Tim Bray wrote an excellent piece this morning, on a number of topics - but I especially liked this point about websites:

The first generation of commercial Web sites (except maybe Yahoo!) was managed by people who didn’t understand the Web, and they developed this deeply pernicious notion of “stickiness”; a successful site was one that was hard to leave. I can remember this horrible magazine ad from, I think, RealAudio, with an actual picture of people stuck to a sphere representing a Web site. Gack.

That idea isn't dead. There are tons of web consultants floating around who will try to sell you the same message. While their at it, they'll go on and on about the importance of having lots of verbiage so that you can hit all the right keywords in a game of Google Bingo.

The reality is simpler. You need a simple, easy to navigate site that lets people get to the information they want fast. As yourself this: You have a person visiting your site, because they might want to buy something you sell. They see a reference to a white paper or screencast that looks interesting, so they follow the link. The sticky advocates will tell you to drop in a form, so that you get a "lead" for your sales staff. Those advocates are wrong. The form will drive away a large percentage of the people who see it, including ones who would have read the paper and found something interesting.

There's also a theory that selling "B to B" (business to business) is very, very different from selling "B to C" (business to consumer). Here's the thing: it's not. In either case, you have to convince the person who will actually use the service or good that they want it. In the B to C case, that's enough, while in the B to B case, the person you sell has to then sell their management (the people with spend authority). This is where most mistakes are made: web marketers like to think they are talking to this latter group with spending authority, but they mostly aren't. They are mostly talking to the end users, who are happy to make the case for your product - if you let them. Make it hard for them to get information, and they'll go elsewhere, where it's easy.

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