You gotta love Jared Spool. Only a child of the '60s would term the tremendous shift the Internet industry is now undergoing as the "dawning of the Age of Aquarius."
But retro references aside, Spool has a point. And a very good one at that.
As the online marketing industry has differentiated itself into many different disciplines, each speaking in its own tongue, what it's failed to do is align itself with the ultimate goals of doing business online: Speaking in the language of business, and producing results that can be measured with the same set of tools.
Referring to his own discipline, web site usability, at a San Francisco conference sponsored by his company earlier this month, Spool said, "We have to change our practices for the bottom line: To help businesses succeed.
"We have to start thinking differently to get past where we are and grow," he added during the keynote address of User Interface Engineering West.
Across the Internet, Spool's wisdom applies. With the evolution of online niches like usability, design, search engine optimization, programming, application services, and so on, has come the development of languages, processes and measurement unique to each.
As each discipline has evolved, so have the specific terms and conditions by which each measures its own excellence and effectiveness on the web. The jargon in the usability field, for example, doesn't jibe with the jargon of our email marketing friends. Are our customers users? Or are they a market segment?
Such jargon is really the words we experts have developed to describe our niche disciplines. But what's happened is that the expert-speak tends to flatter the discipline, rather than deliver a promise to a client.
Our "market segment" may well be a proportion of "users." But aren't they really simply paying customers?
The challenge for us now is to develop a common language that can be heard and understood across all disciplines, and to become accountable to the bottom-line goal of improving the way business gets done online.
"We've built an arsenal of great skills and tools," said Spool, who heads User Interface Engineering of Bradford, Massachusetts. "The trick is…how do we learn to use them together to align with the goals of business?"
Spool's message comes at a good time. The economy is wounded, but the bloodletting appears to have clotted. After the heady days of the 1990s, marketers' feet are now planted firmly on earth.
We know we have to show results. Flash is cool, but is it going to make a sale? Streaming media email rocks, but is it really going to help you build relationships with your customers?
Wouldn't it be better if we, as marketers, could offer more than opinions as sound practices? Wouldn't it be easier to sell our clients on the value of online marketing if we were able to promise results that really mattered, and could measure our own effectiveness with a common set of tools?
Businesses don't want to be educated on the "practices of usability" or any other discipline, for that matter, Spool says. They want marketers to speak to their needs. They need to know what they could be doing to improve their bottom line, and they want help to make that happen.
Businesses marketing online have had it up to their chins with multiple "expert-speak." They are demanding clear results -- promised and communicated in a language accessible to them.
That means marketers needs to speak to the needs of business, in the words they use and understand. Businesses understand revenues…not "products." They understand return on investment, cost per acquisition, the lifetime value of a customer. They want to hear, "Here's how we can deliver on your needs."
It's a big challenge, clearly, to get us all on the same page and speaking in the same tongue. But it can be done. Such clarity of communication ultimately will only help the online space further itself as a necessary place to do business.
We've already established that the web is really nothing more than that - a forum through which goods are sold, services are rendered, and business gets done.
It's not smoke and mirrors. It's not magic. It's a solid platform from which businesses can grow.
It's time we help our clients see that with the same clarity.
