John the website: August 18, 1997 issue of New Thinking

August 18, 1997 New Thinking:
John the website

Website content management

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August 18, 1997

John the website

By Gerry McGovern

The Internet is about relationships. Forget about computers, modems and bandwidth, the Internet is about people: person-to-person, person-to-organization, organization-to-organization.

Let us imagine that your website is a member of your staff called ‘John.’ I decide to visit John. Why do I visit John? Because I want to find out something from him about your organization. I will expect him to be welcoming and very knowledgeable. I will want to ask him any question about your organization and be able to get a positive answer.

I will expect that for most of my questions I will find information with a quick search through the website. I will expect that information to be accurate and up-to-date. I will expect it to be solid information, not marketing hard sell, because I am a knowledgeable consumer.

Yes, perhaps the reason I decided to visit your website in the first place was because I saw an ad for your products on another website or on television. So, the marketing has worked. Now, give me the facts. Why should I buy your product? What makes it special?

If I can’t get all the information I want from John, I will expect that he will tell me that he will check up on things and get back to me quickly. If I get a response from the email request I send within twenty-four hours, I will be impressed. Otherwise, I will think of you as a sluggish organization, which will probably be as slow or slower to offer me support if I should happen to buy your product.

An awful lot of people are wary of using the Internet. They’re a bit afraid of technology; they think it’s too difficult to use, and that if they can’t use it properly it will make them look foolish. They’re right: the Internet is still way too difficult to get onto and use. But it is getting easier.

However, even when the Internet is very easy to use, it will still have an image problem. People will think that computers are not for them, that the Internet is some fancy technology thing. We need to tell people that it’s not: that you can buy that rare book you were looking for on it, that you can talk to your cousin who lives in Donegal, that it’s just great for older people and those who find it hard to physically get around.

However, before we convince the mass population to use the Internet, many of us who develop for the Internet need to change our own way of thinking. A lot of organizations are still developing websites just because it’s the thing to do. Even though the Internet can benefit them, they still don’t believe in it.

They create static websites, with big lumpy graphics; websites that don’t even interact with the staff within the organization, let alone the public. These organizations see the Internet as a thing you do when the pressure is off in other areas, which gets left-over pieces of budget, and which really doesn’t have anything to do with the important job of doing business and making profit.

The Internet is about building and consolidating relationships between you and your customers. In the digital age, that is a very important activity; a vital one.

Gerry McGovern

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The Internet is about building and consolidating relationships between you and your customers.