Expand Your Web Site By Using a Content Management System

Craig McGuire of PR Week recently wrote an article titled “Expanding Web sites helps readership.” McGuire found that updating Web sites to offer easier and effective tools brings in a broader audience and I couldn’t agree more.

McGuire used FedEx’s Online Newsroom as an example of how an organization can take regular press release, news and company background content and turn it into an interactive, Web 2.0 hub for all Web site users from the press to shareholders. FedEx used a permission-based content management system to apply such effective and descriptive tools as videos, images, social bookmarking, multimedia flash video and many more. FedEx went from having 4,500 unique visitors per month to 65,000 per month.

The Furia Rubel site is also built on a content management system foundation and we completely stand by McGuire’s analysis. Your company’s Web site is your store front or as quoted in this article, “one centralized, 24-hour official company online newsroom.” You want your store front to look good and feel clean, offer the most recent and desired goods and entice customers to keep coming back. McGuire lists some key Web site guidelines that may help you expand your Web site.

Do
- Track audience interest and allow feedback
- Lean toward simple, clean navigation
- Offer a means to subscribe to news

Don’t
- Follow the herd
- Produce a variety of Web sites
- Let your content grow stale – timely content is vital

Yellow Book Scores Big on Web Ranking Reports

comScore Media Metrix recently released its monthly analysis of U.S. consumer activity at the top online properties for March 2008. The analysis named Yellow Book Network as the top-gaining site position for the month with a 54% gain to 13.5 million visitors. Again, stating that Yellow Book is strong and substantial company growing in leaps and bounds. See the complete comScore Media Metrix analysis below.

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comScore Media Metrix Releases Top 50 Web Rankings for March

(Yellow Book Network and MLB.com Lead Top-Gaining Properties)

RESTON, VA (April 14, 2008) – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly analysis of U.S. consumer activity at the top online properties for March 2008 based on data from the comScore Media Metrix service. March saw traffic increase to online radio, gambling and retail-health care sites.

“American sports factored in prominently for the top gaining categories and properties in March,” said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. “The NCAA tournament drove substantial traffic to online gambling sites during the month, while the start of spring training made MLB.com one of the top gaining properties. Both events also contributed to ESPN.com’s surge in the top properties rankings.”

Top-Gaining Sites for March: Yellow Book Network secured the top-gaining site position for the month, with a 54-percent gain to 13.5 million visitors due, at least in part, to a new partnership with addresses.com. Baseball spring training and fantasy team drafts prompted a flood of earnest fans to MLB.com, which jumped 50 percent to 9.8 million visitors. Bankrate.com Sites witnessed a 46-percent increase to 5 million visitors with the addition of the InsureMe.com entity in March.

Radio Sites See Surge in Visitation: Radio sites experienced a sharp increase in traffic in March with the category growing 27 percent to 61.8 million visitors, making it the top-gaining category for the month. AOL Music led the category with 21.9 million visitors (up 5 percent), following by Yahoo! Music with nearly 20.8 million visitors (up 4 percent) and Clear Channel Online with 11 million visitors (up 2 percent). Other significant increases were experienced by Pandora.com (up 9 percent), Citadel Broadcasting Corporation (up 11 percent), and Disney Music (up 17 percent).

Online Gambling Traffic Propelled by March Madness: The NCAA basketball tournament, also known as “March Madness,” attracted a flurry of online bettors, prompting a 14-percent gain to the online gambling category. Sportingbet PLC increased 35 percent to 975,000 visitors, UPICKEM.net jumped 174 percent to 396,000 visitors and SportsBetting.com rose 114 percent to 145,000 visitors.

Walgreen Co. Leads Retail – Health Care Category: Retail – Health Care sites experienced a 12-percent increase in March to 26.3 million visitors, as Walgreen Co. led the category with 5.4 million visitors (up 10 percent). Drugstore.com, Inc. captured the second position with 3.7 million visitors, followed by CVS with nearly 3 million visitors.

