I had this idea to see what would happen if I put up a splash page on our web design business website, that was less than politically correct in regards to business to customer relations. More a a rant from me regarding all the “interesting” sales leads that come through our website.
So it started in jest and I was just going to leave it up for day.. but I forgot about it. And I remembered the day after when I was reviewing traffic/analytic stats. To my amazment some interesting trends appears.. such as pages/visit actually climbed for Google traffic, yet the bottom fell out of pages/visit for Yahoo traffic.
So this has now become an unscientific experiment for me. I think I will finish the week out with the “get lost” copy.. and then net week try some super gushy we “we love our clients” copy.. and see what happens then. I will post some charts and whizbang graphs after I compile the data.
The humor is not lost on some, this morning I got the first flame mails, allow me to share:
Your Name: Johnny
Email: **********@hotmail.com
Phone: As if
Message:I can’t believe how badly written and unprofessional this whole website is. It’s like, you’re beyond a geek and despite your ability to design websites (no doubt the result of hours of fully exploring your total inability to socialise) you have set out to appeal to your adolescent friends’ sense of humor rather than clients. It tells me two things. 1 – You are geeky but stupid. 2 – All your friends are too.
Best regards,
Self made millionaire website developer (without even needing a promotional website which embarrasses me).
Johnny uses hotmail which calls into question his millionaire status.
Your Name: Harry
Email: ***********@gmail.com
Phone:
Message:I was looking for a web designer but your message on the first page put me off you, far too arrogant!
Also, if you are a good web designer why is your site so bad? Look at the font size of your sales pitc on the home page, lot of good thats going to do when no one can read it!
The offending copy Harry speaks of:
To Harry and Johnny’s credit they both shared thier thoughts within seconds of each other. Harry at April 18, 2008 4:57:14 AM GMT-07:00 and Johnny at April 18, 2008 4:58:22 AM GMT-07:00. Amazing how great minds think alike at the same time.
Tune in next week for Adventures in Copyrighting part deux.
hilarious! as an aside, you’d be suprised how many self-made millionaires use hotmail. how else would they feel comfortable emailing me?
be very interested in hearing how your research pans out.
I think it is clever and kind of funny as a rant, but I am not sure that that i something that i would want to show to potential clients. I don’t think that if i would write a scathing email even if I were a potential client. I would just not click through.
Hotmail or not, saying that you are a millionaire doesn’t really give you credibility.
oh how i love the “partner” question – that’s my favorite email to not return