Websites and Internet Marketing: Developing a Model for Measuring a Website's Contribution to the Brand

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. DOI: 10.4018/ijom.2013010102 International Journal of Online Marketing, 3(1), 14-30, January-March 2013 15 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. provide the brand with a platform to foster relationship with potential and actual customers, based on a continuous dialogue (Flores, 2004; Christodoulides & De Chernatony, 2004; Dou & Krishnamurthy, 2007; Holland & Baker, 2001). This manuscript aims to address this intrinsic problem by focusing on relevant website dimensions which cater to increase in consumer-brand perception by increasing Site Visibility, Accessibility and Navigability. Appropriate consumer experience, good consumer perception and ability to locate what they are searching for, leads to high consumer satisfaction levels (Ahuja & Medury, 2010). This further heightens the need for a careful understanding of website dimensions which eventually will shape the ability of the websites to contribute to (a) the consumer experience and subsequently, (b) the brand. The decision makers at e-business companies have continued to make vast investments in developing websites for e-business without having clear knowledge of what factors contribute to developing a high quality website and how to measure effects on e-business success (Irani, 2002; Thornton et al., 2003). The success of an e-business company is more likely when it’s website is developed to provide the highest level of website quality among alternative websites & this study shows that online customers mostly prefer to select the most preferred sites. If more customers select the website, the higher the likelihood of improved business performance. There exists a relationship between website quality, preference, and business performance (Carnero et al., 2005; Lohse et al., 1999; Ngai, 2003).