February 25th, 2009 | 
Author: Simple question: Who developed and maintains your Web site? Was/Is it YOU (or your marketing dept) or was/is it an IT geek a couple floors, stairs and halls away? (Btw, I can say geek because I am one, or at least half-one.) So You or IT?
I recently saw a billboard in Tampa. It said in big block letters, “Does your Web site suck?”
How you can tell if your Web site sucks?
- You hate talking about it.
- It’s a pain in the neck to do anything productive with it.
- You never send clients, prospects, members, friends to it.
- It’s “male, pale, and stale” – PvAartrijk
- It doesn’t do anything, hard to find anything, doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t ENGAGE.
- Interaction with visitors is limited to irrelevant emails that clog your inbox.
- There’s nothing exciting, controversial, fun, challenging there.
- It has OUTDATED information that doesn’t even apply anymore.
- The “news” consists of text only – and the visitor says, “Blah-ba-blah-ba-BLAH!”
- It doesn’t help generate REVENUE – in fact, just the opposite – hurts deals.
An obvious related question: Whoever did your site, how much experience did they have with high-performance Web sites before they started out? Really – experience with sites like the one you wanted. Did they do 1? 2? maybe 3? Or did they do 10s and 100s, know all the in’s and out’s, can do things fast, hit the mark (or at least 80-90%) right out of the gate, etc.?
Analogy: If you were building a national account sales team where your company would live and die by the results it generated, would you hire a guy fresh out of HS who sold shoes at JC Penney parttime, or would you hire an industry veteran that is currently doing the SAME THING for someone else? Do you see the analogy? Come on, now. You get what you pay for.
Now more than ever, it’s critical to hit the mark and position yourself and your operation for the next wave of Internet marketing. Call an industry veteran and get your site fixed – content management, CSS, Blog, RSS, viral, personal, channel-of-choice, nimble, sticky, conversions. Shouldn’t take more than three to five months. Should be easy to maintain and update.
Please comment below, tweet about it, blog it, start a thread on Linkedin, or in some way join the conversation. Lurking is Lame.
Next post – PIMA Annual Meeting. Starts tonight.
Posted in Insurance-Technologies
Web development at Aon Affinity is currently within a marketing department. No offense to IT guys, but Java web developers are far different from run of the mill Java developers. Just like you family physician vs a cardiologist. They both went to medical school, both passed state board exams and both have MD after their name. But when you have an artery with a 90% blockage (God forbid), who do YOU want inflating a balloon in your artery? The guy who did it once in med school or the woman that does it several times a week?
Agreed, you get what you pay for. Having your website developed by the lowest bidder in India is going to look, feel and function much differently than the site that is developed by the group in Manhattan or even within your company.