RE: Public Perception?

Interesting article.  And pretty much true by my experience.

eTour.com was originally prolaunch.com. It consisted of a home page that
explained our product, a registration page, an FAQ, one members area page,
and the button bar that delivered the web sites. With prolaunch, we had a
total of 8-10 people in the company, including interns. All we did was
deliver good web sites that matched our users selected interests. Our
conversion rate (the percentage of new visitors that signed up for our site
on their first visit) was in the neighborhood of 17-19%, depending on how we
were currently marketing the site.

About 9 months after the prolaunch site went live, we decided to change the
name of our product to eTour, and marketing also decided that we needed to
add several bells and whistles to the members area of the site, such as free
email accounts, horoscopes, stock tickers and similar items of content. We
also had to create a whole new look and feel for the web site, and added
several new features to the non-members area of the web site in order to
increase our conversion rate. About 30 days after the eTour version of the
site went live, we got our first round of major funding, $10 million, and
started a hiring craze that lasted for 8 months that ended in eTour offices
in 7 major cities, and over 200 employees.

Now the bad part. As soon as the conversion to eTour with all of the added
bells and whistles and supposedly "sticky content" went live, our conversion
rate immediately dropped to below 8%, and stayed there until the company
went bankrupt in May of this year. All of the bells and whistles and added
content were put in place to get a _higher_ conversion rate and to keep
people coming back for more.  All it actually did was _LOWER_ almost every
important number we had.

People loved the prolaunch product, it was simple, and we did one thing and
we did it better than anyone else on the internet. People signed up for it,
used it everyday, and wrote us to tell us how much they loved it. One thing
that did not change, was that once a user signed up for the service and used
it for at least a week or two, they would become avid users, and came back
every day and told their friends about it. But our hay-day was when it was
simple, one product, and 10 employees.

Sorry that was so long winded... I am unemployed and bored. heheh.

Gotta love that Atlanta job market.

Andre

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hwg-basics(at)hwg.org [mailto:owner-hwg-basics(at)hwg.org]On
Behalf Of Captain F.M. O'Lary
Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2001 1:55 PM
To: hwg-basics(at)hwg.org
Subject: Public Perception?


Originally, I was going to post just the URL and the title - because it is
pertinent.

But then I ran across this:

"Name:Franklin Gumby
Email:franklin_gumby(at)yahoo.com
Location:Irvine, CA
Occupation:
Two words: INFORMATION DESIGN.
Most web developers and graphics folks are absolutely clueless about what it
takes to (gasp) GET THE MESSAGE ACROSS TO THE INTENDED AUDIENCE. For a
commercial web site that message is always SHOW ME THE MONEY!
Indeed, very few web developers and graphics folks seem to be able to
construct
a coherent paragraph. It's about the message, not how cool you think your
flash
animation is. After the first time, it's just annoying."

Now, I'll just pass along the URL :-)

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2833155,00.html

FZ.

______________________________________________________________
Captain F.M. O'Lary
ctfuzzy(at)canopy.net
"With computers, every morning is the dawn of a new error. "
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