Field of Dreams: Build It and They Will Come
Businesses spend much of their time trying to attract customers to their web site. Not giving much thought to what will happen when they get there.
Often spending thousands of pounds (dollars) on design, paying little attention to the user experience or content.
A “Field of Dreams” attitude still exists amongst many business men and women when it comes to the web. Rational, intelligent people loose all sense of business acumen when it comes to transferring their skills to the online world.
The thought of technology somehow clouds their judgement. Suddenly they make irrational decisions, expect disproportionate returns and wonder why their new creation is not an overnight success.
In reality there are few overnight successes online, or true garage start-ups; Amazon spent 7 years in the red posting losses of millions of dollars each year until it finally made a profit in 2002.
Mark Zuckerberg may have been a student when he came up with the idea of Facebook, but he was a intelligent enough to get a place in Harvard University.
Even Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar was no slouch when it came to business, a computer science graduate, formerly working as a programmer for an Apple subsidiary and starting his e-commerce software company in the early 90’s.
The same principals apply online as they do offline, and are clearly outlined in this beautiful infographic from Inbound Marketing experts Impact Branding and Design:
