My wife doesn’t like shopping with me - she says it embarrasses her. Why? Because I do not like retail staff that sniffily enquire, “May I help you, sir?” (Mind you, physiotherapists must be overjoyed at the five-foot nothings who try to look down their noses at six-foot somethings).

My usual retort to this asinine question, which has the staff looking for the nearest store detective or exit, is something along the lines of “no, I’ve been like this for years,” or, “no, I’m quite all right, my minder is not far away.”

Quite a few Web developers adopt the same attitude as these shop staff. This morning I was reminded of this when trying to access a BIG Web site that promptly locked up my browser and had to be dealt to with by Ctrl+Alt+Del.

You see, I use Mozilla in preference to anything else, but unfortunately I’m a consumer. Web Developers, like the shop staff, either don’t like or don’t know what a consumer is or how to approach them. Moreover, they don’t seem to know about Mozilla either, and very often I get the sniffy “Your browser doesn’t support X.”

Well folks, just like the shop staff who don’t know how to engage a customer (the consumer) in conversation, those Web developers who don’t know how to engage the consumer are similarly losing customers. Conversion is not just confined to churches, it occurs when a visitor to a Web site is convinced to take specific action by the interesting ‘conversation’ on a Web site. The sort of action that makes the client shout ‘Alleluia!’

And, if your clients aren’t shouting ‘Alleluia,’ brothers and sisters, then there’s trouble in River City. [Ted Fox]