Most of the people who are on your website know what they want. It’s not a matter of converting them but rather of helping them to quickly do what they came to your website to do. Great websites are DO websites. With its large banners and pretty pictures, homepage marketing has largely failed. Where web marketing is really at is at the bottom of the product page, focused on customer behavior, on helping the customer move quickly and easily to the next step.

When Cisco, Microsoft or IBM need help in managing their websites, they turn to Gerry McGovern. Gerry is the founder and CEO of Customer Carewords. He is widely regarded as the number one worldwide authority on helping large organizations create more customer-focused websites. This is achieved through a unique management model that Gerry has developed called Top Task Management.

Gerry has spoken, written and consulted extensively on web content management issues since 1994. His new book, The Stranger’s Long Neck: How to Deliver What Your Customers Really Want Online, was published in 2010.

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 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 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 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.