The Impact of Technology

Chapter 20

Just as every aspect of the marketing function lends itself to measuring, evaluating, and subsequent control the same must hold true for an organizations investments in the WWW and its associated technologies. Initial attempts at Web site evaluations examined the number of hits at a Web page. Marketers quickly realized that this was not very meaningful and the equivalent of somebody picking up company literature at a trade show. This measurement rarely translated into meaningful data and is analogous to anonymous individuals entering a store. Recognizing this shortcoming, marketers have begun developing sites that are interactive and attempt to identify individual visitors. This identification on logging in facilitates the tracking of a prospects path, measures their stay, and may even allow an interactive dialogue along the way. The Trans World Airline sit at (http://www.twa.com/) is a good example of a marketer attempting to follow this strategy. This area has attracted enormous attention and the many up-start technology companies are in the process of creating quantitative evaluative software for the Web.

Other evaluative measures of the value of an organizations commitment to Web may be assessed by measuring: number of leads generated via the Web, revenues generated through Web based sales, reduced communication expenses, and the reduction in the sales cycle. Some other benefits that may not be so visible but need assessment are the nature of feedback received, along with other intangibles such as enhanced employee morale, customer satisfaction, and enhanced competitive position.