consumer have two unique experiences.

NikeID’s website was easy to navigate while having a simple design layout and good use of color. The site is designed around how individuals can create there own merchandise such as shoes, apparel, and equipment to reflect individual styles and performance.

When entering the site, the available merchandise is organized into men and women categories with all the available styles and accessories clearly labeled. The use of color that Nike uses in their website allows customers to easily read the merchandise available and creates an aesthetic appeal that is enjoyable to the viewer as the pictures on the website pop out against a black background. This allows finding specific item very easy.

NikeID is styled so that viewers can see the existing merchandise with the price and name descriptions labeled when scrolling over picture as well as having the option of starting your own design. When designing customized shoes, Nike has made this process as easy as possible. All you have to do is choose the style of the shoe you would like and choose the colors available for select parts of the shoe. The shoe that you are designing is displayed on the left side of the website and changes instantaneously as new colors are selected for the customized design.

Even though NikeID makes the design process of building a customized shoe unique and easy, there are still problems that the company could improve. A problem that I feel that Nike could improve upon is there limited amount of colors to choose from. When on the site I had difficulty selecting which colors to choose because there was a limited amount of color options and they did not have any patterns to choose from. On the other hand, the company had a wide variety of shoe styles to select and design making the overall process more enjoyable.

As for the Puma Mongolian Shoe BBQ website it has a very different approach from NikeID. The unique design set-up is themed around an Indian restaurant. This distinct layout makes it fun for the user to explore as each tab is designed to have items in it to reflect items that are found in a restaurant.

The site is designed just for customizing your own shoes and not for buying already existing merchandise. The unique feature that Puma has over Nike is that if you do not want to have the experience of designing your shoe online you are able to locate a store in which you can design your perfect shoe.

When entering the site it is easy to get started on customizing shoes as a box immediately pops up asking viewers if they want to start designing a customized shoe. After clicking the start up box, it takes you to a restaurant menu which displays the two types of shoe styles that consumers can create and gives consumers step-by-step instructions on how to create a customized shoe.

When starting the customization of Puma shoes, the company set up the site as if you were picking what you wanted to eat at an Indian restaurant. The placemat on the table had the pieces of the shoe that customers can design and the bowls on the table contained materials and colors to select for the parts of the shoe.

Developing the shoe is more of a tedious task as customers use chopsticks as a tool for selecting the colored material in the bowl desired instead of using a regular hand or arrow to make a selection. After selecting a piece of the shoe to design, customers use tongs to choose the material in the restaurant bowl. This process of the designing the shoe was very hard as the tongs move over the bowls to quickly and does not stop directly over the material customers would like to select.

By visiting the two sites of NikeID and Puma Mongolian Shoe BBQ and having a first hand experience at customizing my own individual shoes, I found that the NikeID website created an overall better experience for the customer. Although I found problems with both of the sites, there were less problems that I encountered with Nike than with Puma. Nike made the design process easy and very clear. They displayed the customized shoe design while choosing the colors and customers did not have to pick the materials.

With Puma Mongolian Shoe BBQ, I experienced many problems with the website. First, the Puma site only has two shoe styles to select, unlike Nike where they had a wide variety of shoe styles. Second, it was difficult for me to choose the colored material in the bowls as the chopsticks rolled of the material too fast and I would scroll past the desired color. Finally, I had difficulty clicking on the material I wanted to select and was not able to see the shoe I was designing right away, but only after clicking a box to preview the customized design.

Overall, by visiting the two websites I was able to learn more about how each company markets to their consumers as well as seeing the different approaches the two companies take in shoe designing. Both companies offer unique content that allows customers to be creative, but some design feature limit the creativity of consumers due do to a limited selection of colors, materials, and styles to choose from. Although the two websites were completely different from one another, they both got consumers involved by allowing them to create items to fit their individual personalities and spark consumer’s interest in buying one of a kind items.