In the executive protection/security industry most web sites are selling services not gizmos. A service is tougher to sell to a customer because it isn’t a thing. A customer can’t touch it or control it. A service is not objective but subjective. A customer can’t have a free trial download of a service to test it out. So how should the executive protection/security industry sell a service on the web and do it at a reasonable cost?

As an example let’s take a look at two industry web sites. The first company, Company A, has a web site that contains high end graphics; fancy action shots, and in there is a list of services that they provide and contact information. Company A web site cost to build was $10,000. The second company, Company B, has low end graphics – simple design, no fancy action shots, list of services with prices, and contact information. Company B web site cost to build was $2,000. Now which industry web site is getting more out of their web site? One would naturally think the fancy, high end brochure on the web, right? But that is not necessarily the case.

The Company A web site is three years old and has the exact same content as day one. Same services, same content information, same old, same old. The company has applied the IYBI-TWC principle. Yes, it does get potential clients to use their services; but most of their clients have always used this industry service company for x amount of years so why change. Don’t get me wrong, this company is making money, but the same money, from the same clients. Same eyes looking at the site, same eyes buying the services. I call this approach the even keel – just hums along thinking everything is going great – but watch out for those icebergs.

Company B’s web site is also three years old, however, the company is always updating the site with new services, new schedules maybe a couple of articles related to client feedback or the services they provide. In other words the company is being proactive by managing their web site – keeping it fresh with new content. This does bring to the web site fresh eyes, and maybe new clients. But there is something else this company is doing – looking over the web site statistics.

Web statistics sounds like a college math course, but in reality, most Web Hosting Companies make it real easy for you. Company B is getting the following information from visitors to their web site:

What pages visitors look at and how often

How often visitors stay on a page

What time a day most visitors come to the site

What web site referred their web site

What search keywords led visitors to their site

What country or state visitors are from

Visitor ISP’s – military, government, education, commercial

Most of the information is standard and the hosting provider puts the data into nice bar and circle graphs. So how does Company B make stats work for them? Let me give you a few practical examples.

Search Keywords
Search keywords are key words that visitors have typed into Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. and clicked a search result that led to the Company B web site. For example, Joe the Plumber is looking for a defensive driving course for his teenage son so he typed in Defensive Driving; Company B comes up in the search results. Joe the Plumber clicks the Company B link and visits the site. The upside for using this data is that Company B uses these keyword results to introduce new services and new content so that these visitors will purchase these services rather than continuing their search elsewhere.
Now you wouldn’t want to do too many new services as that wouldn’t be financially prudent, but even posting new information such as links to articles or writing your own is doing two things – keeping visitors on your site and potentially getting new clients.

Visitor ISP’s
This bit of data tells the company what ISP’s people are using while visiting the site. Some are the usual suspects – Cox, Time Warner, Verizon, but a few might stand out like an ISP that ends with ‘.mil.’ or ‘.gov.’ Let’s put this to work for Company B. In checking the web statistics for December, Company B notices several visits from an ISP named bragg.army.mil. At the weekly Company B meeting the web statistics are reviewed with staff. A staff member knows someone over in Fort Bragg who does some training. She places the call, and gets Company B and Fort Bragg talking about some of their services. Fort Bragg says they have gone with Company A for several years and are satisfied with their services, but are interested in what Company B can do for them. Now in this hypothetical situation Company A’s even keel approach could be steering right into an iceberg and Company B could be starting a long term partnership with Fort Bragg.
Some visitor ISP could be commercial like Raytheon, Fidelity or Starbucks. Large companies like these run their own ISP’s and could also provide potential leads for clients. One word on Starbucks though, they rent out their ISP at local coffee shops, so if you see Starbucks in your Visitor ISP data, it most likely means someone logged into the Starbucks ISP and visited your site.

Referrals
Web referrals work like this: Company B posted an article related to their services but also gave good practical advice; another company, abc.com, put a link to Company B’s article on their web site. The web statistics will show a referral from abc.com. These statistics are also a good aide in garnering new eyes and potential new clients. It also does something else – networking and potentially supplemental income. Now that Company B knows that abc.com posts articles a dialogue has begun. Company B and abc.com now post articles and shared services on each other’s web sites. Things are going well between them they are talking about putting referral finder’s fees for the referral traffic.

A Thing about Hits
All Company B activities are going on while Company A sits and waits for the phone to ring or the email to ping. Company A has web statistics available but they don’t think the data is important – except for hits. They have a counter on their home page for all to see. 129,582 hits – looks and sounds quite impressive. But hits can be deceiving.
Technically speaking, a hit is a call to the server where the file is hosted and presents that file on the browser. So what does that mean? Let’s say there are 15 images on Company A’s web site home page. If one visitor clicks on the home page, that produces 16 hits – 15 for the image files, and 1 for the page itself. Now the counter will go up only one notch, but the web stats hit data for Company A will add sixteen. Let’s say that one visitor clicked on the home page ten times, the counter goes up ten – the hit data goes up to 160. Company A is thinking 10 different visitors went to their site, when it actually was only one person. So when you look at hits as a gauge on how your web site is doing – bigger isn’t always better.

About the Author
Larry Snow is owner of SJC Web Design LLC, a web design and web programming company in New York. Larry has been in the web design business for the past 10 years and currently manages SecurityDriver.Com, VehicleDynamics.Net, PersonalProtection.Com, IPSASecurity.Com, and InternationalProtectionGroup.Com web sites. Before starting his own company, Larry worked at Fidelity Investments for the last eight years as a web designer where he managed day to day operations for intranet web sites and developed several programming interfaces.
Larry graduated Magna Cum Laude from John Jay College of Criminal Justice with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminal Justice.

