Strategy...

Metis Internet Partners is dedicated to making strategic internet investments that will return long term value to business and web users.

Our online strategies focus on seeking and creating online opportunities and advising our clients on how to structure, market, brand and develop their online ventures. We provide consultancy advice to our clients, create our own projects in-house and develop joint venture projects with our partners.

Strategy is a continuous, decision-based process. We work with each of our clients on a long term basis and rigourously evaluate the financial, communication and marketing performance of their websites. We see this continuous process as essential to delivering our clients an outstanding service and ensuring that their online venture is best positioned to outperform their competitors. By establishing long term relationships we are able to communicate more effectively, provide more meaningful information and achieve greater success with our clients.

We help businesses bring new ways of thinking to their online ventures. The benefits of our strategies include:

Outstanding strategic insights derived from knowing and understanding our clients needs and their values
A focus on certain markets and deriving competitive advantage in these markets
Dynamic response to changes in the online environment with an strong focus towards long-term success

Understanding Your Web Purpose

Business Objectives to Online Goals

Every online venture must start with a clear purpose and long-term dedication to that purpose. In today's virtual world, simply having a web presence is not enough.

Metis Internet Partners starts every project with a well-defined and considered Web Strategy and Specification Document. As part of this exercise, we work with clients to align their business or project objectives to the right online goals. The mapping of business objectives to online goals is essential to ensure that your website adds and returns value to your core business. These online goals define your website purpose and form the basis of development, online activities and performance evaluation.

This document is a tool to

Define the strategic aims and purpose of the online venture
Ensure that your online activities align and assist with your online goals and business aims
Enable you to measure the impact of these online activities to your business performance
Provide short, medium and long term plans for your website as an online communications tool and extension of your business
Formalise the visual, logical and functional specifications required to achieve the purpose of the website
Formalise the web development scope of the project

This process is essential to any organisation whether it be an online start-up or a traditional business wanting to extend online.

Web Basics

Initial Questions to Consider

Whether developing or redeveloping an online venture, some key questions to begin with include

What is the nature of your business? (Vision, Objectives, Core Business, Structure)
Describe your current target markets / customer segments?
What is your current marketing strategy? (Brand, Product, Price, Place, Promotion)
Describe the target markets that you aim to attract online? Prioritise these in importance to the success of your business?
What is your business aim of having a website?
What functions are essential to the success of your website?
What key areas or categories of information (content) do you want to present on your website?
What is the ‘look and feel’ and visual concept of your website?
Who are your competitors? (offline and online)
Who are your stakeholders?
How do you foresee maintenance and the continuous operation of the website? (Cost, Time, Human resources)

Online Marketing

Marketing for the Web

How will I market my website online? This is one of the most important questions a website owner can ask. User friendly internet communication tools offer a great opportunity for online ventures to try different ways of reaching their customers. With the right mix of technology messages can be sent in as many forms to as many devices that you can connect to the internet.

Metis Internet Partners is excited about the ability of three-way conversations through these tools, allowing dynamic feedback and interaction with users.

An Internet Marketing Strategy is essential to the development of any online venture. Letting your website 'sit' in the virtual world without marketing activity is like building a shopfront that is never open for business. Metis Internet Partners investigates the following questions to develop the right mix of marketing activities for achieving online goals:

What is your Online Brand? (Product, Price, Promotion, Place)
Who is your Online Target Market?
What are the Information Needs of your Target Market?
What are the Key Online Factors for your target market?
What are your Online Business Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats?
What are your Online Sales and Marketing Objectives?
What is the current Industry Profile?
Who are your major Online Competitors?
How will you compete in your Online Industry?
How will your Internet Marketing Activities be Evaluated and Managed?

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Optimisation for the Web

Achieving the number one position in Google is a common demand by many clients. As most web firms will tell you, this can only be reached with a great deal of time, cost and human investment. It does not mean that you will get maximum return on your investment or achieve your online goals.

Metis Internet Partners believes the best Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) advances the online goals of a website by improving website visibility in search engines and directories to increase targeted traffic and customer leads. This means that when web users are looking for something that your website describes or offers, they can find you through search engines like google, msn or yahoo and that you get the users that you want browsing your site.

With a good web strategy and reasonable online goals in place, a website will be designed to encourage a user to perform one or many actions, whether it is buying a product, signing up for an account, joining a mailing list or simply reading some important information. This is referred to as a 'call to action.' For a typical e-commerce website, the basic search engine 'call to action' is as follows

Potential Customer queries top keywords in search engine
Potential customer ‘lands’ at website
Customer engages and enters e-store
Customer adds product(s) to shopping cart
Customer completes sales transaction

Developing and implementing a Search Engine Optimisation Strategy is critical to achieving the first step, enabling the target audience to find you and potentially completing a 'call to action'.

A common mistake occurs when websites try to optimise their sites for large numbers of highly specific industry keywords that indicate readiness to act or buy. Overly broad search optimisation can hinder marketing strategy by generating a large volume of low-quality enquiries that cost money to handle, yet result in little business and low return on investment.

Metis Internet Partners recommends that focusing on desirable traffic and attracting target markets will generate better quality sales leads, resulting in more sales. With strong online branding activities, search engine optimisation can be very effective when used as part of a smart niche marketing strategy.

Investing In Your Website

Getting the Resource Mix Right

Getting the right dedication of skilled human resources, cost and time are important parts of achieving a successful online venture over the long-term. A website will never run itself.

We believe in online ventures that have active marketing activities with businesses that are willing to dedicate long-term investment in skilled staff, finance and time to grow their website, try new ideas and attract and interact with target audiences.

Metis Internet Partners engages with each of our clients to find the appropriate balance of resources

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