Websites and Internet Marketing

Abstract

Websites play a pivotal role in contributing to the brand identity of an organization and an even greater role in stimulating the brand-consumer relationship. This manuscript proposes a framework for measuring the Brand Contribution Index (BCI) for a website. The authors commence the study by identifying eight significant website dimensions viz. Relative Importance(RIi), Popularity(Pi), Search Engine Optimization(SEOi), Domain Age(DAi), Site Compatibility with Social Networks(SCSNi), Keyword Research(KRi), Site Quality (SQi) and Site Accessibility (SAi). The Brand Contribution Index is a weighted measure of these eight dimensions. The authors further proceed to segment the websites according to their BCI and create segment profiles by using Hierarchical Cluster Analysis. This will help the organizations in studying the performance of their websites in the context of the BCI and create strategies to subsequently improve this performance across the website dimensions where the website is demonstrating a poor score.