Publishers See Interest In Improving Web Sites

Publishers voted the Web as their highest sales opportunity in the most recent publishing survey conducted by TrendWatch Graphic Arts. Indeed, improving Web sites and driving traffic to Web sites far surpassed other prospective sales opportunities. Publishers reported that they plan to leverage the Internet to build their brands, improve customer relations, and ultimately sell their print products.

Publishers' votes regarding improving their Web sites amounted to 70%, up from 43% last year. This was also the leading opportunity among all market segments polled: 83% of book publishers, up from 37% last year; 78% of catalogers, up from 51%; and 57% of magazine publishers, up from 43%.

Publishers also intend to benefit from more traffic to those new and improved Web sites, with 62% citing driving Web site traffic as a sales opportunity, up from 43% a year ago. In addition, 74% of catalogers (up from 49%), 55% of magazine publishers (up from 44%), and 55% of book publishers (up from 34%) see this activity as a sales opportunity.

Publishers note that they need to make their Web sites more functional to increase traffic, optimize them for search engines and e-commerce, and build customer relationships through e-mail contact programs, e-newsletters, and chat rooms.

All of this is part of a larger effort by publishers to sell their print product since they're not duplicating their pages nor trying to sell electronic products. They are simply leveraging the Internet as a marketing tool for their bread-and-butter product: print publications.