Newsletter for July 1999
**** The 4specs Perspective
Your stats: As part of our monitoring system, we track the number of referrals (click-throughs) made to your website under our listing programs. Many advertising professionals agree that the value of a referral for a specified construction product is probably between $1 and $5 each. Inexpensive advertising on 4specs.com will generally double or triple the number of click throughs to your website. This statistic lets us show the value delivered for free or for your advertising money.
Our stats: The statistic we track most closely is the number of referrals made to the websites listed in the 4specs.com directory. Ask us for our current statistics for your company.
Here's our perspective:
1. Architects and specifiers are very busy. When they are on the Internet during work hours, they are looking for product design information they can incorporate into their project and continue their work.
2. Product Data Sheets - be they held by Sweets, CMD, Construction Zone or another publisher - will generally not be sufficient for an architect or specifier to make product decisions and incorporate the materials into their design.
3. All of your product data and design info should be on your website. Consider all the ideas out there and incorporate the best features into your website design.
4. Architects and specifiers are frustrated by slow websites, incomplete websites and sites that are difficult to navigate. That is why we developed the WebFormat proposal. Use these ideas to further develop your website.
5. Architects and specifiers want fast access to your data. Consider developing a special page for commercial directories to use when sending their referrals to your website.
6. 4specs.com is dedicated to delivering qualified visitors to manufacturers' websites. We measure success for an advertiser by delivering visitors to their website for a low cost per click-through.
Where do your visitors come from: We talked with many of our advertisers at the CSI show in Los Angeles in June, 1999. I enjoyed talking with many of the people where before we only had a voice to connect with. The single most important insight was that few marketing people know how their website visitors had located their Internet address. How do you know where your website visitors come from?
Without knowing how the visitor came, you have no way to compare and evaluate the effectiveness of advertising in construction publications.You can run programs to analyze your server logs. Your web consultant can help you set these us. Easier for an individual is to subscribe to an outside service. We have looked over two information providers - SuperStats and Hitbox.
They will provide this missing information. You put 10 lines of their javascript at the bottom of your home page and other pages your want to track. (01/02 - these prices have been raised again. Go check for current pricing) (11/2006 - also look into Google Analytics)
These programs will tell you:
1. the number of unique daily visitors (as measured by cookies)
2. number of page impressions and most importantly,
3. the location where your visitor clicked to visit your page or if they typed in your Internet URL.[Links deleted as companies have changed.]
Link back to us: We would appreciate a link from your website back to us so that more architects and specifiers will use 4specs.com as their primary Internet Directory for product information.
What do architects and specifiers want: We propose that they are looking for complete design and specification data from your website. We propose that users will chose to use the directory with the most complete listings and hot-links to manufacturers. Please contact me if you have any questions. When you are ready to advertise with us, let us know and we can get the ad up in a day or so.