Customer Reviews

The Stranger's Long Neck: How to Deliver What Your Customers Really Want Online

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My review attempts to focus narrowly on this book and how it relates to my internet website only. I state this because there are so many tangents that a person can follow from Gerry's thinking, from political and sociological, from commercial to one's personal life. To me, the core concept is a multi-faceted prism through which I now view many aspects of life. I'm not sure Gerry realizes the potential applications of his thinking, but that's good. "The Stranger's Long Neck" is about website success and failure - how to achieve the former and minimize the latter.

I read Gerry's (1st?) book "Killer Content" several times, over a year ago. His core concept fascinated me and resonated with my beliefs, but I still couldn't figure out how to apply them to my small B2B brochure-type website. I worked and reworked a new home page design with my web designer many times over the past year but couldn't hit my target. I knew I didn't have killer content so we never got past changing graphics and navigation and keywords, blah, blah, blase. Finally decided that Gerry's concepts were for the big boys and didn't apply to a 5-7 page site. So nothing was ever settled - until a few days ago when "The Stranger's Long Neck" arrived by mail.

Overall, it's still aimed at really big budget websites, and I skimmed quickly over the data and statistics with blurry eyes. But something big happened to little-old-me when I acted on one of his tips. I discovered that even my little company had top tasks. They finally took a distinct shape that I could characterize as my company's long neck. I was then able to identify and discard the tiny tasks. Now I'm focusing successfully on the second step, as important as the first, creating the right links for visitors' successful completion of the top tasks. This is, as Gerry warns, hard and somewhat boring work, psychological not technological. But what a great feeling when that light bulb finally flips on. The rewards, until you achieve them, are inconceivable, literally.

My industry is highly competitive and 100% of my competitors' websites are failures, when measured against Gerry's work. I am going to have one of the first really small websites utilizing long neck strategies. I'm considering getting into the website design business due to the tremendous power I feel as a result of my realizations. Every site I visit now, I look at as if through Gerry's eyes. And I see enormous opportunity to help small businesses develop websites that really "do" work for them.

Here's the payoff for me from this book. Important to understand that I run a two person B2B service business with billing of under $200k annually. Ironically, 75% of the words and characters on the pages of "The Stranger's Long Neck" seemingly, didn't apply to me, and seemingly, weren't helpful, so you could say that "The Stranger's Long Neck" had a long tail for me. However, like watching a foreign film without subtitles, somehow I "got" the story and both my heart and mind were touched. "The Stranger's Long Neck" indeed does have a long neck, even for me.

Buy this book with it's companion, "Killer Content", also by Gerry McGovern. "Killer Content" wired the bulb. This book flipped the switch to "ON". Don't give up, and don't be put off by the illusory disconnect between the size and type of your project to the ones illustrated in these two books. If you don't get it first time, wait some time and then re-read. There's something of great value for every English reading human being in each of these books.

Anyone who has ever tried to persuade management or website content owners that "less is more" when it comes to website content will love this book. The Stranger's Long Neck provides a framework for understanding your users, the reasons they visit your website, and how you can succeed in meeting their expectations. Like Gerry's previous book, Killer Web Content, this one is filled with practical advice and written in simple, straightforward terms. Gerry has changed the way I think about websites and web content.

I attended a Gerry McGovern master class in 2003 and I've been a subscriber to his weekly newsletter since then. I have read and continue to read every one of his books. It is absolutely amazing to me that after all that, his latest book is full of new insights and new methods, all with his trademark relentless focus on users and their needs. There is no substitute for Gerry's long experience in pinpointing what customers want and proving it through hard facts and figures, not wishful thinking. One constant through Gerry's work is the notion of continuous improvement. He follows his own advice with this book. If you think you know everything that Gerry has to say, think again. Buy this book. In no time, you'll have it dog-eared and tagged with notes. But the best part is, if you put into practice what he says, you'll have happier customers.

