City Brands and their Communication through Web Sites: Identification of Problems and Proposals for Improvement

City marketing tries to position cities in the mind of the public, although the process of creating and communicating city brands is still at an early stage of its development. One of the main tools for the communication of these brands is now the World Wide Web. This chapter describes the results of two combined studies (qualitative and quantitative) that analyzes a sample of official city Web sites. The results show that official Web sites of cities give much attention to ease of navigation, but interactivity is much less implemented, especially between users. Furthermore, some lack of attention to the communication aspects of city brands can also be found. Finally, the chapter submits a number of improvement proposals. INtrODUctION In the current world of cities, competition has increased and the centre of interest has moved to include much broader spheres. Already, cities do not try only to be just significant tourist nuclei, but they also compete in aspects such as quality of life, economic development and sustainability. Aside from tourist interest, cities try to position themselves as comfortable areas to live and important centers of economic development that attract all types of investment. To achieve this, it is necessary to know the opinions and evaluations of the publics (Prebensen, 2007)1, to find out what image they have of the city and determine the positioning that it would be desirable to achieve. Therefore, a vision of the city must be formulated and, consequently, a program of identity must be created that is transmitted through a brand and a visual logo and, later, an adequate and effective communication program must be DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-134-6.ch002