Masa ry k U nive rsi ty

F a c u l t y o f E c o n o m i c s a n d Ad m i n i s t r a t i o n

DIPLOMA WORK

2013

Ana s ta sia STAVIN SKA

Masa ry k U nive rsi ty

F a c u l t y o f E c o n o m i c s a n d Ad m i n i s t r a t i o n
Field of study: Business Management

ANALYSIS OF THE INTERNET MARKETING

ACTIVITIES
Diploma work

Thesis Supervisor:

Author:

Ing. Jii RICHTER

Anastasia STAVINSKA

Brno, 2013

Masaryk University
Faculty of Economics and Administration

Department of Corporate Economy

Academic year 2012/2013

ASSIGNMENT OF DIPLOMA THESIS

For:

Stavinska Anastasia

Field:

Business Management

Title:

Analysis of the Internet marketing activities

Principles

of

thesis

w r i t i n g:

Objective of the thesis:

Primary objective is to analyze the Internet marketing strategies of
international retailer companies and to investigate modern trends of
Internet marketing. Secondary objective is to develop a comprehensive
list of recommendations for the companies expanding online.
Approach and methods used:
1. Introduction - introduction to problems of the thesis and modern
marketing. Assignment of primary, secondary and partial objectives.
Formulation of hypothesis or research question. Summarizing of the
expected contribution of the work.
2. Theoretical part - literature review. Definition of terms, summarizing
of general modern marketing trends, techniques and strategies.
Description of the methods of questionnaire and statistical survey.
3. Practical part - application of described methods on a chosen sample
of businesses. Analysis of marketing strategies and marketing policy.
Summarizing into synthetic knowledge regarding described branch
and environment.

Methodology: Literature review, analysis, synthesis, description,

comparison.

The extent of graphical works:

according
to
the
supervisor's guidelines,
the
assumption is about 10 charts and
graphs
The thesis length without appendices: 60 70 pages

List of specialist literature:

LEE, K. a S. CARTER. Global marketing management. 3rd ed. New

York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 592 s. ISBN 978-0-19-960970-3.

CHAFFEY, D. Internet Marketing. Strategy, Implementation and

Practice. 4th ed. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2009. 693 s.
ISBN 0-273-71740-5.

FARRIS, P.W. a N.T. BENDLE. Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide

to Measuring Marketing Performance. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River:
Pearson Prentice Hall, 2010. 432 s. ISBN 0-13-705829-2.

BLANCHARD, O. Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social

Media Efforts in Your Organization. 1st ed. Indianapolis: Que, 2011.
350 s. ISBN 0-7897-4741-3.

MILLER, M. The Ultimate Web Marketing Guide. Indianapolis: Que,

2010. 618 s. ISBN 0-7897-4100-8.

Diploma thesis supervisor:

Ing. Ji Richter

Date of diploma thesis assignment:

1/11/2012

Submission deadline for Diploma thesis and its entry in the IS

MU is provided in the valid Academic Calendar.

Department Head
Dean

In Brno on 1/11/2012

N am e a nd Su rna me :

Anastasia Stavinska

Title of the thes is :

Analysis of the Internet marketing activities

De pa rtme nt:

Corporate Economy

The s is s upe rvis or:

Ing. Jii Richter

Ye a r o f de fe ns e :

2013

Abstract
This work aims to investigate a Primary objective is to analyze the Internet
marketing strategies of international retailer companies and to investigate
modern trends of Internet marketing. The thesis is split into theoretical and
practical parts. This work starts with a theoretical one, by giving an
introduction to the topic and briefly highlighting the modern concepts of
marketing. The main theoretical part is about the website being a main
tool of the online marketing promotion. For this, common literature and
available internet sources were used. The practical part includes the
assessment of the given sample of international retailor companies and an
analysis of a given single website with following recommendation
regarding its future marketing activity online, which is based on the
findings of the theory.

Keywords
Marketing, Internet, Online Marketing, Website Analysis

Authors Statement
I hereby declare that I worked out the Diploma work Analysis of the
Internet marketing activities myself, under the supervision of Ing. Jii
Richter, and that I stated in it all the literary resources and other specialist
sources used according to legislation, internal regulations of Masaryk
University and internal management acts of Masaryk University and the
Faculty of Economics and Administration
Brno, 26.04.2013

handwritten signature of the author

Acknowledgments
This thesis would not have been possible without help of many people. I
would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Ing. Jii Richter, who
offered invaluable assistance and supervision, whilst allowing me the room
to work on my own.
I would also like to thank my friends for great load of encouragement and
countenance.
Above all, I would like to thank my family for their unconditional support,
great patience and care throughout the whole period of studies.

Content
ASSIGNMENT OF DIPLOMA THESIS..............................................5
1 MARKETING......................................................................- 3 1.1 MODERN CONCEPT.............................................................................- 3 1.1.1 Needs, wants and demands....................................................- 4 1.1.2 The market offering.................................................................- 5 1.1.3 Value, satisfaction and quality.................................................- 6 1.1.4 Exchange, transaction and relationships.................................- 6 1.1.5 Markets....................................................................................- 7 1.2 MARKETING

IN THE INTERNET AGE.........................................................-

7-

2 INTERNET.........................................................................- 9 2.1 A

BRIEF STORY OF THE INTERNET..........................................................-

2.2 NO

ONE IS HERE, EVERYONE IS ONLINE.................................................-

9-

10 -

3 MARKETING STRATEGIES..................................................- 12 3.1 GENERAL PRINCIPLES........................................................................- 12 3.1.1 Indirect approach..................................................................- 13 3.1.2 Differentiation.......................................................................- 13 3.1.3 Concentration........................................................................- 14 3.2 MARKETING

MIX...............................................................................-

14 -

4 WEBSITE AS A MAIN TOOL OF ONLINE MARKETING STRATEGY. . .17 4.1 BUILDING

A SUCCESSFUL WEBSITE.......................................................-

17 -

4.2 ANALYZING A WEBSITE......................................................................- 20 4.2.1 First glance............................................................................- 20 4.2.2 Obtainable indicators............................................................- 21 4.2.3 Statistics................................................................................- 22 5 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY.............................................- 24 6 WEBSITES ASSESSMENT...................................................- 26 6.1 SAMPLE

OVERVIEW...........................................................................-

6.2 PERSONAL
6.3 VISITORS

26 -

EVALUATION.....................................................................-

27 -

PERCEPTION.......................................................................-

29 -

7 BLOGS ASSESSMENT.......................................................- 36 7.1 OVERVIEW......................................................................................- 36 7.2 STATISTICS.....................................................................................- 38 7.3 MARKETING....................................................................................- 40 -

7.4 FUTURE STRATEGY............................................................................- 41 7.4.1 Gantt chart............................................................................- 43 8 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE COMPANIES EXPANDING ONLINE 46 8.1 DESIGN
8.2 SALES

AND USABILITY.....................................................................-

46 -

AND DELIVERY........................................................................-

46 -

8.3 INFORMATION

AND BRANDING.............................................................-

47 -

8.4 INVESTMENTS

AND RETURN................................................................-

47 -

Introduction
Invention of Internet is considered to be a milestone in human history and
the start of the so-called Informational Age. It has changed everything,
from the way of communication to the way of conducting business.
Modern companies are willing to expand online which raises the question
of successful online marketing.
The expected contribution of the work is the result of website investigation
as a main tool of online marketing, alongside discovering the modern ways
of marketing online and revealing methods of websites assessment.
The objectives of the thesis
Primary objective is to analyze the Internet marketing strategies of
international retailor companies and to investigate modern trends of
Internet marketing. Secondary objective is to develop a comprehensive list
of recommendations for the companies expanding online.
Methods of implementation
Theoretical part of the thesis is devoted to the literature review of
marketing modern concepts, Internet as the new emerging market and
website being a core tool of online marketing strategy and promotion.
Practical part illustrates the analysis on a chosen sample of businesses,
summarized

in

synthetic

list of

recommendations

for

the retailor

companies expanding online.

Limitations
Initially there was a risk of international companies unwillingness of
revealing the information about their performance online which actually
became true. It allowed fulfilling the primary objective of the thesis only
partially, substituting the analysis of Internet marketing strategies of
international retailor companies by the analysis of users perception of the
website as the core item of the marketing strategy.

