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Websites: It's The Experience Stupid
By Jerry Bader (c) 2007

The other day I picked up a book that was sitting on my night
table for over a year. It's just a small book and seemed like
an easy read, perfect for falling sleep. It was called, "The
Invisible Touch" by Harry Beckwith. Mr. Beckwith has written
several books and is an expert on positioning, branding, and
client relations. I wasn't sure if I was going to bother
reading it or not, but after looking at the introduction I was
hooked. This guy knew what he was talking about; he must because
I agreed with most everything he said. That surely makes him an
expert, at least in my eyes. Anyway, he tells a story about
going to a concert for one of his favorite artists, a Laura
Nyro. He purchased her recordings and loved them for their
exquisite sound and her technical playing ability but the
concert was a disaster.

Ms. Nyro performed with her usual skill and precision, but she
never once looked at the audience, preferring instead to sit at
the piano staring offstage while she played. Each song was
preceded by a perfunctory introduction that was barely addressed
to the audience. Needless to say, Harry was disappointed, as you
can imagine anyone would be.

The Difference Between Products and Services

The point of the story Harry Beckwith was making was that there
is a big difference between products and services. To quote from
his book, "Products are made; services are delivered. Products
are used; services are experienced." In this case, recordings
are products and concerts are services. This got me thinking of
my own experience, perhaps not quite so genteel as Mr.
Beckwith's but instructional, nevertheless.

Marketing Is Creating Memorable Experiences

When I was a young man, just after graduating from College in
New England, I started working in the family business. My father
exiled me to the shipping department where he figured my newly
earned business degree wouldn't get the company in too much
trouble. One day he came out from his office to the plant floor
where I worked and said, "Come on, let's go to lunch." My
father knew I never eat lunch so this was a special moment, as
he never bothered asking me to lunch at work. Perhaps this was
the day that I would finally be allowed into the ranks of real
businessmen who worked in the office and wore ties to work.

As we got into the car I asked where we were going, to which he
answered, "The Dirty Bagel." He looked over at me and saw me
roll my eyes and grunt in disgust. Of course I knew the place he
was taking me. Every businessman in Toronto who worked in the
garment district knew "The Dirty Bagel." It was a legend more
than a restaurant.

Its real name was just "The Bagel" but everybody called it
"The Dirty Bagel" to distinguish it from another uptown,
neighborhood place where the same businessmen eat breakfast on
the weekends and where their wives lunched after shopping. Back
then it was rare for upper middle class women to work, so they
shopped and ate lunch when they weren't taking the kids to the
dentist or hockey practice.

"The Dirty Bagel" and the "The Bagel" both served the same
kind of food, simple meals, bagels and coffee. The downtown
version was old, grimy, and well worn, while the uptown version
was new, well lit, and well ... cleaner. The waitresses in the
new place were middle-aged, chewed gum, had pencils stuck behind
their ears and called everyone "Hon." The waitresses in the
downtown version were old, actually ancient, spoke with thick
European accents, and were just plain nasty. If you asked for an
extra pad of butter or more cream for your coffee, instead of
getting a "Sure thing Hon" you were more likely to hear something
like, "Sophia, listen to Mr. Big Shot, he wants more butter. Hope
he knows a good heart doctor..." and as she turned to leave you
probably over-heard some Yiddish profanity under her breath.

Now you may be thinking, why would a bunch of rich, privileged
businessmen who owned their own businesses, wore expensive silk
and mohair suits, and drove Lincoln Continentals, put-up with
nasty old ladies who tossed the food on the table and treated
you like you were in prison? At least that's what I wanted to
know.

On this particular occasion, the food arrived skidding across
the table like a curling stone looking for the button (that's
the red center of the bull's eye for the uninitiated). After
mopping-up the spilled coffee and reassembling my bagel and egg
salad, I asked my father, "Why on earth do you come here, the
place is old, the waitresses are nasty, and the food is
something you could brown bag?" My father looked at me, smiled
and said, "It's for the 'experience." And then he took a
bite out of his giant twister bagel and winked.

These businessmen were old school, not an MBA in the bunch. They
survived the Depression and built substantial businesses with
little or no formal business education in conditions that were
quite frankly antagonistic. No matter how successful they
became, they always remembered where they came from and what was
important. These men were characters, who built their businesses
by force of personality and shrewd decision-making. "The Dirty
Bagel" offered these men an experience that kept them grounded
and reminded them how they got to be successful.

Of all the lessons I've learned about business and marketing
over the years, this was probably one of the most important.
It's about the experience stupid!

If Your Website Isn't An Experience, What Is It?

Today every business has a website but so many are sterile,
impersonal and lack any kind of meaningful experience for the
visitor. Businesses spend so much time worrying about driving
traffic to their websites that they forget what happens when
people arrive.

If you provide your website audience with an experience, it is
something your competition can't appropriate. On the other
hand, if all you're providing is a commodity, it's something
somebody else will eventually provide cheaper and faster in
which case you may end up eating at your own version of "The
Dirty Bagel" and not because you want to remind yourself where
you came from, but rather where you're going.
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Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design
firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and
http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com
or telephone (905) 764-1246.
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