Turns out we’ve been ‘converting’ users since way before the web came along
About a year back, I pitched a concept to the Marketing Director at a very large retailer.
A very, very large retailer with some very successful brands.
He admitted he didn’t know much about the web and he listened to my pitch; and then he dissected it.
To the point of destroying it.
Whoa.
He was very pleasant about the whole thing and he acknowledged that what I presented was fine on many levels, though he explained that traditional retailing didn’t actually plug perfectly into online, when you added retailer buyers, egos and the rest.
In fact, when 95% of what he sold was through stores, online was a hard sell and one didn’t work as easily as I assumed.
He then took me through how retail ‘really’ worked at the store level.
Why they did the things they did.
Why wine or food or cushions were as they put them.
And why the Internet had a lot to learn.
I didn’t and couldn’t agree more.
A blog I read this evening on age old principals in retailer really is one of the better and more conclusive I’ve read in a while.
It really is a good read.
Essentially, that whilst we might have all sorts of gizmos and technologies at our disposal to trap and conjure users, age old principals apply.
You’re selling.
It certainly reinforces the benefits of good and provocative copy and some clever tricks in-between.
Get retailing.