PART I

1 Marketing
This Chapter is aimed to serve as the general introduction to this thesis,
reviewing the essence and modern concept of marketing and establishing
the connection to online marketing concepts.

1.1 Modern concept

Marketing a social and managerial process by which individuals
and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and
exchanging products and value with others (P. Kotler, 2005 p. 6)
What is to understand under the term Marketing? Many wrongly consider
it to be solely sales and advertising. Truth is, sales are only the tip of the
marketing iceberg and one of its numerous modern concepts.
Marketing appeared as a respond to the need to provide more close
control over the sales management of the enterprises. Formation of
marketing as a science started at the beginning of XX century as a subject
in leading US universities, making the main focus on commerce and
advertising. The result of practical implementation of marketing theory
was the creation of the marketing department in large enterprises to
conduct marketing research and provide services.
The modern concept of marketing implies a wide range of functions, along
with sales and advertising, targeted on a deeper understanding of the
cause and gaining of effective result. The chart of the core marketing
concepts (P. Kotler, 2005 p. 6), shown below, illustrates the way all the
marketing concepts are interlinked between each other, forming the
closed circle, the general concept of marketing.

N
w
d
m
M
a
(
ff
v
)
,k
g
c
x
E
&
V
u
f
p
h
s
n
io
lt
e
r

Figure 1: "Core marketing concepts"

1.1.1 Needs, wants and demands

Human needs a state of felt deprivation (P. Kotler, 2005 p. 8)
Maslows hierarchy of needs identifies 5 major groups of needs:
psychological, safety and security, social, esteem and self-actualization,
prioritized from low to high, as illustrated on the figure below. It is
expected, that a human will first satisfy low-level needs, as psychological,
safety and social, before satisfying high-level needs as esteem and selfactualization. (N. Capon, 2007 p. 96)
When a need it is not satisfied, it is usually eliminated. Therefore, a
conclusion can be made, that people who have means to satisfy a need
will do that, whereas people who dont have the means will eliminate the
need to fit to available resources.
Nevertheless, a choice is a result of complex interaction of cultural, social,
personal and psychological factors. Some of the factors can be influenced
and this is what a marketer can use to develop and evaluate the product,
establish its distribution and sales promotion in a way to gain the
strongest response from the target audience.

Self-actualization
Esteem
Social
Safety and security
Psychological

Figure 2: "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs"

Human wants the form that a human need takes as shaped by

culture and individual personality (P. Kotler, 2005 p. 8)
To gain sufficient results an organization should constantly ask a question
what makes our customers behave the way they do? People have a
narrow amount of needs but almost an unlimited amount of wants they
expose. And the specific of wants is evolving, under the influence of
market expansion and appearance of more and more objects arousing
interest. Nevertheless, people have to choose products corresponding to
their financial abilities and balance the price quality (or satisfaction)
ratio. This is where a want turns into demand.
Demands human wants that are backed by buying power (P.
Kotler, 2005 p. 8)
Consumers can rank various consumption possibilities, determining their
preferences for getting the best bundle offered for the amount of money
they have. (Varian, 2010 p. 34)
1.1.2 The market offering
Peoples needs, wants and demands imply the existence of the offering to
satisfy it.

6
Market offer some combination of products, services, information
or experiences offered to a market to satisfy a need or want (P.
Kotler, 2005 p. 9)
If to look down on the theory of microeconomics, the market demand is
dictated by the market price of the product or the bundle of products a
consumer wants. Therefore, if the price on the desired product goes up,
demand goes down and the other way round. Market offering or supply is
linked to demand inversely, meaning that supply will grow with the growth
of the price on the market, whereas demand will decline. The market price
is set in the equilibrium point between demand and supply.
Not only products are considered as marketing market offering, also
services, activities or benefits that are intangible and do not result in
ownership of anything can be included. So, not making a mistake of just
selling a product or service, a marketer is promoting a complete solution
or experience for customers. (P. Kotler, 2005 p. 9)
1.1.3 Value, satisfaction and quality
Customer value the customers assessment of the products overall
capacity to satisfy his or her needs (P. Kotler, 2005 p. 10)
In other words, customers do not buy products; they are more interested
in the solution the product will bring to an existing problem. For example,
one trend in retail marketing in grocery business is category management,
implying the challenge to manufacturers to prove to the retailers that
brands add to the value of the category. If to put it very simple: the
manufacturer makes potato crisps; the retailer merchandises salty snacks,
when the customer just buys lunch. (G. Hooley, 2004 p. 24)
This leads us to the next point: customer satisfaction the personal
opinion of the products performance in comparison to the expectations. If
the experience from the product is below the stated expectations, a
customer feels dissatisfaction and the other way round. The perceiving of
the product performance is very subjective, but if the customer is satisfied,
he is more likely to repeat the purchase and tell others about the good
experience. (P. Kotler, 2005 p. 10)

7
1.1.4 Exchange, transaction and relationships
Exchange the act of obtaining a desired object from someone by
offering something in return (P. Kotler, 2005 p. 10)
Marketing as a matter occurs when people satisfy their needs through the
process of exchanging a medium of exchange to the object of desire.
1.1.5 Markets
Market the set of all actual and potential buyers of a product or
service (P. Kotler, 2005 p. 11)
This is the finalizing concept, bringing the circle together. From this point
of view, marketing is a working process on or with the market, the main
target of which is to satisfy customers needs and wants.
If the entrepreneur paid enough attention to discovery and investigation of
customers needs, development of the product, settlement of the
appropriate price and establishment of the stable distribution channels,
the sales should conduct. Then where is the main focus? The definition of
marketing stated above implies marketings contribution to organization
and its demands.
Modern successful companies have one common distinctive feature they
are very customer-oriented and strongly committed to marketing. It is
essential, as even the very best, innovative and quality product will not
gain success if it is not bringing superior value and high level of
satisfaction to the customers. Therefore, customers are one of the most
important components of the marketing process creating value and
satisfaction for the customers is considered to be the basis of modern
marketing.
Today, marketing must be understood not in the old sense of making
a sale telling and selling - but in the new sense of satisfying
customer needs. (P. Kotler, 2005 p. 6)

1.2 Marketing in the Internet age

The technological development of the recent years have changed the
ways of the business conduction and facilitated the creation of the
separate, online market. Internet has become the interactive channel of
business intercommunication partially transferring sales online. This rapid
development of the new sphere has become a basis for the new marketing
direction development online marketing.
It does not mean that enterprises should drop the old way of thinking and
rush for the implementation of the new technologies to their business, it is
more about combining the best skills and practices of the past with the
new ones. With Internet marketing, comes a globalization of the market,
which allows easier coverage of the target audience; due to the easiness
of using global network for the communication purposes, it allows to
significantly personalize the interaction with the customer and last, but not
least brings a considerable cost reduction.
The following chapters will more closely inspect online marketing, its
strategies and the ways to implement them through a website.

Conclusion
Marketing is not just about sales or advertising, its modern concept implies
a wide range of functions, alongside with sales and advertising, targeted
on a deeper understanding of the cause and gaining of effective result.
Main components of modern marketing concept are needs, wants and
demands, the market offering, value, satisfaction and quality, exchange,
transaction and relationship and the last, but not the least markets. The
technological development of the recent years has changed the way
business is conducted through globalization, and contributed to the
creation of additional online market.

2 Internet
I think in general it's clear that most bad things come from
misunderstanding, and communication is generally the way to resolve
misunderstandings, and the Web's a form of communications, so it
generally should be good. Timothy Berners-Lee
The modern world is changing very quickly under the huge impact and
incredible speed of informational technologies development. This chapter
will briefly reveal the history of the Internet and generally describe the
ways Internet can be used for successful marketing.

