The Web site as a brand: an empirical investigation of four online companies

Abstract: Increasing number of Internet visitors understand that the Internet is about choice and they will prefer visiting Web sites that are reliable and trust-worthy. To live up to the expectations the online businesses need to deliver the Web sites as brands. Therefore an increasingly number of advertisements contain a domain name referring to the brand. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate Web sites as brands. This is a qualitative multiple-case study of four Swedish online companies with the brand names: boo.com, etrade.se, jobline.se, and spray.se. The findings of the investigations showed that the main reason to have a Web site as a brand is to increase the traffic to the Web site. The Web site as a brand serves as an invitation and gives the audience a reason to visit the Web site. The content and interface of the Web site describe the brand and the findings show that it is extremely important to continuously update and upgrade the Web site and give the visitor a pleasant time since it will give a good impression of the brand. It is the content and interface that finally result in a relationship with the visitor and return of visit. Furthermore it has shown that the use of both offline and online media tools increase the traffic, gives more credibility and trust for the brand, but also create curiosity for the Web site. However some differences where found between the companies concerning the choice of brand name and advertising tools. From the findings the authors have also constructed an own model explaining the Web site as a brand.