As a Conversion Rate Optimisation Professional (CROP?) I have to deliver Actionable Insights to my clients. This means that if I have to tell them that their website is the Internet equivalent of an Ugly Baby then I have to back up my damning appraisal of their efforts with quantifiable opportunities for optimisation.
WTF?
Look, if a website sucks, it can be made to suck less. I state how to do this, what it will cost and what return the investment will yield and when. Standard good business practice, no?
So, the form goes (in my own paraphrase, this is not normal vocab!):
ME: Dude. Your site sucks...
CLIENT:(tiny hurt look, bottom lip aquiver, tear budding on corner of their eye) Oh...
ME:(Wise and sage like) But lo! All is not lost and we know why!
CLIENT:(Hope springs to their darling visage) Hussah fine sir! Pray tell and explain to us the details of your machinations.
ME:(earnest and serious) Because of A, B and C you are leaving £X on the table every month. Do Y and Z by investing £T and you'll make £X back in 6 months and then get into mega profit. (£T is some proportion of £X depending on the issue at hand)
And the cool thing here is the turnaround from hurt and hate to adoration, frantic note taking, nodding and maniacal zeal is almost instant.
The eagerness to get on and do whatever it takes to improve the site is partly driven by the realisation that in making their site better, the Internet as a whole exudes a little extra polish. It's like an insurance policy underwriting their intent to optimize: by improving their little corner of the good ol' WWW that they have the opportunity to refine the balance between the good sites and the YouTube comments. Make their bit of the web suck less and by definition everything gets just a little bit better. We can say how much better too with a fine degree of accuracy.
They get to make a better honest buck in the process.
I do too.
'Tis a fine and correct feeling.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Sunday 10 October 2010
Monday 4 October 2010
A sincere request to clients all over the world.
Please don't...
With all due respect - and I mean that from the heart of my bottom, pretty please, whilst I cherish your business and admire your entrepreneurial spirit, drive and abilities, I take my hat off to your tenacity and guts but for the love of all that is harder than you can appreciate, don't try to tell experts how to do their job.
I see this ludicrous phenomenon on a daily basis. Poor designers, copy writers, engineers, lawyers, accountants, analysts and even cleaners are all subject to the entrepreneur who knows best, laying down a new set of rules by which recognised experts have to proceed whilst suppressing the bile and shame rising from doing what the pay-master insists on regardless of what might be best practice or even slightly good practice let alone common sense.
What gives the owner and master of a business that they have built up from nothing using their own ballsiness, capital, wit and wherewithal the brazen right to stomp over recognised experts and their life-long, hard won experience and knowledge in preference to there own limited and ignorant whim/view/current brain fart?
Well, exactly that. The fact that they have built the bloody business - no one else. It was their cash, their idea, their spirit and spark, so by crickey they've earn't the right to run the business how they see fit, no?
Well, no.
Great minds talk about ideas. Average minds talk about events and weak minds talk about people. What sort of minds tell smarter people what to do? Shudder...
The entrepreneurs in question once had a great mind. They had an idea and they bloody well made it into something that worked. Kudos my friends. You had a moment of 'great mindedness'. Thing is, now, when you need the input of experts, when you need the smart people you surrounded yourself with (kudos again btw) to guide you onwards and upwards to a whole new level, you decide to regress to a weaker mind than the average mouth breathing TV watching pleb. Engage that great mind and talk about ideas (your ideas) with the experts. Then listen and engage with the serious minds and employ them to the best of their abilities to get the most value from them. To employ the expert and then try to do their job by stomping on the honest and best input you could hope for is near criminal. If this is done through honest ignorance the light may yet appear. To do this through 'smart commercialism' is fucking idiotic and to do this in the sincere belief that you know better is the business equivalent of running with scissors...on a tightrope..over flames....blind folded...whilst sneezing uncontrollably. I hope you fall.
Really I do. Not out of spite. Not out of envy. Remember my opening caveat - I get the businessperson and their admirable qualities: they have done something I haven't. I hope they fall but will become richer from the fall and come back stronger having learnt from the experience. That would be a good thing if it happened sooner and quicker without having to crush the poor experts in the process.
So, if you employ a decent, honest, reliable expert to do a job, bloody well listen to them and don't try to be a smart-arse. You'll be better off in the long run.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
With all due respect - and I mean that from the heart of my bottom, pretty please, whilst I cherish your business and admire your entrepreneurial spirit, drive and abilities, I take my hat off to your tenacity and guts but for the love of all that is harder than you can appreciate, don't try to tell experts how to do their job.
I see this ludicrous phenomenon on a daily basis. Poor designers, copy writers, engineers, lawyers, accountants, analysts and even cleaners are all subject to the entrepreneur who knows best, laying down a new set of rules by which recognised experts have to proceed whilst suppressing the bile and shame rising from doing what the pay-master insists on regardless of what might be best practice or even slightly good practice let alone common sense.
What gives the owner and master of a business that they have built up from nothing using their own ballsiness, capital, wit and wherewithal the brazen right to stomp over recognised experts and their life-long, hard won experience and knowledge in preference to there own limited and ignorant whim/view/current brain fart?
Well, exactly that. The fact that they have built the bloody business - no one else. It was their cash, their idea, their spirit and spark, so by crickey they've earn't the right to run the business how they see fit, no?
Well, no.
Great minds talk about ideas. Average minds talk about events and weak minds talk about people. What sort of minds tell smarter people what to do? Shudder...
The entrepreneurs in question once had a great mind. They had an idea and they bloody well made it into something that worked. Kudos my friends. You had a moment of 'great mindedness'. Thing is, now, when you need the input of experts, when you need the smart people you surrounded yourself with (kudos again btw) to guide you onwards and upwards to a whole new level, you decide to regress to a weaker mind than the average mouth breathing TV watching pleb. Engage that great mind and talk about ideas (your ideas) with the experts. Then listen and engage with the serious minds and employ them to the best of their abilities to get the most value from them. To employ the expert and then try to do their job by stomping on the honest and best input you could hope for is near criminal. If this is done through honest ignorance the light may yet appear. To do this through 'smart commercialism' is fucking idiotic and to do this in the sincere belief that you know better is the business equivalent of running with scissors...on a tightrope..over flames....blind folded...whilst sneezing uncontrollably. I hope you fall.
Really I do. Not out of spite. Not out of envy. Remember my opening caveat - I get the businessperson and their admirable qualities: they have done something I haven't. I hope they fall but will become richer from the fall and come back stronger having learnt from the experience. That would be a good thing if it happened sooner and quicker without having to crush the poor experts in the process.
So, if you employ a decent, honest, reliable expert to do a job, bloody well listen to them and don't try to be a smart-arse. You'll be better off in the long run.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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