REVIEWS

Geotargeting has become a commonplace term in 2002 when it comes to the topic of targeted marketing and adult site traffic management. Knowing where your customers are coming from and where they are going to as they pass through your site has helped many Webmasters find “holes” where they lose visitors (hence, lose sales) and attempt to “plug” those holes by offering a more interactive experience based on information provided by their IP address and web browser.REVIEWS

Geotargeting has become a commonplace term in 2002 when it comes to the topic of targeted marketing and adult site traffic management. Knowing where your customers are coming from and where they are going to as they pass through your site has helped many Webmasters find “holes” where they lose visitors (hence, lose sales) and attempt to “plug” those holes by offering a more interactive experience based on information provided by their IP address and web browser.

New tools for Webmasters are now surfacing on the market to help them harness the power of identifying their visitors and serving them the best end user experience possible, without the need for extremely complex database programming. Geotargeting traffic management systems and tools are predicted to revolutionize the way payment options, content, and advertising models are served to web site visitors, especially in the adult Internet industry.

Why Is Geotargeting Important?

The ability to detect the geographic location and other demographic information of a web site visitor has become more important to adult Webmasters now than ever before. With the new Visa and MasterCard credit card acceptance regulations and concerns about credit card fraud, serving user payment options based on factors like country of origin and language has become an important factor for sales conversions. More importantly, from a legal aspect, content access limitations based on geographical region (such as not allowing visitors from Nevada to surf your online drug store, as the sale of prescription drugs online is now illegal in that state) will be essential to keeping conversion rates profitable and adult sites legal.

It is a known fact that the English speaking Internet audience is the fastest shrinking sector as more and more countries and citizens around the world gain access to the World Wide Web. By the end of 2003 it is estimated that there will be 510 million non-English speaking web users compared to 270 million English speaking. Over 60% of all web users will not speak English.

More importantly, many credit card processing services will not accept transactions from countries where fraud and chargebacks are disproportionate and where conflict resolution can be complicated. With the new Visa regulations, “sponsored merchants” and merchant account holders will be responsible for their own chargeback ratios when compared with their own sales, rather than the collective sales of the third party processor (IPSPs). Keeping fraud levels to a minimum can start with the detection and serving of payment options that are specific to each user based on demographics. For example, if all your chargebacks come from Russia, then eliminate credit cards as a payment option and redirect visitors from Russia to as sponsor or dialer program.

Targeting By Location And Language

Geotargeting software like GeoRedirect comes with built-in databases that contain information about IP blocks and the structure of the global Internet by regional IP’s and other collected and updated data. An IP address will act like a GPS Signal and your server is the Satellite. When a visitor enters your site you can detect their geographic location instantly. Detection by domain country codes is also possible as GeoRedirect includes an extensive database with known country codes and what IP ranges they belong to, which helps to manage traffic with up to 95% accuracy.

Now let’s say you are receiving a lot of traffic from Germany and you have a multilingual web site or translated sponsor site you want to send them to, since you know the most common language in Germany is German. Instead of having them go to the main site and click the language they want, you can use this type of software system to directly send them to the German version of your web site or sponsor site.

In another example this concept could be taken further. If you have a visitor from France and direct them to the French version of your site or to a sponsor, you do not want to offer them a credit card payment option, since it is known that French and other European web surfers prefer to pay using a dialer. You can run GeoRedirect on any page of your site, so if you only want to run it on the join forms of your adult sites to be sure that every visitor is served the most viable payment option, than this traffic management tool could increase your conversion rates by more than 20% simply by reading the user by IP. As we all know, traffic is one of the major keys to the success of a web site and being able to account for and control that traffic is another victory.

Targeting By Legalities And Liabilities

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to obscenity prosecutions is the problem of deciding on “community standards” from which to base decisions affecting content found on the web or sold on video around the world. What is “obscene” in Alabama may not be viewed as such in Southern California. But as the foundation of Internet law spreads it roots, court decisions on what is allowed to be viewed online in certain states may lead to the conclusion that the responsibility lies with the publisher/producer of the content itself, in our case, adult Webmasters.

“The legal and business implications of such geo-locator products for the adult Internet industry are both significant and obvious,” states Larry Walters in his October Legal Update. “Webmasters may soon be able to accurately block certain [audiences] from accessing particularly explicit or unconventional content.”

GeoRedirect is geotargeting software that can help you stay out of some gray areas where it comes to, at least, international law. The door swings both ways for U.S. and non-US based adult Webmasters. What may be legal in Amsterdam may get you in trouble if found accessible to a U.S. audience as time goes on. An even better example is online casinos and gambling web sites. Since it is known that accepting deposits from visitors inside the U.S. is illegal, an online casino can direct U.S. visitors to free based games only, or other types of content.

Increasing Your Bottom Line

With the U.S. economy in a constant state of flux, increasing your potential customer base is going to be an important part of continued success online. Since your customers will originate from many regions around the world, your sales no longer have to remain dependant upon U.S. economic trends. It is possible to never have another “summer slowdown” again.

In addition to traffic management detection and redirection of your visitors based on common variables, GeoRedirect is also a complete web stats program that tracks information about your visitors to help you make the best decisions as long term trends and user patterns become evident. From basic information such as total visitors, unique hits, browser stats, domain and country stats, to even knowing how many users are Java enabled, you can derive the most important information about your audience to help tweak and further develop your site for a customized user experience. This means repeat visitors and an equal chance to convert sales regardless of geographic and demographic variables. You no longer have to waste money in bandwidth pushing traffic that can’t and won’t convert; simply direct them to a sponsor that CAN convert it.

Most geotargeting software like GeoRedirect runs on the web server and is fairly simple to install. With the right tools in place you can now have a complete solution for your traffic and will make your money back tenfold in no time. Now you can finally take the time to filter and control your traffic so you can identify which traffic sources work best for your sites when it comes to making marketing decisions. Geotargeting software can make your site a smoother running selling machine and help push your Webmastery to a whole new level!

To learn more about GeoRedirect, geotargeting traffic management software system and its applications, please visit GeoRedirect.