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Sensor’s Ads on Specialized Web Portal - Best Way for Visitor’s and Advertiser’s Satisfaction

In this article we would like share the three years experience of existence of popular information Web resource www.sensorsportal.com, with high rate of visitors number growth from 107 countries world-wide.

The basic objective of this unique Internet resource is creation the user-friendly specialized web portal for developers, manufacturers and consumers of sensors production with the aim to grant visitors by more extensive sensor-related information (sensors, actuators, MEMS, DAQ, measuring systems, accessory, etc.) and communicate buyers with manufacturers. We always supply users by freshen information about last science and technologies achievements in this area. Today, the portal itself has been become some kind of the big achievement among specialized Internet resources.

Our personal experience of dialogues with representatives of different companies at SENSOR' 2001 in Nuremberg, Germany and ISA' 2002 in Toronto, Canada exhibitions has been shown, that an apprehension of many marketing managers till now remains at a level of epoch of Internet nascence and followed then by a disappointment due to crash of many dot-com projects and marketing plans. It has induced us in more detailed lighting of marketing aspects in today's Internet.
Most parts of article will be certainly useful for marketing staff of manufacturers though, we think, consumers also will find a lot of interesting for themselves. Because of the connection with business and commercial activity (in reasonable limits) gives us a unique opportunity to give the visitor a free access to the information.

So, let us at first to give a look, as today's net-surfer feels itself in the information ocean.

Best Way to Search the Web

Today’s Internet space is so enormous, that the search of the particular information gradually turns to the rather labour-consuming task. The number of Web sites with any possible information grows in geometrical progression from year to year. To realize the search is more difficultly and it is needs to spend a lot of time to obtain the necessary result. Therefore large network resources organized like search engines and directories - guide to the Internet covering everything for everyone - resources, such as Yahoo!, AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, AOL, MSN, HotBot, Metacrawler, Netscape and many others have gained huge popularity. Such search engines, for example Google, has managed to index more than one billion Web pages. Despite the best efforts of search engine designers, Internet searches still remains time-consuming. The huge number of links supplied for each query, requires user to make their way tediously through a haystack of listings before they find their “needle”. And there are a lot of search engines. So many that there is even a special Web site www.searchenginewatch.com, which provides a search engine to find search engines. From 1995 up to now a lot of so-called Internet - portals has appeared in the Net. However information contents is growing up fast and to be oriented in Internet - portals becomes more difficultly. Furthermore, a man, as rule, comes in Internet to obtain the information from the certain specific area. It promotes the appearance of Internet resources with precisely oriented subjects. The way to obtain good search results is similar to find the proper azimuth on starry sky. It varies for each category. To support such complicated visitor’s demands, it is necessary that the information be organized from a point of view specific to the category. This is a major weakness of conventional (horizontal) portals that have structured their services around all-purpose search technologies and for very broad technical oriented portals devoted, for example, to so large areas like ‘engineering’, ‘manufacturing’, ‘testing’ or ‘electronics’, trying to be all things to all people. Database-search engines for different kind of industry products, suppliers and manufacturers have the same weakness. Therefore, the following stage of Internet has been developed. It is so called specialized (vertical) Web portals appear in the Net. Today, the key to survival is differentiation through narrowing the target audience and creating distinctive portals to serve that audience.

All this is true for sensors related area. Popular search engines give a huge number of web results for this kind of information (Table 1).

Table 1. Web Results for Sensors Related Request

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Search Engines! Number of Web Results

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Google ! 1 890 000

Netscape ! 2 620 002

Lycos ! 4 080 130

AltaVista ! 4 462 749

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Today practically all sensor manufactures have own web sites and presence in Internet. But developing and hosting in the Net your own Website alone – it is the same, like live in open ocean at a yacht without a skipper, navigation devices and communications with shore patrol. In order to be found among millions similar Internet resources it need a lot of efforts and money for promotion, sometimes much more, than the product itself. Without good rankings in the top 30 positions on the major search engines for key words and phrases related to your products and services, you are missing the bulk of your potential clients. That is because most people will hardly look beyond the first 30 links returned after they run a search on the engines. If your web site is not in the top 30 positions up to 80 % of your potential client base will not know about your Internet presence. Let me tell you a real life example. After SENSOR’ 2001 exhibition in Nuremberg (Germany), some best products have been described in Sensors & Transducers e-Digest, No.5, May 2001 on Sensors Web Portal. All companies mentioned in this review had web sites. Nevertheless we have received requests from customers to give them URLs and e-mail address some of suppliers, because of visitors are not able to find it in Internet even have the company name!

However, specialized sensors related vertical web portals can change this situation drastically. Why ? Let me explain this step by step. First of all, such Internet resources are already well promoted, known and popular due to the presence in Internet during years. Usually such portals have high position in rating of most popular search engines and Internet directories, there are hundreds links to these resources form other popular Internet resources, for example, online suppliers databases like Thomasregister.com, MotionNet open Internet directories, top result directories, reliable Internet sources catalogues, virtual libraries, etc. Secondly, it is frequently up-dated, giving to the customer new technical, business and commercial information for free, without any preliminary registration. Thirdly, it gives a lot of possibilities for products and web sites promotion. It is specialized in sensors related areas and fine-tunes information, services and product offerings to serve targeted audience better.