Top 50 Properties: The top 10 properties maintained their positions from February with Yahoo! Sites continuing to lead as the top property with 139.5 million visitors, followed by Google Sites with 137.5 million visitors and Microsoft Sites with 121 million visitors. ESPN jumped 12 spots on the popularity of March Madness and anticipation of the 2008 Major League Baseball season. Gains were also experienced by AT&T (up 8 spots to #18 with 31.3 million visitors), Target Corporation (up 5 spots to #20 with nearly 30 million visitors), and CBS Corporation (up 6 spots to #24 with 28.6 million visitors).

Top 50 Ad Focus Ranking: The top 10 Ad Focus properties also maintained their February rankings with Platform-A, the ad network combining Advertising.com, Tacoda, AOL, and Quigo, leading the ranking in March, reaching 91 percent of Americans online. interCLICK gained 9 spots in the ranking to position 14, reaching 58 percent of the 188 million Americans online. Real Cities Network and YuMe Video Network both entered this month’s rankings in positions 38 and 43, respectively.

About comScore Media Metrix: comScore Media Metrix provides industry-leading Internet audience measurement services that report details of online media usage, visitor demographics and online buying power for the home, work and university audiences across local U.S. markets and across the globe. comScore Media Metrix reports are used by financial analysts, advertising agencies, publishers and marketers. comScore Media Metrix syndicated ratings are based on industry-sanctioned sampling methodologies.

About comScore: comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/boilerplate.

Forbes Top 25 Web Celebs...

Forbes compiled this year’s list by looking at a “Web Celeb” as a person famous primarily for creating or appearing in Internet-based content, and for being highly recognizable to a Web-based audience. From the candidate list of 200 Web celebrities each candidate was ranked in five areas:1. Web references as calculated by Google 2. traffic ranking of their home page as calculated by Alexa3. Technorati rank of their primary Web site or blog4. TV/radio mentions and press clips compiled from Factiva5. bonus points if ‘Web Celeb’ regularly published their own videoblog or podcast. For the full list, go to
http://www.boxofficepsychics.com/?p=864

IT Investments: Measuring Your Businesses ROI

I came across a live roundtable webcast, Get Better Results from Your IT Investments, featuring speakers Rob Whitley, Sr. Analyst for Forrester Research and Matt Gowarty, Sr. Product Manager with Fluke Networks along with moderator Sandra Gittlen, Technology Editor from NetworkWorld.

The panel offers some interesting information:

In a 2007 survey done by Forrester Research, Inc., it seems IT objectives are coinciding with those of the business world. Instead of focusing solely on security, IT trends show companies focusing on improving disaster recovery, consolidating multiple programs and upgrading applications to keep up with the changing business demands; all aspects that prove to provide headaches for many business leaders.

Measuring your ROI for your IT needs may not be as hard as you think.

According to the panelists, there are 3 aspects in which to keep an eye out for:

Optimization – Update your site regularly to ensure consistent web traffic
Control – Know your security applications and how to manage them
Visibility: Measure and monitor your activity to see the results you yield

To find out more information on what value can IT investments can bring to your organization, how to increase increase productivity among co-workers and associates, benefits of consolidating multiple IT applications and providing necessary IT security for your business, Register Here to see a free presentation.

Online Contest a Slam Dunk for Website Traffic

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) partnered with 5W Public Relations in New York to generate traffic to their newly redesigned website. The team devised a web based contest that I thought was absolutely brilliant and fun – check it out!

The web based contest, PetStyle Contest, invited animal lovers to upload their favorite picture of their pets. Piggy backing off of American Idol’s voting tactics, registered users were allowed to vote for their favorite picture. The top 10 pictures won various prizes.

This fun and innovative contest yielded great results for the SPCA:

Coverage by industry reporters on local and regional beats, publications and blogs
Viral penetration by “send a friend email option” which was utilized 9,500 times
Generated traffic – 1.5 million pageviews (doubling previous total)
Created new brand loyalty – 700 people offered to volunteer for SPCA
Active participation in event – 3,650 photos submitted and 12,500 voters

The next time you are thinking of a creative way to drive more traffic to your website and satisfy your customers – remember the SPCA’s creative efforts. It’s not only beneficial to you but also to your audience.

For more information check out http://www.spca.org/