Localisation
A further aspect of customer-centricity for web site design is the decision whether to
include specific content for particular countries. This is referred to as ‘localisation’. A site
may need to support customers from a range of countries with:
different product needs;
language differences;
cultural differences.Localisation will address all these issues. It may be that products will be similar in dif-
ferent countries and localisation will simply involve converting the web site to suit
another country. However, in order to be effective, this often needs more than transla-
tion, since different promotion concepts may be needed for different countries.Reviewing competitors’ web sites
Benchmarking of competitors’ web sites is vital in positioning your web site to compete
effectively with competitors that already have web sites. Given the importance of this
activity, criteria for performing benchmarking have been described in Chapters 2 and 4.
Benchmarking should not only be based on the obvious tangible features of a web site
such as its ease of use and the impact of its design. Benchmarking criteria should include
those that define the companies’ marketing performance in the industry and those that
are specific to web marketing as follows:
Financial performance(available from About Us, investor relations and electronic copies
of company reports) – this information is also available from intermediary sites such as
finance information or share dealing sites such as Interactive Trader International
(www.iii.com) or Bloomberg (www.bloomberg.com) for major quoted companies.
Marketplace performance– market share and sales trends and, significantly, the propor-
tion of sales achieved through the Internet. This may not be available directly on the
web site, but may need the use of other online sources. For example, new entrant to
European aviation easyJet (www.easyjet.com) achieved over two-thirds of its sales via
the web site and competitors needed to respond to this.
Business and revenue models (see Chapter 6)– do these differ from other marketplace
players?
Marketing communications techniques– is the customer value proposition of the site
clear? Does the site support all stages of the buying decision from customers who are
unfamiliar with the company through to existing customers? Are special promotions
used on a monthly or periodic basis? Beyond the competitor’s site, how do they make
use of intermediary sites to promote and deliver their services?
Services offered– what is offered beyond brochureware? Is online purchase possible? What
is the level of online customer support and how much technical information is available?
Implementation of services– these are the practical features of site design that are
described in this chapter, such as aesthetics, ease of use, personalisation, navigation,
availability and speed.
A review of corporate web sites suggests that, for most companies, the type of infor-
mation that can be included on a web site will be fairly similar. Many commentators
such as Sterne (2001) make the point that some sites miss out the basic information that
someone who is unfamiliar with a company may want to know, such as:RESEARCHING SITE USERS’ REQUIREMENTSLocalisation
Tailoring of web site
information for
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