Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

When an assistant professor at the University of Rochester's Simon Graduate School of Business (one of the top business schools in the nation), and someone who's area of Ph.D study is "online search and the consumer behavior regarding the creation and purchase of online content"—is asking for suggestions on webpage content and traffic generation, there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with the world of business education in the United States!

The current content of the page speaks of the University of Rochester Simon Graduate School of Business TWICE as often as it speaks of the interests of the reader.

This page needs a clear call to action, social media support, compelling headlines, bulleted text, interesting call outs, images with alt tags, images with captions, video, downloadable PDFs, articles that speak to the self interests and compulsions of the readers, key phrases aligned to highly searched for terms, key phrase optimized article content at a density of no more than 2 percent, solid offers, reasons why, aligned outcomes ... the list goes on.

This school's graduates go on to become the teachers at other business schools, and coming as it does from a member of faculty at one of the top business schools in the United States, this question is as surprising as it is alarming.

Gary and all,
Thanks for the insights. A professor should be humble enough to hear other opinions on the topic, even he or she has studied parts of that problem before. Thank you all for the insights!
palbuque.

Oh well ...

Gary, you aren't wrong. However, you did state things a little strongly for the tender ears of academics!

I have a friend who is at a business school (the equivalent of a university in the US) and their marketing department came up with the question "Is Google Adwords cost effective marketing" (!!). In their answer they want links to scientifically based studies. I just looked at him in despair. And yet the culture is that to be a marketer you need a qualification from such a university on your CV.

Palbuque (warning: contains strong language).

In the light of the conversation I had with my friend who has to make an answer to this question shows a *clear dislocation* between the demands of the academic world and the one I have to deal with. I am aware of the nature of academics, as my father is a retired professor. Suggesting things that are not in his direct capacity to think are met with all kinds of responses, all of them defensive all of them trivial. All of them making assumptions that are simply irrelevant and will never be met with in real life.

I have a suggestion for you: get in touch with one of the marketers who lives in the States (I live in the Netherlands) and have them do a six or eight part course that simply acts as a lead-in to the real world that marketers have to deal with outside the academic world.

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Because in my honest opinion, your website is no better than any that are posted here by **complete newbies**. You on the other hand are teaching people marketing. To be truthful it was a shock to see just how far from the reality of marketing your need for objectivity had taken you.

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Better put: you teach what you think is marketing from the basis of all the assumptions you need so that your studies can be "evidence based" and "scientifically thorough". A marketer has no room for the assumptions that lead to such thinking as yours. We have to deal with the real world where people act on the point of the moment and that means they aren't always thinking but feeling. Emotions are something that is only possible to study by way of statistics, for they do not form part of the fixed, material part of the world we live in. Wherever you see statistics you see the realm where academic thinking has run out of road*.

I can say that because I have taken the time and no small effort to understand what emotions are and how to form a manner of thinking that can accommodate their complete lack of fixity. This has allowed me to form a pattern of thinking that is truly explosive - and any marketer of any real skill will share much of what I have developed though not perhaps in such a conscious or rigorous manner. It is a manner of thinking that needs few assumptions, demands no evidence save what you see before you. Perfect for the rough and tumble of the world of real marketing. That is to say it can deal with people as they are, and not as you need them to be.

Because making assumptions about people means that you are wasting advertising money - and to this day 95% of marketing falls into this trap, and that is in no small part due to the fact that many have been taught at university.

*It was one of the main reasons for me dropping botany and biology at university - all these beautiful things were turned into sheets of little figures on pieces of paper. To me it was tragic, and so I studied physics instead.

Moriarty,
Thanks for the long email and the interest in improving the website. I did not mean to be defensive, and I was meant to take Gary's seriously. I will do the same with your suggestions. For example, after reading yesterday's email, I went to both the Harvard and Duke University websites.

https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/marketing/
https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/units/marketing/Pages/default.aspx

Harvard does have a lot of the content/tools/headlines, etc as Gary suggested. The Duke website is similar to the one I posted, with a description of the programs/faculty/etc., but with a more interactive landing page which definitely helps.

It is also my first time posting here, so still learning about the functionalities of this website as well.

Thanks again for the discussion!

I know I wasn't wrong—and I stand by my earlier remarks.

I'm no stranger many of the—well, let’s just call them “quirks” and leave it at that—of academics when their area of study is in some way called into question by people like me.

I’ve worked with several academics, in museums (in the UK and the USA), and in higher education at Ivy League level here in the USA.

"A professor should be humble enough to hear other opinions on the topic, even [if] he or she has studied parts of that problem before."

… and yet ... a professor was not, was he?

No matter.

Note this and note it well: I salute and applaud your dedication to your education, and to your line of academic inquiry.

I congratulate and whoop with joy on your behalf as if you were kin on your appointment as Associate Professor.

It is my most earnest hope that in good time you attain the rank of full professor, and that you get tenure—I truly do.

These things aside, “studying” a problem is one thing. Taking ACTION to SOLVE the problem, and listening to the opinions of people who can HELP you solve the problem ... well, those things are quite another.

I know of dozens of people, some whom have a high school education, who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars per month employing effective, proven marketing techniques online. One person I am connected with has a few hundred clients who all own small businesses and many of whom are sole owners, who between them generated over one billion dollars in annual sales in 2012.

And all through many of the techniques outlined in my earlier post.

I IMPLORE the rethinking, re-examination, and relearning of some of what you believe you already know as fact because sadly, a good deal of the accepted academic truths you're placing your faith in are in error.

The Harvard page is no better or worse than the Simon page.

Having reviewed its source code, whoever put this page together has NO IDEA what keywords are because within their code we find: <meta name="keywords" content="">

Those last two inverted commas before the > symbol? That's where the keywords go.

Harvard's use of a scrolling banner is similarly irritating: the headlines are badly written; the content is too long, and the images are hardly on screen long enough to read, let alone absorb.

To most search engines, rotating banners might as well be written in Aramaic because they are poorly positioned to aid SEO.

Although the Harvard site does have downloadable PDFs, they're buried.

This is a mistake.

And as far as images go, the file name of the head shot of Sunil Gupta, the head of the Harvard’s faculty is “Ent261323.jpg”, which to a search engine, means nothing.

Although logical, going straight to the websites of Harvard and Duke is precisely the WRONG thing to do.

In an environment where every site in a niche looks the same, if your site is modeled after those same sites, YOUR site will not stand out.

The keys to visibility are relevance and salience. Get this right and you’re golden. Screw it up and sooner or later, key elements of the audience you want to cultivate will sprint for the exits.

I ran customer focus content comparisons on Simon's site, on Duke, and on Harvard.

The results?

Simon talks about itself TWICE as often as it talks about its reader.

Likewise Harvard.

Duke talked about itself FOUR TIMES as often as it talked about its reader.

FOUR TIMES!

Are you SURE you want to model your page on Harvard and Duke?

In marketing, the majority is always WRONG.

You can do better, and I truly hope your do.

I leave you with the words of Mark Twain:

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

Although educationally we might be poles apart, we share a time zone. If you’re willing to speak off forum, I’m happy to work together. And if not, good luck to you.

Thanks Gary...I really appreciate the time spent analyzing the pages and the complete feedback. I also understand that modeling after the majority is not perfect, but I thought modeling after the top business school would be useful. I was wrong it appears. Thanks again, and all I can say is that I have learned quite a bit about website design and I will try to learn some more before releasing the website again.

I would be happy to speak off forum...send me an email. :)