Gerry was so on target in The Stranger's Long Neck that I couldn't put this book down. The "findability" factor to what visitors to the Web are seeking and whether they can easily and quickly achieve their tasks has been long overlooked in our daily rushes to publish to the Web. This book will go a long way in helping validate the metrics we have collected and hopefully will help us get the resources to dive in more deeply so we can applyt best practice solutions.

Anyone responsible for managing a Web site or Intranet should read this book if they value the opinions of their customers. Gerry McGovern proposes that every site has a number of top tasks that account for a disproportionately high amount of activity, and it is critically important that they are properly identified and managed. The most important tasks (those in the `Long Neck') must be prioritized, and the smaller ones pushed to the background. In other words, there must be a relentless focus on managing what matters most to customers.

McGovern outlines the steps needed to work out what the top tasks are for any Web site or Intranet. Facts outweigh opinion when it comes to deciding what content to include and how the site navigation and linking systems help people find it, and these facts can be ascertained using a data-driven methodology. The examples in the book show how various organizations implemented the top task approach and changed site elements (such as navigation menus, home pages and link labeling) based on the results.

The book focuses not on technology and visual design but on the process by which companies can establish what their customers really want to do online. As such, the book is useful regardless of the size of the Web site or intranet, the audience it serves or the type of content it contains.

Once the central message of the book becomes clear, you'll never approach the design of a Web site or intranet the same way again. This task-based approach can and should be applied by anyone that puts the needs of customers front and center.

I have just completed my reading of this excellent, clear, shiny book; it has the grace and ability to explain to you even not so simple concepts and tasks in a very immediate and simple way; I think I have learned a lot about web management and the importance of identifying the top tasks; I am looking forward to applying the methodology to one of my customers; I hope it will be successful:)

Okay, that's a hokey title, but this book is truly worth both buying (yes, you will look cooler having it on your bookshelf or Kindle) and more importantly, reading. So much common sense here, but also insights into finding your customer's top tasks in a way that everyone would say can't work, but amazingly, it does.

After reading the book I tried Gerry's top task identification methods for a client of mine. Initially there was some push back on the exercise, but with a little tweaking, it worked great and we are so excited to have a better picture of what our client's customers need. Now we can work on designing the website in a way to meet those top task needs. Back to the book for more wisdom!

Thanks, Gerry, for sharing your methods.

Gerry McGovern has an engaging, straight-forward style, and I appreciate the simple elegance of the top-task approach he recommends in this guide. He provides enough detail for imitation, so it's an ideal addition to a project leader's bag of tricks.

Gerry's message is simple and makes total sense. He goes into a lot of detail on identifying top tasks and the process, which we've all heard before. The first bit is kind of rehashing what he always says but the middle part has all the details you will need to conduct a top task assessment.

All marketing people who have been thrown into managing their company's web presence should read - not just web content and devs! People come to your website TO DO SOMETHING. His message might get old to some who've heard it before, but yet why are so many websites still doing it wrong?

Having been a fan of Gerry's trainings, and his previous book titled "Killer Web Content", I was eager to see what "new" things came in this book. I expected it to be a rehash, but it actually brought new and updated insights to his ideas.

This book adds significantly to "Killer Web Content", by taking the ideas in the first book and adding the connections. Taken together, this information can certainly help any website publisher to improve their site to deliver what the customer really wants, in the shortest amount of time, and make it searchable.

The idea of "top task management" was foreign to the company I work for, and was met with great resistance. I often heard "we know what customers want", but through these books, and subsequently running a Customer Carewords study, we found that we really had no clue. Little tips Gerry gives in his books make all the difference. We have iteratively added little things one at a time, and seen significant increase in customer satisfaction. This book will help you examine such things as the graphics on your site, whether the important things highlighted and findable by customers, are you producing the right content, or even if you are producing too much.

The key thing to remember when reading these books is that it is not meant to give you a magic formula for an entire website revamp. It gives you the keys to iteratively improve your site, measure the improvement, and to readjust again.

Great reading which no website publisher should be without.