How to market my web store for free?

Online Market Study of Web Site

• We are looking to have a marketing study done on our business. We are a CCTV Security company. We are a manufacturer and distributor of CCTV Security products. We are a web based company. We are looking for the study to evaluate our business web site from a interested buyers perspective. Here are some of the areas we are looking for information on. Our visibility on the web, if you were an interested buyer how easy would we be to find.? How does the web site compare to our competitors? Evaluate the web site on appearance, organization, information, and professionalism. There are basically three scenarios we are looking for from a consumers perspective. The three perspective buyers would be a basic home owner looking to purchases un upscale CCTV (Closed circuit Security) system which would include a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) by it self and/or four to 16 cameras. The second prospect would be a Small business owner looking for an advanced CCTV security system which would include a DVR by it self and/or 4 to 32 camera system. The third prospect would be a chain store operated government or municipality looking to purchase an advanced high end CCTV security system by it self and/or 16 to 32 cameras. The market study would need to include an evaluation between our competitors in the areas of diversification of products, value of features, and must include a cost analysis of products or a perception of value. We are not looking for an overwhelming load of information. We are looking for a concise evaluation much the same way a prospective buyer might approach the task. We are not looking for a mountain of links but would be interested in who you perceive our competitors to be and who the prospect would most likely buy from and for what reasons. What are the strong points of the web site , if any and what are the weak points of the web site. Initially what is your general over all perception. Would you click and leave shortly after arriving or would you "book mark" the site to come back to in the future. We are looking for a quick turnaround time that is why we have priced the study at $100.00 Incentives will be paid for for concise report followed by a more in-depth report.

• Answer:

  Hello Drsam2007-ga, Thanks for your question. The concise report you asked for (Executive Summary), by its nature covers your request for a general overall perception. The in-depth analysis was done first, and the Executive Summary extracted from it. I organized the analysis following the four criteria you detailed, and considered convenient to add a fifth: navigability. In the analysis for each criterion I assumed the three viewpoints you are interested in: home owner, small business owner, and large organization buyer. Please notice that pricing and competitive analysis is not ready yet, but I will post it within the next day. I decided to post the part that is already complete --the largest part-- because of two reasons: I'm about to travel overnight, for longer than the maximum time I have to get back to the question, and because you stated you need it as soon as possible. Thus, you can begin to take profit of the work already done, and I can overcome my timing obstacle. If you consider the quality for this first posting good enough, you can expect no less for the rest. Thank you for your understanding. I'll be in touch. Regards, Guillermo <><><><><><><><><><><> Executive Summary (Concise report) >> Strong points: ~ Elegant; ~ Well organized; ~ Understandable, clear content; ~ Transmits an image of professionalism, the feeling that "these people know their job". ~ Very good navigation; ~ The information / organization of the site is fine for targeted customers such as dealers, retailers / wholesalers for your products, technicians, security experts, in sum, people with some previous knowledge about the subject. >> Weak points: ~ A few glitches, two quite important: a shopping cart failure, and a text in weird Spanish on the page for spy cameras; ~ It's not really helpful for customers searching for a solution for their home or small business; ~ Visibility is seriously low, presumably due to scarcity of keyword combination in the body texts. >> General Conclusions: ~ The general conception of the website needs no major modification unless you are determined to address to potential customers other than business buyers, technicians and security experts; ~ Now, if you want to address home and small business owners, I suggest to include in the home page links explicitly addressing those segments, which would lead to pages helping them to figure out what equipment they would need; ~ Build product combos for those needs, and expose them in the home page, explicitly announcing the needs they match; ~ Regarding visibility, work out its optimization, with a strong emphasis in relevant content. Your content *is* relevant in terms of human visitors; the next step would be making it so to increase keyword combination with search engines in mind, but without altering the quality of texts. I know it's challenging, but not impossible. ~ Fix the glitches, specially the shopping cart and the inadequate Spanish text. <><><><><><><><><><><> In Depth Report ~ Appearance First impression: elegant, neat, no abuse of animation or pop-ups, just the spinning logo in the upper left corner, which is nice, although the double spinning is bit confusing, and may distract the visitor. Also the brand name that grows from the nebula might be a bit distracting, and I don't like it that much, but that's just a subjective minor detail. The image of a young representative standing by the introductory text --as if he was speaking it-- transmits a sense of reliability, good disposition, proactivity and efficiency. And the text is appropriate too -- as a customer, regardless which of the three categories I belong to, I may think "ok, these guys claim they provide reliable, non expensive satisfaction of my needs". I'll definitely look further. ~ Organization The three scenarios you required are reflected in the introductory text, but not in the organization of the home page. I don't mean that the organization is not good, but seems thought out with a business buyer in mind, rather than an end user. The home page appears as a well organized showroom for products, cleverly not overcharged. I guess you're posting just those you either consider more interesting for your customers, or you are more interested in marketing, or are novelties, what is well thought out if you're addressing to retailers, dealers or specialized technicians. But if an end user is trying to find the match for their needs, will feel that needs previous knowledge to know how to surf the site. That would probably not be a problem for a security expert at a large organization who is expected to know about security technology, but it certainly will for most home or small business owners. ~ Information The way the information itself is presented is excellent. Texts are as clear as can be, from simple product descriptions through technical articles, including the explanations for potential dealers. Again, if there's any problem it's more related to the previous criteria --organization-- than to the quality of information itself. I mean, if the targeted customers are technicians, dealers, security experts, in sum, people whose training and or experience give them a previous understanding for the surveillance devices usage, the way the information is outlined is just fine. But, if you are a home or small business owner, the website doesn't help me to understand what I need. I'm writing this while navigating the site, and still haven't found a hint to figure what my needs are. What type of equipment do I need according to the size of my home or my store? Do I need a camera for each room? Do I need a DVR? Why? Of course, there will be well informed customers who already have an idea of what they need, but I wouldn't expect that to be the majority. ~ Professionalism In every sense, the website shows professionalism behind it. Beginning with the design, the esthetic, the image quality, the clarity of the texts. I'm particularly impressed about the texts: if something remains difficult to understand, is because its intrinsic difficulty, you can't blame the texts, they are written with a visible effort to be understandable. That transmits professionalism too. Also, of course, the variety of products and the technical articles. Only the few glitches contrast to that general image, being that the main reason to fix them. ~ Navigability In general terms, navigation is just fine. Fast, no dead links, no wrong destinations. One glitch: Everything was going ok until I tried the shopping cart. It seemed to be working fine, but after I emptied it, I would no longer see its link, even though I refreshed the page, an even closed and opened it again. It may very well have been just an occasional accident, but it's a very sensitive feature (particularly for you) and deserves to be checked. An oddity: In the page for spy cameras (http://www.securitycameraworld.com/spy-cameras.htm) I noticed what seems an attempt for an automated translation into Spanish. (I noticed it in this one maybe I didn't in others.) I suggest not to keep that text in the page, for two reasons. I happen to be a Spanish native speaker, and can tell you that the resulting text is just funny, and contrasts with the professional and elegant image of the site in general. Also, since some parts of the text rest just incoherent, there's a risk that search engines interpret it as a collection of keywords, what is an outdated search engine optimization (SEO) practice, currently supposed to be penalized by search engines with low rankings or banning the site out. For the same reason, I more strongly discourage to hide it by likening the text and background colors. Something a bit confusing: when you click the "contact us" link you don't see the contact information right away, but an about-us type text; then you scroll down and see the payment methods, and only below that the contact information. >> Visibility Sorry, bad news for this one. As you probably know, visibility for a web-based company means position in search results pages ?specially at Google, still the hugest generator of visitor traffic- for the most competitive keywords, which typically are the most intuitive any layperson would take off the top of their head. I tried the three currently most popular search engines. Consider that the default setting for search results display is 10 per page, so in your best instance your site appears in the 4th page. Search results are counted apart from sponsored links and ads. Please notice that positions may vary every time you perform the search, but changes would be minimal unless a major change in the search engine was produced in the middle, what is not that frequent. I checked five keyword intuitive combinations: Searches for: security cameras Google # 31 (your best) Yahoo! # 77 MSN # 122 ?security cameras? Google # 197 Yahoo! # 77 MSN # 117 CCTV security Google # 294 Yahoo!: not in the first 500 search results MSN: not in the first 250 search results (their maximum) "security system" CCTV OR cameras Google # 488 Yahoo! # 186 MSN: not in the first 250 search results (their maximum) surveillance cameras Google: not in the first 500 search results Yahoo! # 278 MSN # 111 I also did a search for your brand name keyword, for both security camera and "security camera". However, I don't consider that likely that most potential customers thought their searches with a "single" security camera in mind, but for a provider of security cameras, in plural. Notice, as an example, that I only thought of it when I proofread this part of the analysis. These were the results: security camera Google # 2 for sponsor links; # 30 for search results (3rd page for default setting) Yahoo! # 10 (first-page occurrence) MSN # 132 "security camera" Google # 1 for sponsored links; # 17 for search results (2nd page for default settings) Yahoo! # 9 (first-page occurrence) MSN # 140 As a conclusion, you definitely want to optimize your website for search engine visibility. For what it seems, your critical point is keyword combination rather than link popularity -- don't let the latter unattended, but start with the former.