2.1 A brief story of the Internet

The Internet population is constantly growing. In our western society its
hard to imagine a day without using the Internet. Trying to give a definition
to this widely used term is a lot more difficult than assumed on the first
glance. My personal definition would be: the Internet is a world-size
network of interlinked electronic devices, forming an array of digital
information. One of the biggest advantages of the Internet is the easy
accessible and manageable information of any kind, available 24 hours
and 7 days per week.
Everything was different only around 60 years ago, when computers have
just been introduced to the public. It is considered to be a milestone in
human history and the start of the so-called Informational Age. However, it
was still not cost efficient to transfer the information until the computers
were interlinked. This changes when the web was formed in 1990s.
Nowadays, web can be defined as:
(The) Web can be considered to be a massive information system
with interconnected databases and remote applications providing
various services. (H.P. Alesso, 2006 p. xvii)
Modern Internet is as much a collection of communities, as it is a collection
of technologies and its success is largely determined by satisfying the
needs of the communities and pushing technological progress further. As a

10
result, the Internet grew above its research routes and now is including
both broad user community and increased commercial activity.
Development of the commercial products, implementing the Internet
technology turned Internet almost to a commodity service, and
transformed into a mean of supporting online commercial services. It is
important to point out that the popularization of the Internet among users
was accelerated by rapid adoption of browsers and the WWW technology,
allowing easier access to the information online. (B.M. Leiner, 2012)
The evolution of the ways of getting information caused a rapid decline of
the information costs. Moreover, it made it possible for an ordinary user to
have control over the consumer products information and ability to create
their own content. Nowadays, it makes Internet to be a natural
marketplace and a sufficient part of the economics.
Internet is emerging both as an extremely useful tool for business
planning and also as a part of a companys marketing mix. As a
planning tool, the Internet search and resource sites can aid any
discipline by opening a high-speed gateway to the wealth of
information. In addition, the Net is a vehicle for marketing research.
(J. Strauss, 1999 p. preface)

2.2 No one is here, everyone is online

According to internet portal Statistic Brain1, 53% of European population is
using Internet on the everyday basis, spending an average of 66 hours per
month online. It is essential, as with the rapid popularization of the
Internet many day-to-day operations got a lot simplified. For example - the
search and comparison of products, ticket purchase, hotel booking, etc.
Together with the rapid development and usage of e-commerce, online
marketing gives an opportunity to better differentiate business and easily
find target customers. In addition, availability of behavioral patterns
analysis systems allows conduction of the fairly accurate and cheap
statistical studies.
1 Statistic Brain: Internet Statistics, http://www.statisticbrain.com/internetstatistics/

11
As a matter of fact, online business is constantly evolving and improving,
as well as online marketing. The best illustration to the fact is the growing
amount

of

companies

creating

online

presence

and

mass

media

duplicating the paper content electronically. Therefore, with a growing

competition online, website becomes critical, as a main tool of promotion.
It has already became a lot more than just a brochure online at least, it is
expected to be interactive, provide up-to-date information and a hub of
activities extendable to social networks. And, as has been discussed in the
previous chapter, it should not just sell, it should correspond to customers
needs and provide value and satisfaction. It brings us to the term Internet
or online marketing:
E-marketing is the term used for marketing activities, such as
promotion or customer relationship management, that is conducted
over the Internet (G. Hooley, 2004 p. 491)
What

to

understand

under

online

marketing

activities?

Modern

technologies, for example, provide a wide range of functionality and allow

following the visitor from the first time he or she sees the product, to the
cart. It enables behavioral tracking and analysis, sensitive information
collecting, and even providing personalized service when the customer
returns to the website. Real-time manageable data allows usage of
dynamic visual and text content, while being worldwide accessible 24/7.

Conclusion
The modern world is changing under the significant impact of technology
and commerce needs to follow the tendencies. Introduction of the
computers

has

become

milestone

of

human

history,

bringing

technologies and communities together through globalization. It was

followed by the rapid development of Internet commerce due to the
sufficient reduction of information cost. Nowadays, Internet is considered
to be more a commodity service and already has become a part of modern
economics. Marketing does not stay behind the technological progress
evolving with it, and together with Interned gives an additional opportunity

12
to differentiate businesses and find new customers on the global online
market.

13

3 Marketing strategies
Marketing strategy the marketing logic by which the business unit
hopes to achieve its marketing objectives (P. Kotler, 2005 p. 595)

3.1 General principles

Any economic strategy is combining theoretical and practical aspects of
entity functioning on the market, taking prevailing tendencies as a basis.
Nevertheless, marketing strategies find their routes in the military. There
are five basic types. (Paley, 2007 pp. 27-31):
Direct attack
A direct attack implies using available resources to full extend and in many
business situations results in exhausting budgets and people. In the case
of direct attack the company may have little or none resources left for the
further penetration to the market. Therefore, this tactics is useless towards
an opponent who is strongly in the leading position. Consequently, if there
is not strong differentiation of the product, price, place and promotion on
the market, success chances are approaching zero.
Indirect attack
According to Liddell Hart1, indirect attack is the most efficient approach
due to conserving the greatest amount of strength. When applied to
business strategy, the main focus is given to the undeveloped, neglected
or just emerging segments of the market, as initial point on market entry.
Following the entry, market strategy is determined by using the suitable
marketing mix to create a competitive advantage. In this case, the
available resources are mobilized to fulfill the need in the segment and
create the long-term fruitful relationships with the customers.

1 Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, usually known before his knighthood as
Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, was an English soldier, military historian and
leading inter-war theorist. He is credited with greatly influencing the
development of armored warfare. (2013)

14
Envelopment attack
This type of attack consists of two major stages:
1. Focus on a specific market (the same way as in indirect attack).
2. Identification of additional segments and development of suitable
offer to envelope the entire market.
Bypass attack
The core meaning of the bypass attack is the expansion of the areas of
interest to the unrelated segments of the market. Thought it is deceiving
the competitor, it may also cause a negative effect of being spread and
dispersing the main focus from any single area.
Guerrilla attack
This strategy involves small, and, on the first glance, chaotic attacks with
the aim to lead the opposing manager into making a strategic mistake. For
example, selective price cuts, promotional bursts, supply interference, etc.
Mainly, it is used for a small company, competing against a large
corporation.
Having those principles in head, it is possible to form them into an
actionable plan (Paley, 2007 pp. 41-42):
3.1.1 Indirect approach
As discussed above, indirect approach strategy implies a company
entering the undeveloped segments of the market. The actions taken
when using this approach include creation of uncertainty among the
competitors, - so they have to guess what the actual strategy really is;
quickly filling up the gaps in the undeveloped segments by targeted
products or services; gaining access to the supply chain by add-on
products or services. All the actions should be sharp, fast and causing
confusion for the competitors.
3.1.2 Differentiation
It is considered to be the most effective way to apply indirect approach by
means of differentiating the components of marketing mix. Differentiation

15
should be considered in such areas as customer service (including faster
delivery, after purchase follow-up, packaging, management training, etc.)
and intangibles as reliability, reputation, prestige and value. Even when
the competitors products may seem identical, differentiation in the areas
stated above will add up to the overall image of the product and the
company in general.
3.1.3 Concentration
Concentration is an important part of the marketing strategy, following up
the indirect approach and differentiation. Its success is determined by the
ability to distract competitor and seek out an opportunity in a developing
segment. But it is important to take into consideration that concentration
is effective only to extend one can successfully differentiate from the
competitors.

3.2 Marketing mix

Taking all that into consideration, its time to proceed to marketing mix, as
a core structure under development of the marketing strategy. Marketing
mix is usually composed of so-called 4P components Product, Price, Place
and Promotion. Every of the four primary components suggest strategy
possibilities. For example, it is extremely helpful when comparing
performance of the company to the competitors one to determine is the
chosen strategy is the most suitable one. The table below is providing a
guideline for creating a strategy out of a marketing mix. (Paley, 2007 p.
51)
The basis, when working with the marketing mix, is to effectively
determine the factors that can possibly become a distinctive competitive
advantage on the market.
For example, a company should select a feature of an offered product or
service that a competitor cannot match, put quality and service as a
general priority and try to focus on premium priced segment. Maintaining
a market-driven orientation it is easier for the company to establish long-

16
lasting relationships with customers through timely identifying and
fulfilling their needs and wants.
Constant investigation of opportunities, which can contribute to the longlasting goals, like, for example, new exporting situation, is a must. Timely
investigation of the opportunities may as well result in the identification of
the emerging niche on the market and lead to successful expansion.
(Paley, 2007 pp. 52-53)
In the marketing discipline, the Internet serves as a distribution
channel, communication medium and fertile ground for new products.
It has also lowered marketing costs and put tremendous downward
price pressure on products sold online (P. Kotler, 2005 p. 148)
Established and old-school marketing practices are not rejected with the
technological advancement, they are being adopted. Now they are being
used on a different scale, as globalization has brought a lot more space for
the activities.
Product

Price

Quality

List price

Features

Discounts

Options

Allowances

Style
Brand name

Payment
period

Packaging

Credit terms

Promotion
Advertising:

Channels:
-

Direct sales
force

Personal selling:

Distribution

Incentives

Dealers

Sales aids

Sizes

Samples

Services

Training

Warranties

Customer and
trade

Distribution

Sales promotion:

Returns

Demonstrations

Versatility

Contests

Uniqueness

Premiums

Utility

Coupons

Reliability

Manuals

Durability

Telemarketing

Patent
protection

Internet
Publicity

Market coverage:
-

Warehouse
locations

Inventory
control
systems

Physical
transport

17
Guarantees
Table 1: Creating strategies out of the marketing mix

Conclusion
Marketing strategies take their routes in military and differentiate into
direct, indirect, envelopment, bypass and guerrilla attacks. Having those
five basic military principles in head, it is possible to combine them into an
actionable plan. For example, indirect approach implies using an element
of surprise towards the competitors confusing them with the taken actions
while targeting the low-competitive or emerging segments of the market.
Strategy of differentiation infers excelling the competitor increasing
reliability, prestige and value. Concentration is about distracting a
competitor to seek out an opportunity in undeveloped segment. When
determining a strategy marketing mix elements should be taken into
consideration product, price, place and promotion. Analysis of those
basic components helps to determine a distinctive advantage over the
competitor.

