Sept. 11 helped travel Web site Expedia.com, thanks to on-the-spot attention to common sense marketing. Smart use can harness
Web’s marketing abilityBy Tim Ruel
truel@starbulletin.comFollowing the attacks, Expedia removed its Web site's online booking section and replaced it with information that allowed people to see which flights were running and to check their reservations. Since customers couldn't get to the airlines by phone, they turned to the Web, said Gene Harden, director of packages business at Expedia.com.
"It really made a boon for us this last year, and turned the corner for what we were doing," Harden said.
Disney Online removed its Web-based promotions and put up links to the Red Cross, said Ken Goldstein, an Iolani graduate who is the Disney unit's executive vice president and managing director.
Harden and Goldstein spoke yesterday at a panel discussion on "The Power and Potential of the Internet," at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. The panel was part of a program of the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau's day-long Visitor Industry Symposium.
The panel highlighted other examples of using the Internet's marketing power.
The challenge of a Web site is the permanence of its appearance, as compared to traditional media, where spots and ads can run for a week, then disappear, said David Liu, chairman and chief executive of New York-based wedding-planning company Knot Inc. There's a danger if a company poses the wrong image on the Web. Customizing a Web site to fit different audiences is critical.
His company's Web site, TheKnot.com, is customized to target nontraditional types of weddings, including same-sex, interracial and interdenominational unions, as well as weddings for couples who are on the second marriage. Traditional wedding magazines don't feature those market segments, even though the segments are large and growing, Liu said. TheKnot.com now enrolls 3,000 to 4,000 members a day. A publicly traded company, its net loss shrunk to $1.1 million in the second quarter from a $4.2 million loss last year.
So how does a Web company deal with the 16 types of personalities, as identified by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator?
That's where so-called "usability" comes in, said Harden. Expedia picks different people to sit in a room and surf its Web site, under surveillance. Their reactions are used to tailor the Web site to as wide a variety of customer as possible. For those customers who are dead set against using the site to book travel, the company provides a telephone number on the site.
One study shows that the Net is making progress, potentially at the loss of television. Internet users watch 4.5 hours less television each week than non-users, according to a 2001 Internet report from the University of California Los Angeles.
Other panelists yesterday included Paul Nelson, vice president of partner marketing for Travelocity; and Mariko Fujiwara, research director for a division of Hakuhodo Inc., Japan's second-largest advertising agency.