If you would like to learn more about web statistics and how they can work for you please contact Larry Snow at lawrence.snow@sjcwebdesign.com.

If you are in the corporate world you may just remember Human Resources plunking you down in a seat during orientation and discussing various do’s and don’ts topics such as Sexual Harassment, How to Put out a Fire, How to Take a Bomb Threat phone call and other various basic security situations. You may have also had the pleasure of watching a re-enactment of these aforementioned issues on a video. Well, what did you think of those videos? My guess is you felt watching a soap opera would be more entertaining and better acting.

In the security industry, personal protection and specifically security driving, Scenario Based Training (SBT) has proven to be one of the best methods of instruction. By using SBT those involved in the protection function can examine an incident, discuss what went right and what went wrong and from that develop lessons learned. In the past there are usually two ways to do this training: real or simulated.

Using the Human Resources videos listed above as an example. A corporation would hire a video/audio company or use in house resources to produce a video; the corporation would use its employees, taking time away doing the things that make the corporation money or hire actors to depict the scenario. Taping would take maybe one or two days; editing another a few days. Estimated costs for a 5 minute video is approximately $50,000 and multiply that by the number of videos and you can see it is a lot of money spent.

It would be expensive and close to impossible to apply the above to personal protection. Most executive security groups are usually operating with a limited budget. To recreate a recent attempted ambush would be mind boggling expensive. A surveillance detection video program specific to their environment discussing, choke points, danger zones can be done with a hand held camera pointed out the window. But how about this, as you are watching the presentation of you driving in your environment and you come to a choke point, the presentation is showing an image of your rear view mirror, and in your mirror a car pulls up behind you. The car pulls around you and cuts you off; it’s time to earn you paycheck. The scenarios you could come up with are endless. If you try to do this with your hand held camera or even if you had videographer directing it would be near impossible, and cost the national debt– enter 3D animation

3D animation is a process where characters or objects, any character any object you would like, are created as moving images. Rather than traditional flat or 2d characters, these 3D animation images give the impression of being able to move around characters and observe them from all angles. One of the advantages is that you can create the eye view of the character. As an example we recreated the Herrhaussen incident, from the eye view of the drivers of all three vehicles, what the terrorist was looking at, overhead, side, and front view and the end result of that. From all that developed a lessons learned, and there are many of them, what could have been done to prevent the incident. All this can be done with one person; at a quarter of the cost and have it completed in as little as a few hours depending on how detailed the animation.

Imagine trying to do that with video. First you would need to talk to the city to shut down that intersection for about two days while you hired actors, vehicles, and film crew do their thing.

Whether you are a security director training employees, in the military, or are security officers, or on an EP team, if you want to save time and money try 3D animation as a useful training tool. I think you’ll like what you see.

Any questions email Larry Snow at lawrence.snow@sjcwebesign.com.

The first App is for the general driving audience and covers, Backing Up, Braking, Driver Fatigue, Driving In Inclement Weather, Merging, Night Driving Passing and Road Rage to name a few.

If you are interested in the App and have an iPhone or Touch go to the iTunes store and type in Driving Techniques and it will come up.

In the upcoming months we will be producing Apps for security professionals related to Security Driving and Executive Protection , and more Apps for the general driving public including A Parent’s Guide to Teenage Driving.

What is an “App.”
You may have seen the Apple iPhone commercials on TV showing you a finger clicking on these small little images that open widgets that let you see your latest Fed Ex shipment, the NY Times home page, your email inbox to name a few.  These widgets are called iPhone applications or Apps for short. Some of these Apps are made by Apple and are packaged on the iPhone but the majority of the Apps are made by third party developers. Some developers are large companies, but most are from small companies or individuals.

Once an App is made by a developer it is posted to iTunes – Apple’s storefront for music and Apps. As of June 8th 2009 there are over 50,000 Apps posted on iTunes Store for download. Some are free, some you have to pay for. Prices range from .99 cents to as high as $49.99. Most Apps are games but there are quite a lot of Apps that are useful tools for everyday use.

The iPhone for Security Professionals
Every security professional needs to have a PDA and a Phone. If you are using a cell phone and a note pad you definitely need to upgrade. The iPhone should be something you seriously look at. Why? Here are some good reasons to go with the iPhone; you have an 80 GB (or more) laptop at your disposal that fits into the palm of your hand. I don’t think Blackberry can say that. Even better, Apple lowered its price for the basic iPhone package to $99.

Here are a few other reasons to think about:

1. First and foremost it is a Phone. If you are not a fan of the main carrier AT&T the iPhone will soon be available on other carriers.
2. GPS positioning is built into the iPhone, you simply select the Map widget and it will show you where you are and you can punch in where you want to go.
3. The Apps. In the iTunes store there is a plethora of Apps that are useful everyday tools such as language dictionaries, To do lists and guides just to a few. All at your fingertips. Think of it this way.  Say the boss wants to know where the closest bank or dry cleaner is: With two pushes of button and 10 seconds later you know the answer.
4. Apple Updates. Apple has quite a few updates that produce more and more features. Apple just released the 3.0 software update that allows you to: copy and paste, voice memos, improved calendar, enhanced stock application just to name a few. I can guarantee (I can’t reveal my sources) that Apple is already working on 3.1.

iPhone/iTouch Design
As of April of 2009 there have been one billion, yes billion, apps downloaded , that is a rate of approximately 3 million a day, and the number is increasing at an exponential rate.

SJC Web Design LLC is one of those small companies that have just started into the iPhone App development industry. We cater specifically to the professional security industry and are working on several Apps. Currently we are working with Tony Scotti Associates developing Applications related to driving. We love a challenge so if you have an idea for iPhone App send us email and we would be happy to speak with you about it.