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Why Your Site Fails To Attract The Audience It Deserves

This may be my favorite cartoon ever. The marvelous webcomic XKCD explains in one simple diagram what is wrong with most websites: They aren’t about what the users want.

Webcomic XKCD explains why most sites fail to serve their intended users.

 

Has this always been so? In 1981’s “The Soul of a New Machine,” Pulitzer-Prize winner Tracy Kidder describes an engineer examining Digital Equipment Corp’s new computer and seeing the flaws, not just of the computer, but of the entire company’s corporate organization:

“Looking into the VAX, West had imagined he saw a diagram of DEC’s corporate organization….The machine expressed that phenomenally successful company’s cautious, bureaucratic style. ”

Once the pinnacle of digital success, DEC is long gone, absorbed first by Compaq, swallowed in turn by HP.

The decisions an organization makes when creating a product reflect its structure. And it is common for internally-focused groups to unconsciously reflect this —  essentially treating the organization as the end-user, instead of the intended audience.

 

via XKCD.com (used under Creative Commons 2.5)

Filed Under: Audience Development, Digital Management, Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: SEO For Editors

Charlie Rogers Charlie Rogers

Chief content officer, editor-in-chief, managing editor, launch manager, and product strategist on dozens of digital ventures, for companies including NBC, Conde Nast, Time Warner, Martha Stewart and Random House.
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