Turner DeVaughn / Benchmark

American Sensor

450 Clark Drive
Mt. Olive, NJ 07828
Phone: (973) 448-1901
http://www.astsensors.com

Insights

American Sensor Technologies (AST) manufactures and sells MEMS based pressure sensors, transducers, and transmitters. It claims to have the "best price-performance ratio in the industry."

The web site presents what Turner DeVaughn calls a "monologue." It tells a story from the perspective of the company, which does not make it easy for search engines (and the rest of us) to find AST.

In a "related" Google search, the top three peers/competitors were identified as macrosensors.com, pro-talk.com and optocom.com.my. The reference to Macrosensors is closely related (given the ownership). However, it is surprising that Honeywell Sensotec was not in the top three. The language used on the AST site not helpful to search engines in finding other peers because it is not written using the words and phrases that AST's market uses — as evidenced by "peers" such as ProTalk and OptoCom. The results reflect a site that is not serving the company as an effective corporate asset, and not as revenue-minded as it could be. There are a number of steps that can be taken immediately to bring the site to be more aligned with its market.

On a 100 point scale, AST only earned 60 points. The average among all companies benchmarked is 64. A score of 60 is the result of AST not clearly and consistently articulating a value proposition, proof points and customer testimonials on its web site.

Application notes are a good place to start, but fail to provide customer success stories or testimonials. Translations by Yahoo Babel Fish are extremely helpful for international visitors, but the site content needs to be stronger to convert prospects into customers. Our research tells us that only two percent of site visitors can make a purchasing decision based on features and benefits alone.

Leading companies such as Cisco and IBM each utilize their web site as a key marketing asset — which includes Web 2.0 technologies. Yet, they also fail to articulate and quantify their value proposition. Companies with a quantfied value proposition are at the greatest advantage.