How Not to Market: Imitate Opera.
June 16, 2011
What you are about to see is dumb. Really, truly dumb.
Opera offers a Web browser in competition with Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google: giants. It took on the biggest companies that offer their products for free. You can't beat "free" with price competition. You can beat it only with performance and ease of use.
Next, they created a page for downloading their program. Here, we see this.
They provide a partial image of the pop-up box that offers a choice: Run or Save. The screen tells us to click Run.
With Mizilla Firefox, the pop-up box offers only two choices: Save File or Cancel.
Dumb. Really, truly dumb.
When you click Save File, the program downloads, and the download screen goes blank. It just sits there: blank. You have to know what to do next. But there are no instructions for what to do next.
Is this stupid? You bet it is!
How did this happen? Simple. There is no rule in the manual of procedures (if any) that says: "No coding change is to be implemented until the person in charge in writing instructions has authorized it."
The rule book should include instructions for all rival versions. From a marketing standpoint, this is obvious. But it was not done.
"Cross-departmental coordination? That's not the way we do things around here."
Techies are arrogant. "Should we beta-test our instructions? No need. We know they work. After all, we coded them, and we don't make mistakes."
These people have taken on the three biggest Web browsers. How smart is that? Then they have provided inaccurate instructions. The user has to know what to do next. He probably doesn't.
Techies don't think the way marketers do. Marketers think, "Test it to make sure every step is either automatic or else intuitive. There is money on the line." This is not the techie's attitude.
Marketers make a lot of money. Techies don't. This is why.