The Internet is a phenomenon that every company in business has been forced to consider. The actions taken following that consideration vary from ignoring it, to putting up a web site just so you have one, to actually studying what the Internet is and what potential it offers your business. The problem we see with most web sites is that the company that produced it did not have a vision for what they were trying to accomplish. And in some cases, the company might have had a vision, but contracted with a service provider that neither understood that vision nor had any insight into the industry in which the company does business. And surprisingly, many so-called professional web site creation companies lack an understanding of the Internet as a medium of business communication, and too often have only a threshold level of talent for creating presentations for the medium. So what we are seeing is a hodge-podge of poorly designed, dreadfully executed web sites for RV industry companies that at best are electronic brochures and at worst, an embarrassment and a total waste of time and effort.

So let's take a look at the Internet and consider what it should or should not do, what it can and cannot do, and what role your company plays in the great world-wide stage that is the Internet.

Who is using the Internet?

The first element in creating any form of communication is knowing who the audience is. You are hearing and reading the same numbers we hear and read, and it's somewhere in the range of 30 to 40 million people who have Internet access. Undeniably, the demographics of the typical Internet user is younger than the RV industry's typical buyer and user. But that doesn't mean that those above 40 are not using the Internet, it simply means people under 40 make up the largest group.

What we have found is that people who have a specific interest or hobby naturally migrate to the web sites that provide information about that activity. Are there millions of people coming to RV web sites? No. But those that do, through their decision-making process, qualify themselves as potential buyers or users of RV industry products and services.

Are Hits the Gauge of Success or Failure of Your Web Site?

One of the real fallacies of the new age of the Internet is judging the success or failure of a web site in terms of hits. Invariably, when you hear someone bragging about the success of their web site, it is in terms of hits. "I got 40,000 hits in two days!" The more you learn about the Internet, the more you begin to understand that using hits to determine success is false criteria. For example, we could show you actual statistics that show "hits" on the same page during the same time frame ranging from 1,000 to 10,000. Unless you really understand what the "hit number" indicates it is easy to be mislead. Hits for example could count every graphic on the page as well as the page itself, or a hit could be how many times the page was downloaded. If a person went to the web site every day for a month, he would have recorded 30 hits all by himself. Or you could load a page and then click the reload button on your web browser over and over again and roll up the hits on the automatic web page counter.

So what we are going to have to do is come up with a uniform way to gauge activity. The criteria we like to use is "unique visitors." The more sophisticated server software packages can identify different users and when it calculates unique visitors it only counts that individual one time, no matter how often he or she may visit.

On the web site RV America On Line for example, 16,067 unique visitors came to RV America in January 1997, a 29 percent increase over the previous month. While we are happy with these figures, we don't gauge our success on that criteria. It's simply a tool. It tells us whether or not the methods we are using to promote the web site are working -- are people able to find RV America.

So as you start preparing a plan for your web site, use the right criteria to determine its success. If hits are your goal then you will be better served to put nasty pictures on your web site rather than RVs and use suggestive key words instead of words that would lead someone looking for RV information to your site -- adult oriented sites still do get the lion's share of hits. On the other hand, if your goal is to provide information about your product and service to a person looking for those kinds of products and services, then success would be when your web site is found by that person.

Library or Shopping Mall?

The roll of the Internet is still defining itself both by the needs of the people accessing it and those that provide the information. Today, it is probably more of a library than a shopping mall; however, we are seeing a trend toward it becoming more important as a tool for real commerce. But for the most part when people log onto the Inter-net, they are searching for information, and in many cases information that they can use to make buying decisions about a product or service.

When a person accesses the Internet, he or she more than likely is looking for some rather specific information. And when they access the Internet, unless they know precisely where they are going, they are going to be presented with literally millions of options. Where do they begin? Just like when they visit the library, they probably won't just start meandering up and down the aisles looking for the information they came to find, they'll go to the card catalog. On the Internet, the search engines and directories function much the same way as a card catalog does in a library. But after pulling the various indexes and narrowing their search they don't have to take the elevator to the sixth floor, go to the back row of shelves and look down to the third shelf, then sort through the numbers on the spines of books to find their target, they simply click a button with their mouse and instantly the information is displayed in their home on their computer terminal. That's part of the beauty of the Internet; it's simple to use, intuitive and offers immediate gratification -- if the information being sought is there.

At RV America if there is one continuing frustration that visitors have, and they tell us through e-mail, it is that RV manufacturers have been slow to realize the importance of the Internet. And therefore the majority of the information they are seeking is simply not available.

Planning Your Web Site

When you start planning your company's web site, you need to shove all the papers off your desk, clear your mind, and then tell yourself, "this is different from anything else I've done." It's not a brochure; it's not a print ad and it's not a television commercial. Preparing information for the web comes with it's own unique characteristics; it has strengths and weaknesses as far as a marketing medium is concerned. One of it's strengths is that your audience has specifically chosen to be there, so, for as long as you can keep him or Continued