Who’s Building Your Website? Marketer or Programmer?

Pastor Dennis recently gave me a book written by my favorite author, Seth Godin. The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better, is one of the best internet marketing books I’ve ever read. It’s simple, direct-to-the-point, and readable in less than an hour. Seth Godin raises a very important issue about building websites – who’s vision is it that is followed for the site? Is it the “engineer” or the programmer? Or is your person from Marketing taking the lead and playing an active role in the site building? The answer to this question will make or break the profitability and performance of your online business. Details after the break.

Let me quote the book The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better (Page 7):

There’s the engineer’s version, which is that smart people, with plenty of time, who know precisely what they want from their online surfing, are able to make a considered decision with access to all the data. This version of the web says that if you can thoughtfully organize everything you can think of, people will find what they want and do business with you.

Then there’s the marketer’s version. This says that people are busy, ill informed, impatient, not very thoughtful and eager to click on something right now. Marketers also believe that if you don’t give a prospect the right thing to click on right now, he’s going to hit the “Back” button and leave.

The second version is the one that’s backed up with all the data and all the successful results. Because it’s the right version. The first version is what leads most web-based companies to failure.

I agree 100% with what Seth said in his book, but let me just add to this in the context of the Philippines. There are only a few marketers who actually invest in learning about the ins and outs of the internet and website building. If you take a traditional marketer, he’ll probably treat the web as an extension of his media campaign. It’s most likely that he will just come up with a microsite that’s pretty, cool, and takes forever to load.

Internet Marketing is a science and an art. You have to learn it. You cannot just apply everything you know about mainstream media and expect to be a great marketer. It’s an entirely different subject matter, one that requires study and experience. A lot of big companies repeatedly make mistakes like this. Remember URC’s FAB Campaign?

If you’re a business owner and you want to invest in the online space, make sure that your marketing person knows what he’s getting into. If you can’t hire a consultant, then maybe you can invest in your marketing people some more by letting them go to seminars or have them read some books. The web is like a treasure box with a lock. It has so much potential but you need to find the key that will open it first. That “key” is a properly educated Internet Marketer.

The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better