18

4 Website as a main tool of online marketing

strategy
4.1 Building a successful website
The number one myth is Build it and they will come. Richard
Kauffman
As already mentioned in the previous chapters, the most important fact of
the modern Internet is that the customer is in charge. In this respect, a
website should be a totally customer oriented platform used for providing
a no-pressure sales environment and a thoughtful choice making process.
The key to the websites success lies in the understanding of its customer
and his or her preferences.
Characteristics of the best websites:
1. Easy to use
2. Meets visitor expectations
3. Communicates visually (Wheeler, 2009 p. 153)
A good website is an effective sequel of the overall companys marketing
and PR policy that is evolving with the companys growth. Its success on
the Internet is determined by careful planning and strong goal targeting,
including the mechanisms of goals achievement. (Wheeler, 2009 pp. 188189)

19

Initiate plan

Develop
database

Prototype and
test

Build groundwork

Design and
program

Launch

Launch project

Prepare content

Monitor success

Figure 3: "Process: Online Branding Site"

If the website is being planned not like everyone else has, but based on
the careful examination of the business and its target audience, the first
step has to be determining the goals. Identification process starts from
identifying current brand and PR problems and proceeds to setting targets
and milestones. A very important part of website planning process is the
conduction of the Internet marketing analysis, seeing usage statistics and
validating ROI1 results of the old website or the competitors ones. The
outcomes of the analysis will help to determine the specifics of the
demand on businesses products or services online.
After reviewing status of assets and current standards, a marketing
concept of the website should be created.
Marketing concept is a philosophy that an organization should try to
provide products that satisfy customers needs through a coordinated
set of activities that also allows the organization to achieve its goals.
Customer satisfaction is the major focus of the marketing concept. To
implement

the

marketing

concept,

an

organization

strives

to

determine what buyers want and uses this information to develop

satisfying products. (O.C. Ferrell, 2006 p. 11)
1 ROI Return on Investment

20
Marketing concept is the key factor to determine the interaction tactics
between customer and the selling website, implying the conversion of a
random visitor to a potential customer. Therefore, scrupulous development
of the concept is crucial for high efficiency and high ROI of the website.
Taking into consideration the fact that Internet users do not perceive open,
touting advertisement positively, marketing concept implies unobtrusive
but understandable promotion, as a part of the content, design and overall
idea of the website. The main purpose of this unostentatious promotion is
to give a visitor a clear understanding of the object of advertisement in an
indirect way, without graphical or textual overloading.
Having the concept and the overall image of the website in mind, a
preliminary budget and timeline should be created before the launch of
the project. Again, an important part of the project launch is the definition
of the future ROI measurements. Main question here is how to classify and
measure the return on the invested money if the website is not an ecommerce type, no transactions will be conducted through the Internet,
and therefore gathering statistics about website efficiency is complicated.
Nevertheless, it is possible to estimate ROI by comparing the current
outcome of the website and its ability to fulfill the set goals with the future
results. Attention should be paid to the questions Have the sales
increased?, Is there any feedback from visitors? and, the most
important one Is the increase in traffic followed by the increase of sales?
One of the most important steps in improving your site's ranking in
Google search results is to ensure that it contains plenty of rich
information that includes relevant keywords, used appropriately, that
indicate the subject matter of your content. (Google, 2012)
The best example of good content is daily news. They should be updated
frequently, checked thoroughly and be timely. In addition, the text itself
should be written according to the KISS 1 principle short and simple. The
information should be classified and structured -descriptions are best
perceived in text, accompanied by illustrations if needed, and numbers are
more understandable in tables or graphs.
1 KISS keep it short and simple

21
Moreover, there are specific indicators used to evaluate the quality of the
content as perceived by the search engines, such as page headers
relevance, stop words, words density, outbound links, etc. Those indicators
will be described in more details in the Chapter 5 Tools and methods of
website analysis.
The

designing

and

programming

process

should

start

from

the

identification of the interface and navigation style as well, as definition of

the website system functionality. Functionality and design of the website
form a harmonic and simple tandem, creating a comfortable and intuitive
interface.
There is an unofficial web-design rule concerning the navigation of the
website The Rule of Three Clicks. It implies that a visitor should be able
to find all the necessary information only in three mouse clicks throughout
the website. Though the rule is unofficial, it gives a perfect image about
how simple and comprehensible the website should be organized.
The relation between visual consistency and site identity is complex
because visual consistency is not a unitary construct. Visual
consistency varies along multiple dimensions or features such as
logo, page layout, background, and color scheme. Conceivably,
individual features of sites could be used to make site identity
judgment in a number of ways. The notion considered here is that
multiple features are considered in site identity judgments, but that
some features, notably the logo, are given more weight than other
features. (C.P.Haugtvedt, 2005 p. 290)
I will omit the part describing the technical aspects of the website
development, even though it is also a component of the success and is
essential for the search engine promotion, I do not consider it to be
relevant to this topic. Nevertheless, when the website is finished and
launched, the assessment of usage trends and reports comes in hand to
identify the frequency of content updates and functional advances and
upgrades.

22

4.2 Analyzing a website

4.2.1 First glance
When opening a new website, I asses it by 5 major characteristics
appearance, content, functionality, website usability and, the least
obvious, optimization. The appearance of the website is the first thing
giving a major impression over its topic, main target and general message
it spreads.
In my personal opinion, it should be neat, clean and comprehensible.
Content of the website is the mean of transferring information to the mass,
its core value and reason of visiting, therefore, it should be kept short and
simple, giving all the necessary meaning in lesser amount of words.
Functionality allows the visitor to navigate in a search of needed content,
so it should also be simple and clear, easily comprehensible for the firsttime visitor. Usability shows the friendliness of the website to its visitors,
meaning short scrolling, fast-loading pages and browser compatibility. And
the least obvious part, optimization stands for perception of the website by
search engines.
A remark should be made here, that in the run for the search engine
rankings, owners of the websites may neglect the stated above
characteristics and modify the website to acquire high rank, but lower the
possibility of first positive impression from the website. By saying so I
mean adding hidden text, overloading content with keywords or adding
unnecessary big amount of external and internal links.
4.2.2 Obtainable indicators
When analyzing the given website, the first look should be devoted to the
history of the website and its description, time of loading, authority and
trustworthy in the eyes of the search engines, amount of the indexed
pages, amount of outer links to the website as well as amount of the
referrals from social networks, etc. All of those indicators are easily
obtainable online and are widely used for the assessment of competitors
websites.

