Gerry McGovern

Founder & CEO of Customer Carewords

Worldwide authority on increasing web satisfaction by managing customer tasks

Gerry McGovern speaker, keynote speech
English

Gerry McGovern is the founder and CEO of Customer Carewords. He is widely regarded as the worldwide authority on increasing web satisfaction by managing customer tasks. Gerry McGovern has spoken, written and consulted extensively on web content management issues since 1994. His latest book, The Stranger’s Long Neck: How to Deliver What Your Customers Really Want Online, was published in 2010 by A & C Black.

In 2006, The Irish Times described him as one of five visionaries who had had a major impact on the development of the Web. (The other four were Tim O’Reilly, Vint Cerf, Tim Berners-Lee, and Nicholas Negroponte.) In 2006, he received the Educational Contribution award from the Irish Internet Association.

In 2004, he was included in the 100 most influential figures in e-commerce in the UK and Ireland, as part of “An Internet Decade”, which was organized by NOP World and E-Consultancy. In 2000, he received the Web Ireland Internet Industry Person of the Year award. He is a founding member of the Irish Internet Association and the Content Management Professionals Association.

Gerry McGovern has written four books. In 1999, Gerry published The Caring Economy (Blackhall Publishing), which was voted 25th out of the top 50 new economy books by Middleton/Capstone. In 2001, he published two books with Financial Times Prentice Hall, entitled: Content Critical and The Web Content Style Guide. Design Research News stated that Content Critical “should be on the reading list of every course in Web design.” Knowledge Management Review described it as a “bible” of content management.

In 2006, he published Killer Web Content (Bloomsbury / A&C Black). Suzanne Sowinska, Manager, Content Publishing Excellence, Microsoft Corporation described it as “essential reading”. Bev Godwin, Director, FirstGov.gov: The U.S. Government’s Official Web Portal, said about the book: “Genius! Gerry McGovern gets it! If you read ONE book on managing a Web site, this is it.”

Gerry McGovern has appeared on BBC, CNN and CNBC television, partaken in various radio shows, and featured in numerous print media publications. Gerry has been nominated as best overall speaker at numerous conferences. He has spoken about content management at hundreds of conferences and workshops in 35 countries.

Previously, he was founder and CEO of Nua, a developer of content management software and solutions. In 1996, Nua received the Best Overall World Wide Web Business Achievement award from the European Union.

Since 1996, Gerry McGovern has written New Thinking, a weekly email newsletter focusing on best practice in managing customer-centric, task-focused websites.

Gerry holds a Management Science degree from Trinity College, Dublin, and lives in Dublin, Ireland.

Gerry McGovern is a truly ‘amazing’ speaker—passionate and profound, hilarious and enlightening. A golden-tongued orator whose every utterance merits quotation, and a lone rational voice in a wilderness of self-defeating, self-interest and inverse prioritization. He fights a never-ending battle to bring reason and utility to our websites by focusing relentlessly on your user’s most important tasks.

"The Long Neck Versus the Long Tail"

Designing for trust

Brand delusion and how to overcome it

Designing for the Millennial Generation Web

How Not To Manage Search

Making the Digital Business Case to Senior Management

Building the business case for online self-service

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

The long-awaited new title from THE corporate expert on building the right web presence to drive sales!

In an age that is exploding with information, it's now critically important for companies to identify what truly matters on their Web site. The web customer is a "stranger" online to web teams who must work in a medium where it is very difficult to know who is clicking around on your site. Every Web site has a "long neck" or a small set of tasks that are very important to its customers. If you don't make these tasks easy and fast to complete, your customers will go to your competition. This book will give you practical advice and case studies on how to tune in effectively to deliver precisely what your web customers want to make the sale!

Gerry McGovern is widely regarded as the number one worldwide authority on managing web content as a business asset. Named as one of the 100 most influential figures in e-commerce in the UK and Ireland, he has appeared on CNN , CNBC and BBC television and has been featured in numerous print media publications.

Top 5 Tips for Improving Your Website by Gerry McGovern

1. On the Web, content may be king but the customer is dictator. There's one word to describe the web customer: IMPATIENT.
2. Traditional marketing and communication is about GETTING ATTENTION. Web marketing and communication is about PAYING ATTENTION. When customers are at your website you already have their attention. Don't waste their time by telling them things they already know.
3. Every website has a small set of top tasks what I call the "long neck" that customers expect to complete quickly and easily. The customers' top tasks are often not what the organisation thinks they are--or wants them to be!
4. The BIGGEST key to website improvement and efficiency of "long neck" consumer tasks is most often overlooked: companies must do rigorous, methodical and continuous testing! Great web management is based on facts about your consumers, not opinions offered by the smartest people in your company.
5. The Web is about doing, not talking about doing. A great website puts task-completion features on the homepage. In Web 1.0 you saw a picture of a hotel room on the homepage of a hotel website. Now, you book your room on the homepage.

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

Killer Web Content: Make the Sale, Deliver the Service, Build the Brand

On the Internet, if you're not read, you're dead. Written by an internationally-acclaimed specialist in this field, Killer Web Content gives you the strategies and practical techniques you need to get the very best out of your Web content. Accessible, concise and practical, it will make your website really work for you.


This book helps readers to: - provide visitors to their website with the right content at just the right time - write compelling Web content that users really respond to and want more of - make sure their website has the best possible chance of getting into the first page of search results - understand the benefits of blogs, RSS, and e-mail newsletters


Web content is an increasingly important asset. It helps sell
products and deliver services. From travel companies to software
companies, from universities to governments, it's something that has to
be got right.

Killer Web Content: Make the Sale, Deliver the Service, Build the Brand

Content Critical: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through High-Quality Web Content

In the age of information overload and content glut, how do you get people to read what¿s on your website?

The modern world runs on content. And the Web is fast becoming the medium of choice for content delivery. Increasingly business is about getting the right content to the right person at the right time ¿ and making a profit out of it. Content is critical. Content Critical will change the way you think about the Web. If part of your job involves writing original content to be placed on the Web ¿ product support material, a marketing pitch, or internal communication ¿ you¿re part of a publishing process. Think of your website as a publication and it all begins to make a lot of sense. Think of the person who visits your website as a reader and your objectives become clearer. Content Critical explains the theory and practice of producing reader-focussed, compelling content. It includes highly detailed, practical advice about what it takes to build a professional, content-oriented website, including classification, navigation, search and content layout. It shows you how to organize a publishing team and how to create a web publishing strategy.Discover what high-quality content really is, and learn how to create it.Content Critical will help you:

discover the key skills required to write compelling content for the Web
understand the rules of publishing content online
know how to appeal to your online readers
develop an effective Internet communications strategy
build publishing skills within your organization.

Content Critical: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through High-Quality Web Content