[thelist] Old Browsers old Software, cut bait and move on.

[Martin]

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Brian King wrote on 11/7/01 8:46 pm

>Dear Martin,
>	You sincerely strike me as on of those, "I don't have it so no one else
>can", type of people. 

Nup. Just learned the hard way from clients who really want to
know the business benefits - they're very large sums of money for
me, even more for the systems which are put in place out of my
work, so it's only right they ask the hard questions.

>>only upgrading it following a thorough cost/benefit review.
>Let's see you sit in a corporate meeting and quantify efficiency gains due
>to an upgrade. 

See this T-shirt...

>Pretty tough to do, especially in the face of people who only
>want to talk about real dollars and examples of those who have already done
>it before.  Immediately places you in a position of sloppy seconds.

What does? Being able to answer the questions, or not being able to
answer the questions? Because make no mistake, the questions will be 
asked.

>>reducing the budgets for;
>* Ongoing tech support
>One real reason E-commerce sites fail, ex. Etoys etc. .  No or lack of
>consumer support or response to consumer problems is cited as a major factor
>consumers refuse to do business with online companies.

I doubt whether eToys were responsible for troubleshooting PCs
in every school and library. Good tech support is good. Causing extra
work for tech support is bad, particularly where the TS budget is
non-stretchable.

>>If you're working on a site with a tight
>>business case, losing 10% of your users without good reason could
>>be the difference between substantial profit or loss.
>My point exactly.  Catering to cross platforming instead of audience can
>cost you business.  

The closest to a technically homogenous audience I've seen was on an
Intranet. If you want to lose 10% of your customers just because a small
amount of extra HTML (or a small amount of time thinking about how
you could do this without dual versioning) is 'too much work', then fine.
The benefits case doesn't stack up, the project doesn't go ahead, you 
don't
get the work.

And yes, I've lost work this way in the past. But it very quickly stopped
happening.

>Problem is, being the geeky single focused developer you
>are, 

Funny, I thought I was a CRM consultant wanting demonstrate business
benefits. Sorry, my mistake.

>>The most effective sites targeting teenage
>>and young adult consumers know damn well that the audience sees
>>right through 'flashy'.
>Tell that to your psychiatrist.  He will laugh in your face. Everyone is
>attracted to shiny objects.  

Only on the most naive level. Add a bit of sociology and anything beyond
a foundation course in Psychology and it's actually different.

You'll be saying that naked people is the only way to sell stuff next...

>That's why sportcars cost more than family sedans.  

Motor industry marketeers wouldn't agree.


>>So why would I hire you? How would you add value to my proposition?
>>What's the evidence that not coding for older technology helps my
>>bottom line, rather than supporting your work-aversion?

>Trust me, with your vision of Technology and IT, I wouldn't grace your
>presence with my resume.  

Don't want to work on high-profile brands where a web design budget of
US$160k is considered 'small'?

Cheers
Martin

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email: martin at easyweb.co.uk             PGP ID: 0xA835CCCB
       martin at members.evolt.org      snailmail: 30 Shandon Place
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