SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Seller or Advertiser? (was SIGIA-L: impr
Seller or Advertiser? (was SIGIA-L: impressions)
From: James Weinheimer (j.weinheimer_at_jlw-dmg.net)
Date: Sat Jan 26 2002 - 13:09:20 EST
> >Does anyone have any supporting evidence for the proposition that the
> >overall impression made by a website is important to business
> >success?
>
> The only measure of success in business is how much profit is being made.
> Impressions do not matter.
> The primary goal of any business is to get the product into the hands of
as
> many users as possible, without regard to quality.
There seems to be a big difference occurring here in the minds of company
execs and it could be the reason for some confusion. Do they see websites
primarily as advertising or as a retail outlet for consumers?
I think this is an important point. Certainly, sales and advertising were
always linked, but there was never the idea that the advertiser had to
literally sell the item to whoever happened to read the billboard sign or
read the ad in the magazine. Advertising is there just to make a
presence--even if some people find it offensive, such as the Calvin Klein
ads or the Benetton ads. The idea of making the money back from an
advertising campaign wasn't really there: you had to do it or die. If people
heard your message, that was good enough.
But with websites, execs want their money back and if they don't, they get
mad. I understand this way of thinking, but I think that there are too many
reasons why people don't want to buy things on the web, and they don't all
have to do with IA. The web is still a new medium.
In short, are business execs asking too much from their websites?
Jim
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