Online merchants hold high hopes for garnering return through building Web traffic using a loyal, profitable customer base. Trial can only pay off when the entire positive business experience of purchasing from the website supports the promotional message, and a mix of methods dedicated to promoting loyalty, as well as to stimulating trial, is what will pay off for online businesses. Even now, with much improved online promotion methods and measurement, not all merchants take part in website promotion. Only one in four Web businesses have formal site promotional budgets, which explains differences observed in website growth and success. Websites that are most successful promote heavily to reach their target audiences and don't leave success to chance.
Profitable sites are more likely to promote than sites that have yet to turn a profit.
As traditional advertisers and marketers have recognized for years, the key to success is to clearly identify the promotional goal for the program and to address it in a way that is both efficient and suitable to the task at hand. Today's sophisticated marketers integrate online and offline promotional techniques for optimal promotional mix. It is the latest analysis from a five-year examination of online commerce across the entire spectrum of web businesses and is part of a report series highlighting the source of online revenues, profitability, patterns of growth and a range of issues that influence online business development.