There is one point that hasn't come up in the messages I've read.
That is the problem of making the site and pages serve the purposes of
different groups of readers. This is the core of marketing (as opposed to
sales) - delivering what your intended readers want, and in a way that:
a) attracts them to have a look, against the competing interests of the
rest of the WWW
b) is easy enough to read and navigate that they aren't put off, but stay
around a while, and
c) is useful or entertaining enough they come back again.
It is worth having a good look at the papers published by Project 2000 at
Vanderbilt University, where they base their work on Internet marketing on
the idea of relationship marketing. You want readers to build up personal,
long-term, relationships with your institution through the WWW, e-mail and
other contacts (cf. Action Aid's sponsor a child in Africa programme, and
the personal letters sponsors exchange with children in the village they
are helping).
Since universities are diverse, there are many readerships whose needs we
are trying to meet. The overarching problem is:
How do we best serve all these different readers?
Everything else mentioned so far is merely a means to that end.
----------------------
Dr. D. R. Newman, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's School of Management,
BELFAST BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland (UK). http://www.qub.ac.uk/mgt/
FAX: +44-1232-249881 Tel. +44-1232-335011 mailto:[log in to unmask]
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