What does it mean a good (or best!) sensors web portal ? It is well-organized web resource offering big technical content. It should have easy navigation both for technical information (due to a big number of targeted sensors sections) and sensors ordering (e-commerce) as well as an active management and continuing relationship with visitors, including consulting service.

Of course, all these are qualitative performances, but fortunately, there is a quantitative criterion. It is so called High Quality Rating Score (QRS). It can be checked by LinkBot software. If for example, a web portal is placed in the 98th percentile, it means there are 98% percentages of web sites in Internet with a quality rating lower than this one. The quality rating needs additional explanations. First of all, it is the accordance to the 3W consortium requirements. Speaking from visitor’s point of view it means well-optimized graphics, the absence of dead links (broken external and internal URLs), broken pages, deep or slow pages, missing titles and attributes, etc. We have tested a lot of sensors related web sites in Internet, including some very big resources. The results were 27 ¸ 86 percentile for web sites and not more than 35 ¸ 55 percentile for big sensors related Internet resources. There is only one specialized vertical Internet web portal – Sensors Web Portal (www.sensorsportal.com) - that has biggest QRS = 98 percentile. If for a little web site it is possible to achieve a big QRS without many efforts, but keep the high QRS for web portal, containing thousands external and internal links and pages needs a lot of efforts, time and money. And we are proud be able to provide and keep our portal's QRS = 98 percentile during all time in the Net !

B2B e-commerce and Online Ads

Specialized vertical Internet web portal is not only the best way to start sensors related web content search, but it should be a good marketplace for sensors B2B e-commerce. What was the first best product for B2C ? It was a book Do you know Amazon history ? What is the best product for B2B ? It is a sensor, of course. Today sensors are everywhere: from customer electronics and smart houses up to automobiles and space shuttles. Therefore, the B2B e-commerce is a best way to buy and sell sensors. Due to sensors web portal it will be possible to compare prices and technical performances for sensors from different manufacturers and suppliers in the same place and make a good purchase saving customers’ time and money. It is the best place to make a strategic alliance between manufacturers and customers, 70 % from which are from industry and 30 % - from academy.

Speaking about on-line ads it is necessary to take into account that ads on specialized vertical Web Portal have resulted in an average clickthrough rate 7-9 times higher than for banners on common purpose search engines. So, 500 000 ads exposures on a common-purpose search engine generate 10 buys, 1000 exposures on the specialized vertical web portal generates 70 buys.

If marketing campaign's aim is not only to attraction of visitors to the Web site, but also successful promotion of products or services, sales increasing, market expansion and creation of positive image, it is strongly necessary to take into account the branding. For branding, exposures and wide coverage of an audience it is much more important than clicks. Each advertising exposures on the specialized web portal brings to the advertiser appreciable benefit, being by the good branding tools. So, after one ads demonstration the brand awareness is increased by 7 % in average, and customer loyalty - by 4 %. Each banner exposure in the appropriate context of specialized web portal creates strong connection between the brand and the appropriate group of goods and promotes the given brand on a scale of ranks.

Marketing researches have shown, that a banner works even without any click on it. The click means only momentary interest of visitor. The basic idea reflected in the on-line ads in any case is remembered by the visitor. Due to the Internet specificity, the efficiency of advertising here is higher: about 30 % visitors remember on-line ads after one week.

Proceeding from the above-stated, it is possible to give the following conclusion. The most effective model of pricing for advertising on the specialized web portals consists in payment for the calendar period (depends on updating content frequency), instead of clicks or exposures as the last one does not reflect the true feedback from advertising. You see, the result of advertising campaign is neither abstract clicks and exposures, and even, no the number of casual visitors, but the concrete result - the constant audience (site reach) growth, which can be provided only by specialized web portals.

The Nearest Future

What do key world analytics think about today's situation in Internet? First, despite of so-called crisis of virtual economy, the number of Internet users has been increased. The number of users of traditional mass - media, is remained at the same level in the best case. So, according to the research given by eMarketer, the audience of Internet were 445.9 million persons in 2001. In 2004, the number of Internet users will be increased up to 709.1 million persons.

World expenditures for e-commerce have grown on 68 % in 2001 in comparison with 2000 and have made $600 billion, informs IDC. It is supposed, that it will exceed a mark in $1 trillion in 2002.

In 2002, the market of on-line advertising will be restored after the recession and will make $ 8.1 billion, consider analytics from eMarketer. So, according to Nielsen NetRatings, the size of on-line advertising has been grown on 33 % in the period since January until April 2002. In opinion of analysts, it testifies about finish of on-line advertising crisis. The list of the largest Internet-advertisers have headed by Columbia House, Nestle USA, USA Networks, Microsoft, and also the Federal government of USA. It has dispelled a myth that the on-line advertising is expedient only for small, unknown companies at start-up stage.
The attitude of Internet users to on-line advertising for today are the following: 18 % - strongly support; 41 % - approve; 34 % - do not object; 6 % - against; 1 % - extremely not support.

Certainly, we realize that the Internet advertising, as well as all new in this world should pass the way of development, overcoming rises and falls. Every day, our team build up the efficiency and popularity of described Internet - resource among the broad audience of users and visitor. We hope, that given article will help much to reconsider out-of-date concepts and to look by the new fashion at huge opportunities of Internet world.

Taking into account all mentioned above the usage of specialized vertical web portal will save your time and multiply the money, not waste it. King alive, not dead !

Igor L. Myshkin,

SWP General Manager

E-mail: igor.myshkin@3web.net

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