Web Promotion

Web sites are freely accessible and many people visit sites just to see what they are about. So the sheer number of visitors to a web site is not always a good measure of its success. To promote a web site effectively, its aims and intended audience should be clearly defined. The site is successful only when it is visited and revisited by large numbers of this audience.

Techniques involving cookies (signatures from web sites stored on the users' computers and checked for each time they revisit) allow patterns of visits to be recorded in a database and studied. These techniques also allow the pages to be customised to the users preferences.

There is no easy way to attract attention on the web. Until early 1996 sites that featured the latest browser technologies such as Java and VRML were considered cool, but not anymore. Novelty of content was another attraction, but the web is now so big that most novel ideas would hardly get noticed without promotion.

A new site should be registered with as many web directories as possible. If a site falls within the interests of a popular Usenet newsgroup, it can be announced there. Similarly, announcements on subscribed mailing lists are a possibility. As in the early days of the web, hyperlinks on other web sites are still a good way of attracting attention. This has gradually developed into paid, targeted banner ads or icons on other sites.

[text written in early 1997 with minor changes since]

As the web grows larger and larger it is becoming more difficult to attract users to a new site. The irony is most users are keen to visit interesting new sites but the necessary search is too time-consuming. Web search engines and directories attempt to bridge the gap but with limited success. Search engines work on words, rather than concepts, so a search will likely produce hundreds of unwanted results. Directories have other limitations. Only predictable things fit in obvious categories. As the number of categories in web directories rise to cover the diversity of the web, they become cumbersome and less accessible. Concept search is the next step forward but it seems a long way ahead.