Web geography and location
School geography teaches us about the location of historic cities:
- 'Lowest bridging point' [eg London]
- 'Crossroads' [eg Birmingham]
- 'Defensive site' [eg Edinburgh]
- 'Nearest port France' [eg Dover]
Property developers tell us that the first seven principles of property development are location, location, location, location, location, location and location. Small shops want locations where pedestrian flows are at their highest. Supermarkets want to be by busy roads.
Curiously, its the same on the web. A website requires a strategic position to succeed. Dotcoms won't succeed if customer's 'don't-come'. Intranet's need to attract users. Ezines won't attract advertisers if readers don't pass by. B2B marketplaces fail without strategic locations at junctions in the web landscape. The big portals aim to defend their positions at the top of the food chain. Niche portals aim to occupy crannies better than anyone else.
Locational analysis is likely to become as specialised for the web as it is for property developers. Web marketeers need to know:
- how much traffic they are receiving
- where it comes from
- what socio-economic groups visitors fall into
- why they pass through, or by, a particular website
If you are an internal web analyst, sever statistics will be available. The most popular program (because it is free) is Analog. Other programmes will take Analog stats and analyse them for you.
If you are an outside website analyst, it is necessary to use other sources of information. Do a search on 'web statistics' to find what is available. A simple free service is available from www.linkpopularity.com. Pay them and you will get more. A sophisticated service, and widely praised, service is available from Web Position Gold.
