Potential customers increasingly obtain information from websites and data sheets. If anything goes wrong here, it is very difficult to repair this later during the personal contact. The Internet has changed a lot of things: not only the technical processes to supply information, but also in terms of user behavior. For example, these days many people first obtain information about a company by looking at its website, often before establishing initial contact. 

People like obtaining specific technical information there rather than going through the bother of phoning or e-mailing the company, which can also have the disadvantage of triggering a flood of advertisements for years to come. Without the company that is being inspected being able to follow it up, customers gain an important impression of the company in general, its products and the level of competency, efficiency and trustworthiness.

It is thus all the more surprising to realize just how much goes wrong in this area. Some typical problems are described here:

• Often the perspective of the presentation takes no account of the customers' information requirements or possible level of knowledge. Visitors to the site are asked to make a choice based on made-up names or type abbreviations, which then provide them with more information although they often have no idea what it is all about. This generally causes frustration and leads to information gaps.
• The web technology does not work or it is difficult to navigate within the website. Sometimes a search function cannot even provide suitable results for a specific product name that is entered. Often it is not even clear what types of pages have to be searched. Product information, press releases or all available pages? Links often lead nowhere, although this could be easily recognized with automated methods. And the site takes too long to load if the CMS has to compile every page from numerous databases, which quickly overloads the server. Interestingly, the search engine robots often cannot handle this, which produces disappointing search engine rankings for the site.
• The product information on offer is often put together with very little care. Many specifications are so incorrect that an expert could easily assume that the company is incompetent – which also undermines trust in the quality of the products and the associated services. For example a statement such as "beam position stability: < 0.15 mrad" leaves many questions unanswered: full angle or deviation from the reference position? Maximum value or average (perhaps r.m.s.)? Does this include short-term (very frequent) fluctuations and/or long-term drift? Under what conditions does the specification apply? Without vibration and at a constant temperature or in the entire specified temperature range? If you don't know all of this, the specification is completely useless and tells you more about the source than about the respective laser.

It is obvious that the nicest suits and demo objects that are later presented at the trade show will have difficulty correcting the bad impressions gained from the websites and data sheets. The difficulty is that the insiders are usually technicians with too little understanding of potential customers or are advertising professionals with absolutely no eye for incorrect technical information. The answer is to employ an external expert with the necessary technical knowledge who also has a horizon outside the company.


Author
Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta, RP Photonics Consulting GmbH
Internet: http://www.rp-photonics.com/
Dr. Paschotta is an expert in lasers and amplifiers, non-linear optics, fiber optics and ultra-short laser pulses. With his company, RP Photonics Consulting GmbH, he supports companies in Laser technology and photonics with product designs, feasibility studies, independent analyses and customized training courses.