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Comment by robertAngst | Hacker News Reader

> Focus on your content and your visitors will enjoy you and your website. Focus on decoration

Yeah its time for that person to take a marketing class.

Despite my website having best-in-class content, it took a custom wordpress theme for people to begin taking it seriously/sharing. My conversion doubled overnight.

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What's your site's topic? Is your site about sharing information or making money from one-time visitors?

Sharing information, google calories per dollar, thats the site.

It sounds like you applied styling to improve your conversion rates

> Despite my website having best-in-class content...

That's quite a claim. I'm not sure which website is your's so I can't dispute it. Personally, I frequent websites with higher quality content and avoid "gotta-sell-you-something" sites.

Also, as another commentor mentioned: > It sounds like you applied styling to improve your conversion rates

Please don't encourage people taking marketing classes. The internet needs less advertising not more.

Marketing != advertising

Call it what you want, it's all annoying to the person that received it.

This conversation is about the design of websites, which are pieces of marketing you only receive if you request one.

Are you annoyed that you just received Hackers News, which is a piece of marketing for Ycombinator?

Sites are not marketing, they are the shop itsself in most cases.

The point is that advertising is a subset of marketing, not another name for the same thing. In addition to advertising, marketing includes building websites and providing information, research to determine market demand, and determining optimal pricing.

Surely if companies all dropped their marketing budgets to 0, they will increase the profits enormously and provide way more value to their customers! They dont understand anything!!

That would be a wonderful world to live in. I can seek out the services/products I want and not have them thrust on me. Sounds like a win.

Yes, its called the 1900's, it was great.

People tried to sell just as much back then. But they were only about 2billion so the average person didnt have to wade through a swamp of thirsty advertising 24/7. Maybe the whole thing is unsustainable, maybe we can control ourselves, maybe we are better that bacteria in a closed system that multiply untill they kill themselves

"But that's the last 2 generations did things, I can't possibly imagine any other way for life to work"

Do the words "provide value" make anyone else puke in their mouth a little bit?

Who is against value??? What do you even mean??

I'm not against value, I'm against the term "provide value" because (to me, and I'm probably a huge minority in HN) it is a term loaded with capitalist meanings.

We don't talk about providing value in academia, I assume they don't talk about providing value in philanthropic organizations or political movements. Whenever I hear the term it essentially means "to make money".

I appreciate that this is my personal interpretation of this though

> We don't talk about providing value in academia

I am not surprised. The requirement to provide value in academia would go very much against getting any funding for it.

Good point. I will correct the above statement:

Please don't encourage people taking advertising classes. The internet needs less marketing not more.

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