The ISP Web Site as Marketing Asset

Every ISP has one, but not every ISP realizes the full marketing power that a well-designed, well-managed web site can provide.

by Jason Zigmont HowToSell.net [October 19, 1999]

Many ISPs take their web sites for granted—thereby losing many potential customers every day. After all, the home page is usually the first impression a potential customer has of an ISP. Your home page should be something you are proud of. If it's unattractive, people will go elsewhere. If they can't find what they need to know—or do—they'll pass you by. If it hasn't changed since you first put it up in 1997, customers will see that.

What are you trying to say with your web site? Does your site contain everything that needs to be in it?

Reap what you sew
Not only is your web page a fundamental marketing tool for your ISP, it's also a potential source of income. Most ISPs, when setting up customers, set their web page as the users' default home page—and many users leave it that way.

Asumming your ISP does this, as your customer base grows, the number of users who view your web site every day grows also. The more content your site offers, the more page views it will generate. Once your web page is getting a high number of page views, it's a fairly easy matter to sell a banner rotation on your front page to local businesses that want to increase their traffic.

ISP web sites may contain 5 pages or 50, but all should have the following minimal contents:

Acceptable Use Policy/Privacy Policy
Your AUP and privacy policies should be posted on your web site in order to protect you and state your intentions from the start. While some may think that putting a contract on your web site may deter some users from signing up, realistically, any customer that doesn't sign up because they don't like your AUP/Privacy Policy is not a customer you want.

Pricing
In the past, ISPs have been hesitant to put their pricing on their web page due to competitive issues, but with the almost universal establishment of $19.95 unmetered service, this is outdated.

Tip: Keep your pricing schemes simple. Ask a friend to read your pricing page and see if s/he really understands it. List the features of the account, but don't include givens such as 'graphical PPP interface'. This just confuses the issue. Less is more.

POPs list
The most important page to a prospective user is your Points of Presence (POPs) page. Therefore it should be prominently placed and easy to read. If you have an abundance of POPs, in many states, then employ a quick CGI search engine to find a POP for the user. If potential customers don't find a POP in their location, they aren't going to look any further.

About the Company
As an ISP, you are selling a service. When customers decide to buy that service from you, they are trusting that you'll be there to service them. An 'About the Company' web page can provide background, information on recent happenings, press releases, and the like. It will be then only 'personal face' that most of your customers get to know.

Technical support
This is another personal face that customers may get to know. A good technical support web page can not only minimize the unpleasantness your customers experience in getting help, it can also cut your technical support costs in half.

Tip: Use screen shots and detailed instructions on how to switch from another ISP. Also, a 'switch from AOL' web page is very useful in getting users to trade up to your service.

On-line signup
Many ISPs are reluctant to take on-line signups. If you're among this group, consider that customers make purchase decisions spontaneously and emotionally. If you make it easy for them to sign up through a secure web page, then you increase the likelihood they'll sign up without looking at your competitors first—simply because you made it easy.

Tip: There is some chance of fraud with online signups. Therefore I suggest calling up new users the next day to confirm the signup and thank them for signing up for the service.

Members-Only/Content
Content helps bring users to your web site, but there's a hitch. The more content you cram onto your home page, the tougher it is for potential customers to find basic information—and/or your signup page—which may loose you sales. Some ISPs have gone from having an informational web site to becoming a portal. A better solution, perhaps, is to make a section for Members Only or the like and put the content, local content, members web rings and the like in there.

Many have enlisted the help of outside services such as Planet Direct or the like, and some have even replaced their first page with a Planet Direct page.

Don't keep it a secret
Once you have developed your web site, you need to publicize it. Make sure your URL is on all your sales materials (which includes many items you may not think of as sales materials): Every print ad, including line ads, your letterhead, press releases, and any publicity you may have should have your web address in it.

Index your web site in all the search engines. Make sure you put the states that you serve, and their abbreviations, in your keywords—or example CT, Conn., Connecticut. You may actually want to pay one of the search engine indexing services to do it for you.

Last tip of the day: Index yourself in the following sites: internet.com's The List, InternetList.com, The Ultimate Web ISP List, and any other on-line ISP list you can find.

—End

Read other marketing articles by Jason Zigmont

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