23
One of the things to look at is the history of the website. It starts from
careful choosing and obtaining the domain name. It is easy to check the
date and the time of the creation, as the general information about the
domain is public and easy obtainable through the Internet.
Though speed of the modern Internet allows not paying attention to the
overall weight of the webpage, or graphics in particular, anymore, it is
however still important to pay attention to the loading speed of the
website. For the estimation of the loading time I have used the Internet
connection provided on Vinarska Halls of Residence by 99 Voice and Data
Services1; the Aneta system website2 claims the speed of Internet to vary
with 100Mbit at most.
The other easy obtainable online indicator is the website ranking among
the other portals in the search results. For example, Google PR is one of
the algorithms of page ranking. Every page is being assigned a numbered
indicator, showing the importance of the webpage in comparison to
others. The more links from other authoritative resources the website
has, the better, the higher the PR ranking is. The number of the assigned
ranking can vary from 0 to 10, but the exact meaning and the algorithms
of the calculation is not spread by Google.
But not all of the pages of the website may be taken to the search engine
index due to various, sometimes not stated, reasons. Therefore, the
amount of indexed pages indicator shows how many pages are taken into
account by Google bots. It does not reveal as much information as other
indicators, but just might indicate the problem with search engine filtering
pages with not unique content, for example.
Links and referrals are also connected to the trustworthy of the website
the more links from big and frequently updated portals with unique
information, the better. This includes referrals from social media websites,
such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and LiveJournal. If the
1

Information

about

the

provider

was

obtained

http://www.speedtest.net/
2 https://www.pks.muni.cz/pripojeni.php#english

on

the

website

24
information on the website goes viral, it is possible to spot it through a
rapid increase of external links and referrals.
4.2.3 Statistics
When creating a website, one can request a creation of the custom
content management system or chose the most suitable for the purposes
of the website available online systems, like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla.
Popular and user-friendly systems usually provide the owner of the website
with statistics that helps to evaluate performance.
In the case an owner wants to use the external system for analysis, he or
she can turn to online services such as Google Analytics. Google Analytics
is a service provided by Google Inc. to help website owners to measuring
sales and conversions, to track how visitors see and use the website, or to
see where did they come from and what they are searching for. Due to the
powerful reporting system, Google Analytics gives a webmaster the ability
to view information in the default mode or customized reports to get only
the information the webmaster needs.
The reporting system gives an insight of which parts of the website are
performing well and achieving the set goals, for providing the best
experience for the visitors. The new feature that was introduced recently
allows tracking success of social media promotion as well, through
monitoring the behavior of the visitors with social networks sharing
buttons. So, as it is clearly seen, Google Analytics can provide some
valuable insights to the performance of the website and revealing its
potential.

Conclusion
First step to the online promotion is building a successful website which is
easy to use, which meets visitors expectations and communicates
visually. To do that nine basic steps should be taken: planning, conducting
groundwork, launching the project, developing databases, designing and
programming, creating content, testing prototype, launching the website
and monitoring success. Every visitor is assessing the website according to

25
his or her expectations and the overall satisfaction is determined by five
basic

elements:

appearance,

content,

functionality,

usability

and

optimization. Users of the website are not the only one assessing its
performance, there are also rankings provided by search engines based on
the previously determined trustworthy of the website. To statistically
analyze performance of the website one can use already built it the
content management system statistics or refer to the outer services like
Google Analytics.

26

5 Limitations of the study

Primary objective of the thesis, as stated in the official description, is to
analyze

the

Internet

marketing

strategies

of

international

retailer

companies and to investigate modern trends of Internet marketing.

Initially there was a risk of international companies unwillingness of
revealing the information about their performance online which actually
became true.
According to the methods stated in the description, I have created a
questionnaire to collect the statistical information needed for the analysis.
But having no possibility to use it for the initial purpose, I have modified it
in a way, that it targeted not the success of the companies marketing
strategy, but the users perception of the website as the core item of the
marketing strategy. This information is less accurate but, a sufficient
sample of participants assumed, still a qualified indicator.
Also, poor availability of information about the given sample of websites,
forced me to mainly focus and statistical analysis of the blog as a medium
of the modern internet and its formulation and creation of an overall image
of the international retailor companies in the minds of potential clients.
In this case, alongside with the general investigation of the publically
available information about the websites of the international retailor
companies, a research about the popularity, availability and range of
influence of a particular blog was conducted. I consider it to be a reviewing
of the small item under a magnifier to understand the trend and be able to
model the overall tendency.

PART II

26

6 Websites assessment
Profiling of the international retailor companies sample is due to the just
mentioned limitations restricted to the publically available and obtainable
information1. Nevertheless, it gives an opportunity to have an insight on
the general characteristics of the websites.

6.1 Sample overview

Websites of eight top personal computers producers were taken as a
sample for the investigation. Market, separated between Acer, Apple,
Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony and Toshiba is being watched closely, as the
competition is tight. The figure2 below illustrates the market share held by
vendors in personal computer shipment. The data is ranged from first
quarter of 2010 to first quarter of 2013.
20.00
18.00
16.00
14.00
12.00

Acer

10.00

Asus
Dell

8.00

HP

6.00

Lenovo

4.00

Toshiba

2.00
0.00

Figure 4: "Global market share held by leading PC vendors"

1 Some of the information used in profiling was taken from http://www.cypr.com/

2 Source: http://www.statista.com/statistics/163767/global-market-shareof-pc-vendors/

27
As it is seen on the graphic, Hewlett-Packard is leading in the amount of
personal computer shipment if the first quarter of 2013, closely followed
by Lenovo. The middle place in the amount of shipment is taken by Dell
and Acer, both facing slight decline in the shipments. And the last place is
shared by Toshiba and Asus, slowly increasing their sales.

6.2 Personal evaluation

For the purpose of this thesis, an overview of major personal computer
vendors

websites

was

conducted.

For

easier

comprehension

and

comparison, all the obtained information was merged in the table below.
The first glance assessment was done in five steps; each of the
characteristics was assigned a numerical meaning composing 20% at
most.
To assess the appearance of the given websites, attention has been paid
to the conformity of the colors used in the design (distracting or
annoying); to the clarity of the text, presence and variability of illustrative
graphics and simplicity of the page overload.
The main indicators of good content are clarity, simplicity and up-todatedness. As it has been already stated in the previous chapters, content
should not be overloaded with keywords, links or anything else distracting
from the perception of the relevant information. The shorter, more
organized, more updated and more user-friendly content, the more points
were granted.
Maximum points for the functionality were given to fast and error-free
websites, across hyperlinks, contact forms and website internal search.
High scores for usability were assigned in case a website is simple,
consistent and prominent. Meaning not much time is required for getting
to the desired information fast scrolling, descriptive links, and sufficient
local navigation. It is also important that the website is consistent in all the
modern browsers and has a mobile or pad light version.

28
Website gained search engine optimization high scores if it had plenty of
content written in HTML format, used descriptive links and successfully
passed a markup validation test provided by W3C1.

1 The World Wide Web Consortium - http://validator.w3.org/

29
Ac
er

Appl Asu
e
s

Del
l

HP

Leno
vo

Son
y

Toshi
ba

First glance
Pleasant
colors

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Text
clarity

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Illustrativ
e graphics

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Total, %

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

Clarity
and
organizati
on

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Up-todatedness

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Keyword
overloade
d

No

No

No

No

No

No

No

No

Total, %

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

Functional
ity

Error-free

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Total, %

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

Usability

Convenie
nt
navigatio
n

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Mobile
version

No

No

No

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

Total, %

10

10

10

20

10

20

10

W3C,
errors

88

86

908

24

60

191

81

Descr.
links

Yes

No

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

No

Total, %

14

10

15

20

84

80

85

80

90

87

70

65

2.8s

1.69

2.28s

Appearan
ce

Content

SEO

Total, %

Obtainable indicators
Loading time

1.58

1.19s

1.47

2.53

2.0

30
s

5s

Google Page Rank

7/10

9/10

7/10

8/10

9/1
0

7/10

7/10

6/10

Webpages in index

8
530

142k

432k

1390
k

405
k

4 930k

2070
0

20k

Table 2: "Sample profile"

The table above illustrates the assessment conducted by myself, based on

the 5 major criteria. As it was concluded in the theoretical part, one of the
major focuses of the marketing is customers satisfaction. This is quite
difficult to measure online. In order to be able to do so, I have conducted a
sample survey with sufficient amount of respondents. The questionnaire
can be found in the Appendix. I think it is essential to state, that the
questionnaire is not aimed to receive and capture a reaction on the
interface, making the poll just a measure of the usability, as for measuring
that, one also needs assessment of the users ability to fulfill their tasks on
the website.

