(PRWEB) December 20, 2005
Thinking of hiring a web designer? Proceed with caution. One of Australia’s best known web developers and Internet marketing experts, Chris Bloor, ruffled a few feathers this week when he claimed ‘Nerds’ often make the worst marketers.
Over the last few years I have lost count of the number of expensive, ‘technically brilliant’ websites that, in terms of traffic, sales and money-in-the-bank are as effective as washing a hairy dog on a rainy day!
Like the popular seminar website that let me waste ten minutes filling up an online shopping cart full of DVD orders, only to say that my USA zip code was invalid!
I live in Australia!
Not only did the site lose a thousand dollar sale but in my experience it is just the ‘Tip of the iceberg’ I blame most of this on hiring the right people for the wrong tasks.
They probably hired a gifted, highly-educated ‘Nerd’ to install their shopping cart software who then failed to remember that it’s called the ‘World-Wide’ Web for very good reason. Perhaps he thought that the net magically ‘stops’ at the border with Canada? Who knows but in the meantime, how much money are the site’s owner’s missing out on?
A good marketer would have spotted that in a nano-second.
I see basic mistakes like this every day along with such things as font sizes so small an electron microscope would have trouble reading them and flaming logo’s that move and jiggle so much you ignore the sales message
It isn’t that ‘Nerds’ are unnecessary, I employ a whole team of them myself, it’s just that 9 times out of ten they couldn’t market themselves out of a paper bag!
Readers of his popular Marketing Secrets Blog (ChrisBloor.com/blog) appreciate his straight-talking approach but he concedes his latest comments haven’t won him many friends in the ‘Nerd’ community.
His advice? Avoid hiring the ‘right’ people for the ‘wrong’ tasks.
Whist your brilliant technical staff might know more about ‘cold fusion’ than the encyclopedia Britannica and eat java scripts for breakfast, he or she will drive your customers completely bonkers if they respond to support questions in ‘Geek Speak’
Finally – always get your marketing people to look at the ‘end products’ and for goodness sakes listen when they tell you; Boss, people just won’t get this
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Australian Marketing Expert Claims Nerds Make the Worst Marketers
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