Sunday, August 07, 2011
The web is a customer service medium
Man, it's been a long time since I've read any Paul Ford. But this is good stuff....trying to identify the thing that the web is best at, and along the way explain why some sites succeed and others fail: http://www.ftrain.com/wwic.html
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This was a tremendously useful blog post, Aaron. Even though I'm under the gun to get a number of tasks done today, I'm glad that I read it.
ReplyDeleteThe most traffic I ever got on my web site was when I created a section with characters and adventure ideas for an RPG that had was just being released to a fair amount of hype. I had preordered the game and so had access to the rules and such before most people. Before Google Analytics blew up on me, my traffic reports showed that I was getting a few hundred hits a week, and that the average time spent on site was something like 5 minutes, which is pretty damn good.
Reading Ford's blog post makes me realize that by not having a way for readers to easily express their opinions on the content, via ratings or comments or other feedback, I squandered that initial wave of interest. It also makes me realize why I don't read 90% of the sites that he references in his post; by nature I'm not a joiner and those sites appeal to people who want to be part of a virtual community.
Writing is a solitary endeavor, but the new model of audience participation via the Internet shakes that up in ways that are probably not comfortable to a lot of writers. It's interesting and a bit daunting.
Doug