6.3 Visitors perception

Before proceeding to the evaluation of the survey results, several words
should be said about the respondents profile. All of the respondents, who
took part in the survey, are from 18 to 25 years old, both males and
females, mainly international students studying abroad. Respondents were
asked to visit websites one-at-a-time and choose the most appropriate,
according to their own opinion, adjective to characterize the website.
There were 24 adjectives listed, more than one were available to be
chosen. List of the adjectives was shuffled for every question to avoid
clicking through responses. The list was as follows:
High-quality, business-like, messy, distracting, convenient, accessible,
slow,

consistent,

trustworthy,

time-saving,

useless,

comprehensible,

organized, appealing, clean, clear, time-consuming, simple, frustrating,

advanced, ordinary, effective and user-friendly.
Offering a website to the public is very much alike with offering a new
product. Nevertheless, it is a contribution to the branding of the company

31
itself. The survey supports the assumption that the perception of the
website can influence the purchasing decision of a potential client.
As illustrated on the figure below, respondents consider a website to be an
influential factor, what makes it a very important part of the marketing
online. 28% of the respondents said that visiting the website will influence
their decision for sure and 40% replied that it will most surely influence it.
No, not at all

Probably not

I don't know

Probably yes

Yes, surely

8%
28%

12%
12%

40%

Figure 5: "May visiting retailor' website influence your purchase decision?"

The next interesting general thing to discover is the correspondence of the

website to the perception of the brand itself. In the modern world one may
first go online to check out the information about the product he or she is
about to purchase, in this case the website may be supporting or
contradicting to the already created perception of the brand.
I wanted to find out if the websites of the international retailor companies
correspond to the initial brand image respondents already have. As the
survey has shown, in general, 44% of the visitors were almost sure the
website image corresponds, whereas 32% could not reply this question, as
shown on the graphical illustration below.

32
No, not at all

Probably not

26%

I don't know

Probably yes

Yes, surely

11%
11%

22%

30%

Figure 6: "Does your perception of the website correspond to your perception of the
brand?"

So, after figuring out the general tendency, there is one more important
thing to pay attention to. In the questionnaire, the respondents were given
an option to fill in their own opinion on the given website, if the bank of
words was not enough to describe their perception. Omitting the response
Never used it, given by one of the respondents to every single offered
website, some of the comments were revealing the attitude very good.

33
Accessible
User-friendly
Advanced
Useless
Appealing
20
Usable
Business-like
Trustworthy

Clean
10

Time-saving

Clear

Time-consuming

Comprehensive

Slow

Consistent

Simple

Convenient

Organized
Ordinary

Acer
Apple
Asus
Dell
HP
Lenovo
Sony
Toshiba

Distracting
Messy
Frustrating
High quality

Effective

Figure 7: "Comparison of the websites' characteristics"

The figure above is the illustration to the results of the questionnaire on

the attitude to the websites. Though most of the websites share key
characteristics, it gives an opportunity to have an insight on the most
outstanding, as of the point of view of the respondents, features and forms
the general idea of the ideal website, again, according to the
respondents. So, the ideal website of the international retailor company
should be of the high quality, organized, simple and user-friendly,
nevertheless it should be effective, clear and business-like.
As for the individual characteristics, I will give a quick summary on the
evaluation of each of the websites.
Acer website is considered to be simple, organized and user-friendly by
majority of the respondents votes. Nevertheless, several of them were not
satisfied with the overall simplicity. For example:
Its comprehensive to a fault. Too many options presented. Its
aesthetics are pleasing but the overall layout and design doesn't
exactly make it too easy to navigate
Or:

The

colors

and

the

34
confusing

outline

make

it

seem

really

untrustworthy and cheap. (Needs more strong colors like dark-blue).

Apple website was considered to be of high-quality by the absolute
majority of votes, adding up with the positive comment:
Clean, clear and concise. Represents the Apple design philosophy
Nevertheless, some of the comments were negatively describing the
design, reflecting on the too big picture in the middle and too small text in
the menus. Every detail matters, and taking into consideration the
possibility of purchase decision change after visiting a website, it makes it
not the least matter to consider. One issue that was mentioned was the
lack of a multi-language landing page:
Considering high Hispanic population and customers worldwide,
Apple should consider multi-languages upfront on home page rather
than going region wise
As for the Asus website, the votes split between ordinary and organized
characteristics, supported by the good search of products and very well
regional distribution network praising comments.
Dells main characteristic, according to the visitors was effective. The
supporting comment to that is:
A really clean and effective design. No-nonsense approach. Straight
to business
Hewlett-Packard website is considered to be simple, visually appealing
and functional.
All the important options made available and clear from the get-go.
Easy to navigate and the overall click-flow is free of hassles. You can
easily land up where you want to go.
Alongside with the positive perception of the website, there is a very
strong motive that well organized and understandable website is too
simplified and, therefore, boring.

35
Votes on the Lenovo website have split between distracting, ordinary and
usable features. The main reason of confusion was highlighted in the
comments:
Good comparison of models, but no images of products (to see how
they look)
Sony website is considered to be well organized and called by the
respondents to be one of the best-looking websites:
Pertinent information and links made easily available, visually
pleasing and an accessible interface
Sony not only earned praise for the pleasant and convenient usability, but
also for giving the ability to compare different products:
Has photos of products from different sides and different color
variations.
The most confusing website for the respondents was one of Toshiba.
None of the provided characteristics gained the majority of the votes,
allowing getting the main idea of what respondents thought of it.
Meh. Its all over the place. Doesn't exactly scream High End
Computer Manufacturer. I'd skip this one.
This is the perfect illustration of the websites negative influence on the
respondent to the extent of unwillingness to evaluate it. None of the
comments left by the visitors were positive, indicating that the overall
impression of the website was negative. Another testimony to illustrate it:
Inconsistent, when choosing product category (e.g. laptop) moves to
other web-page http://www.toshibadirect.com/. This is inconvenient if
one would like to check products in different divisions (e.g. home,
business products, etc.)
The overall conclusion about the results of the poll can be stated as
follows. It is a well-known fact, that the brand is one of the most important
things a company should invest in. It works approximately the same as
income from the deposit account in the bank, with the only difference that
a return from the investment comes in the form of positive long-term

36
attitude of the customers. And if to take into consideration, that brand is
having a big influence on the purchasing behavior of the potential client,
trust to the brand is very important.
The result of the survey have given a short insight on the behavior of the
website visitors, that can be summarized, as positive impact of the
website influences not only the one-time purchase decision in most of
cases, but also the overall image of the companys brand.

Conclusion
Websites of the top 8 personal computers producers were taken for the
investigation. Due to the lack of information, investigation was conducted
in two major steps: personal evaluation according to the criteria discussed
in theoretical part and survey conducted among the potential users of
those websites. Respondents ranged from 18 to 25 years old, both sexes,
majority of international students studying abroad. The main conclusion
made according to the results of the survey stated that a website is an
influential factor that can potentially change the purchase decision upon
visiting.

37

7 Blogs assessment
According to the research of Technorati Media, consumers consider
product description and blogs to be the top factors in influencing their
purchase decision. In fact, the result of the research concludes that blogs
overviews tend to mean more for the potential customers, that word of
mouth from a friend. 28% of more than 1200 respondents consider a
positive review in a blog to be the deciding factor, leaving friends
recommendation on the second place with 17% of votes. (2013)
It suggests that customers tend to trust online testimonies of bloggers
who have used the product more, than to the information on the official
websites. It put blogs to the very influential position and therefore, I offer
focus and statistically analyze the blog, as the medium of the modern
internet.

7.1 Overview
For the purpose of investigation, I have selected a website Living in Brno |
Where to go in Brno, clubs, pubs, restaurants, and any other places that
you should take a look at it. It is a non-commercial English language blog
with a sufficient potential, describing places foreign students can visit in
Brno.
It is a popular website among the students of Vinarska Halls of Residence,
giving an exhaustive overview of the places of interest in Brno, currently
promoted mainly through the Facebook social network. The updates are
posted regularly, including not only the overview of the places, but also
the description of the events.
The owner of the website, Jomar Bustamante, has kindly given me a
permission to look into the websites statistics to evaluate its performance
and suggest online marketing strategy, if possible.

38

Figure 8:"Living in Brno"

The website was created on September 2012 and is successfully

functioning for eight month, with the average of 275.5 views per month. It
contains 29 posts, 2 pages, summarized in 8 categories and marked with
54 tags. It is also accompanied with a social network profile, created in
September as well, for easier popularization among students. So far, it has
435 likes, 5 people talking about it with the engagement rate of 1.1%.
Going back to the blog, its loading time is 2.549s of 827kb1, Google Page
Rank is 0 out of 10 with 134 indexed pages2.
The website has pleasant colors; text is clear and very well illustrated by
graphics. The content is up-to-date, not overloaded by keywords, but not
unique, what might affect the overall trustworthy of the blog. It has only 5
errors, according to W3C, what is an indicator of a quality content
1

Information

obtained

from

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/130417_X3_RJV/
2

http://www.google.ru/search?q=site

%3Alivingbrno.wordpress.com&filter=0&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

39
management system. The navigation is clear and convenient, with the
sufficient mobile version of the blog.

7.2 Statistics
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
September October November December

January

February

March

April

Figure 9: "Visitors per month"

Visitors are the most important indicator of the website success. As

illustrated on the figure above, the interest to the website was totally
dependent on the holidays schedule, which is easily explained by the
overall theme and topic of the blog and supported by the search words
used to find a website, as living in Brno, Two Faces, Mandarin club,
life in Brno and I love living in Brno.
The next figure illustrates tendency of the website visiting per day. The
numbers are obtained by the sum of views per month divided by the
amount of days. It is showing the interest to the website at the particular
day throughout the eight month of the website existence. The graphic is
also reflecting the pattern of decreasing interest to the website during the
holidays, when students go home. In this case, it is indicating one of the
specific

features

of

target

audience,

that

should

be

taken

consideration when analyzing the website during summer month.

into

40
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
September October November December

January

February

March

April

Figure 10: "Average visitors per day"

Alongside with the amount of visitors it is always useful to take a look on

the location of the visitors.

Figure 11: "Location map"

41
For the given website, the location map shows the most activity for Czech
Republic 1 359 visits. That result is followed by Norway, Spain, United
Kingdom, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Germany and Greece. The chart
illustrates the share of each country in particular, excluding Czech
Republic, to make the illustration more comprehensive. Multinational
audience is also one of the distinctive features of the website putting
political and interracial restriction on its content.
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

Figure 12: "Location share"

7.3 Marketing
Statistical overview gives an opportunity to assess the performance of the
website and its impact on overall business result. In the case with the blog
I am reviewing, the impact on the business activities can be only
hypothetical and formed as a prognosis for the future monetization, as the
website is non-profit.
For the current moment, the blog is following the marketing strategy of
differentiation, offering a differentiation in reviewing the places to visit in
more precise matter and according to the needs of the target audience. If
to take into consideration the main competitors of the blog, as Brno Now
and Czechmate Diary, the differentiation is easily spotted.

42

Figure 13: "Brno Now"

Brno Now website has more trust from the Google search engine,
illustrated by 5/10 page rank indicator. Having 1520 indexed pages and
uptime since November 30, 2010, high page rank indicator can be
explained by frequent updates of content and longer website availability
online. Nevertheless, major difference between Brno Now and Living in
Brno is the content and targeted audience.

Figure 14: "Czechmate Diary"

Czechmate Diary appeared online on May 11, 2005 and has earned 4/10
PR trust indicator, having 2260 pages indexed. The interesting feature of
this resource is that it is updated on both, Czech and English languages,
and is supported by a Czech living in United States. Czechmate Diary is
an indirect competitor of Living in Brno.
So far, the only marketing activity applied to the Living in Brno was the
promotion through the social networking, Facebook in particular. It has
engaged 437 subscribers with the low involvement ratio. By the
involvement ratio the active participation in discussions and offered
activities is understood.
The next sub-chapter is devoted solely to the creation of the future
marketing strategy and list of recommended activities to enhance the
performance of the investigated blog.

7.4 Future strategy

There is a saying If you are not on the Internet, you are not existing. But
creating a website is the least thing that can be made to capture the

43
attention of potential clients. On the example of the blog, I would like to
create a plan for online promotion and illustrate the flow of the activities
with the Gantt chart.
The first step to take is to define goals of the website. In the case of the
blog, the ultimate goals are to become the primary source of information
about Brno and activities in Brno for students and international visitors,
through the increase of target audience flow and increase of popularity
of the website. As for the long-term goal, it is to obtain the sufficient
amount of audience for monetization the traffic through paid reviews or
context advertising. But for now, the blog is non-profit and the main
target is the primary source of information.
When the goals are formulated, the next step would be to find out the
semantic core of the website. This means finding most suitable keywords
and search queries. It is very important to understand the target audience
at this point, its interests, age and gender, to view the website from the
point of view of view of the visitor. For example, a target audience for the
Living in Brno blog is international student and visiting foreigners at the
age from 18 to 25, males and females.
Taking it as a starting point, it is possible to figure out the current most
common search queries1 for the blog, as places to get food delivered or
food delivery. It is important to pick the key phrases with medium or low
competition to have more chances to appear on the first pages of search
results. In this case, the most suitable key phrases to target would be:
takeout food places, theme pubs, film clubs, clubs in Brno. To
expand the area of the influence, I would also suggest targeting:
exchange students, clubs in Brno, restaurants in Brno and pubs in
Brno.
When the semantic core of the website is ready, it is useful to take a look
on the competitors, assess their websites and promotion strategy, position
and tendencies. The indirect competitors of Living in Brno blog are Brno
Now and Chechmate Diary. Direct competitors in the niche of
1

Information

taken

https://adwords.google.com/

from

AdWords

Google

service:

44
informative blog for international students, reviewing places of interest are
not present. Therefore, the correction of the previous set goals and chosen
search queries is not needed.
At this point the analysis of the website usually takes place, but I have
conducted an analysis in the previous sub-chapter. It is important to get
rid of all the mistakes found out with the help of W3C markup validation,
increase the amount of the pages indexed by search engine and also
increase the involvement of the visitors on the website.
To index the fallen out pages in the search engine an owner must submit a
sitemap to the Google directory. Any pages that are not indexed yet will be
included to the search engine, as stated in the Google support
documentation. The sitemap is also useful in helping determining which
web pages are important and it is essential not to prevent Google bots
from indexing the website with robots.txt file or meta tags.
For the involvement of the visitors on the website, I offer to create a form
for the visitors to be able to submit places they think should be reviewed,
options to rate already reviewed places and a chart of most popular places
among students, based on visitors voting. In addition to that, I would also
recommend paying more attention to the uniqueness of the review articles
content ideally it should be 95.5% authentic. All together these
measures will increase the trust of the search engines to the website and
regular posting of the fresh information will encourage web-crawlers visit
and index the blog more often.
It is important to devote time to the online marketing of the website.
Optimizing the website once and leaving it as it is will not get sufficient
results in the long-run. To follow the strategy of differentiation for the
given blog, one has to constantly improve the experience a visitor is
getting from the website, introduce new features, and upgrade the old
ones. It is useful to involve the visitors to help building the blog they like
by asking their opinion and responding to their requests.
Promotion of the website online is not limited by just following the
indicators and responding to their change, it may be, as well, a well-placed

45
link, bringing lots of potential customers or grateful readers. For example,
asking a fellow-blogger for a positive review is a very good beginning of
gaining visitors that would want to come back later. Or discussing a matter
on the forum, or involving people from social networks, as marketing in
the modern Internet is a process of the communication.
7.4.1 Gantt chart
To graphically illustrate the plan of Living in Brno website improvement
from the current condition to the defined by goals amount of popularity,
refer to the Gantt chart below.
As the first step to be taken is the definition of goals, it is planned on the
upcoming month. The thorough assessment of the competition should
start at the same time as goals definition, as according to the theory of
differentiation, one should take into consideration and surpass the
advantages of competitors. Analysis of the website overlaps the creation
of the sitemap. As it was pointed out in the analysis of general indicators,
to increase the amount of pages in the search engine index, the owner
should submit a sitemap of the website. It is an important step to increase
trust to the website from a search engine.
Define goals
Assess competition
Analyze website
Create sitemap
Update content
Encourage
involvement
Monitor success
Task / Time

May

June

July

Table 3: "Gantt chart"

August

Septem
ber

46
Content update is scheduled on the time with the estimated least activity
of visitors. As have been stated before, the target audience has its
features that need to be paid attention to, for example, as international
students visitors would be least interested in the website during summer
holidays. Along with the content updates comes encouragement of visitors
to take part in the development of the website by suggesting places for a
review,

rating

and

interacting

on

the

Facebook

page.

In

August

international students are already aware of the place of their destination

and search for the available information online. September is the month of
monitoring performance and success of implemented changes, as well as
time of setting new goals.

Conclusion
Living in Brno blog was taken for the overview of website analysis
process. Alongside with monitoring visitors of the blog, general obtainable
indicators were taken into consideration. Analysis has revealed that
interest to the website is totally dependent upon the holidays schedule, as
main visitors are international students. Overview gave an opportunity to
create a list of recommendations for the improvement of the blog,
illustrated by the Gantt chart spreading the tasks for the next five month.

47

8 Recommendations

for

the

companies

expanding online
In the previous chapters it has been discussed how to build a successful
website, how to analyze it from the visitors point of view and a short
overlook was given on how to promote a website on the example of a blog.
This chapter is devoted to the outlining the recommendation for the
retailor companies expanding online, pointing on the specifics of ecommerce websites.

8.1 Design and usability

As the conducted survey has shown, visitors tend to trust more to the
websites with professional and appealing design. Nevertheless, the design
and usability of the website should correlate without confusing a visitor. A
potential client should be able to easily find necessary information or
product, while being unobtrusively but effectively offered related products.
A website should clearly state, who is selling, what is being sold, at which
price and how the purchase would be delivered to the buyer. This implies
that a website should have comprehensive description of the product
illustrated by photos and 3D models if necessary. Alongside there should
be full characteristics and an opportunity for the buyers to share their
opinion on the offered product.
Most of the retailor websites require registration for the proceeding of a
purchase. Therefore, the registration process should be minimized and
simplified, requiring the least possible amount of time for the website
account creation. It is getting popular to authorize on websites through the
already existing account on the numerous social networking websites as
Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.

8.2 Sales and delivery

A customer should be well informed about the full price of the purchased
product, including the additional costs on product delivery. For increasing
the level of trust, it is recommended to state which risks a buyer can face

48
when purchasing a product and how a retailor can protect his customer. All
the terms and conditions on the return of the product should be stated in a
clear and comprehensive way as well.
Good service is not the only thing that will make customers return to the
website. It is important to keep the visitor updated and encourage him or
her to return with appreciation systems. As for the retailor website, it can
be reward points, discounts or pleasant small presents. One additional
brick in building successful long-term relationship with visitors of the
website is keeping them updates on new events on the website or sales
proposals through weekly or monthly newsletters.

8.3 Information and branding

Website is the online representation of the company, when future partners
may acquire their first impression of the company through its website, it is
important to maintain professional website corresponding to the brand
book of the entire company.
Placing additional information about the company, its products or services
and offering online or offline consultation on any matters is an important
part of the informational support of clients and partners. Timely and
quality support not only pleases and allocates clients and partners, but
also is an essential component of the modern companys corporate
culture.
As the part of the information feature of the retailor website, the practice
of placing current job offers is very common nowadays. Listing actual
vacancies with the detailed job requirements on the official website
significantly increases the chances of acquiring a qualified candidate
fitting a position.

8.4 Investments and return

Creation of the website is the investment, and as a business instrument, a
website should bring returns, inform clients and advertise products or
services. If the website is not bringing profit, it is not working and the

49
money spent on creation, filling with the content and promotion are spent
meaningless.
Returns from the website can be perceived either as a profit or as an
economy, in any way it is participating in the overall performance of the
company. It is useful to keep track on the returns from the commercial
website to adequately estimate the effort put in the website. A formula of
Return on Investment (ROI) can be used for the estimation of website
returns.
Gain
(investment Cost of investment )
ROI=
Cost of investment
Where return from investment is consisting from the determined amount
of direct sales from the website, potential brought by the new partnership
or future contribution of perspective employee. And cost of investment
includes amount of money spent on the development and launch of the
website and its promotion. It is important to remember that a website is
bearing monthly technical maintenance and update and promotion costs.
It is obvious that the website is bringing profit when the monthly income
from it is higher than the cost of maintenance, the difference can be called
website net income. This ratio should be very carefully considered,
taking into consideration that costs of promotion and updating are
bringing new visitors, thus, potential clients. Therefore, it is necessary to
balance between optimal amount of investments and optimal amount of
visitors.

Conclusion
Based on the previous chapters where analysis of visitors attitude towards
the international retailors websites and analysis of the blog, as the major
force forming opinion in the Internet were investigates, a list of
recommendations for the companies expanding online was created.
Recommendations include a practical guide for enhancing design and
usability

of

the

website,

managing

sales

and

delivery,

providing

50
information for partners and visitors, branding and calculating return on
investments.

Conclusion
Introduction of the Internet has changed the way people communicate and
conduct business due to globalization. Modern companies understand the
advantages brought by online market and are willing to expand online.
Creation of online representation or website has become an ordinary
practice, and the amount of the websites is increasing every minute. It
raises the question of marketing on the Internet, its strategies and
methods of implementation.
In the thesis, website had been investigated as the core tool of online
marketing, as a customer oriented platform used for providing no-pressure
sales environment and a thoughtful choice making process. To determine
the return from the website, be it increase in visitors, brand strengthening
or direct sales boost, a website should undergo a thorough assessment,
methods of which were also previously discussed in the thesis.
Nevertheless, the primary objective was to analyze the Internet marketing
strategies of international retailor companies and to investigate modern
trends of Internet marketing, which was impossible to perform due to the
limitations of studies. The risk of international retailor companies
unwillingness of revealing the information about their performance online
actually became true. This allowed only partial fulfillment of the primary
thesis objective, as the analysis of Internet marketing strategies of
international retailor companies was substituted by the analysis of users
perception of the website as the core item of the marketing strategy.
Secondary objective, that was to develop a comprehensive list of
recommendations for the companies expanding online, was fulfilled with
design and usability, sales and delivery, information and branding and
return on investments comprehensive suggestions.

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List of figures
Figure 1: "Core marketing concepts"- 4 Figure 2: "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs".................................................- 5 Figure 3: "Process: Online Branding Site"..............................................- 17 Figure 4: "Global market share held by leading PC vendors".................- 26 Figure 5: "May visiting retailor' website influence your purchase decision?" 30 Figure 6: "Does your perception of the website correspond to your
perception of the brand?"......................................................................- 31 Figure 7: "Comparison of the websites' characteristics"........................- 32 Figure 8:"Living in Brno"........................................................................- 37 Figure 9: "Visitors per month"................................................................- 38 Figure 10: "Average visitors per day"....................................................- 39 Figure 11: "Location map".....................................................................- 39 Figure 12: "Location share"....................................................................- 40 Figure 13: "Brno Now"............................................................................- 41 Figure 14: "Czechmate Diary"................................................................- 41 -

List of tables
Table 1: Creating strategies out of the marketing mix...........................- 15 Table 2: "Sample profile".......................................................................- 29 Table 3: "Gantt chart"............................................................................- 44 -

Topic related vocabulary

Sitemap ......................... is a list of the pages on the website. It is a way to
tell Google (or any other search engine) about the
content of your website it may otherwise not
discover1.
ROI

A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an

investment or to compare the efficiency of a
number of different investments2.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?

hl=en&answer=156184&from=40318&rd=1
2 http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/returnoninvestment.asp

Appendix
Questions to measure the satisfaction with the websites1:
Respondents were asked to visit websites one-at-a-time and choose the
most appropriate, according to their own opinion, adjective to
characterize the website. There were 24 adjectives listed, more than
one were available to be chosen. List of the adjectives was shuffled for
every question to avoid clicking through responses. The list was as
follows:
High-quality, business-like, messy, distracting, convenient, accessible,
slow, consistent, trustworthy, time-saving, useless, comprehensible,
organized, appealing, clean, clear, time-consuming, simple, frustrating,
advanced, ordinary, effective and user-friendly.
The questions asked were as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

What
What
What
What
What
What
What
What
Does

do you think about Acer website? http://us.acer.com/

do you think about Apple website? http://www.apple.com/
do you think about Asus website? http://www.asus.com/
do you think about Dell website? http://www.dell.com/
do you think about HP website? http://www.hp.com/
do you think about Lenovo website? http://lenovo.com/
do you think about Sony website? http://www.sony.com/
do you think about Toshiba website? http://www.toshiba.com/
your perception of the website correspond to your perception

of the brand? (rating scale from 1 to 5)

10.
May visiting retailors website

influence

your

purchase

decision? (rating scale from 1 to 5)

The

original

used

questionnaire

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HHHWLV5

can

be

found

here: