Stop Stuffing “You Know What” Into Your Business Website
Gotta, wanna, coulda, shoulda. Your business website is often your first impression on potential clients and customers. (No pressure or anything.)
When you talk to designers and marketers about creating it, you’re going to hear a lot of things you “gotta” do and you’ll probably make a list of things you “wanna” do. But when it’s all said and done, many business owners end up looking back at the things they “coulda” done or “shoulda” done.
That’s why we encourage people to take a step back to the basics. Your company’s website should sound, look and act like your best salesperson. It breaks down into three pieces:
1. The message or text
2. The look or design aesthetic
3. The usability and navigation
Looking at the first piece, the text, we often find companies forget to speak to their customers. You’re so knowledgeable about your area of expertise, it’s easy to write words that new prospects may find unfamiliar or confusing.
The text of your site should answer this for the customer: “What’s in it for me?” They should also avoid jargon or overwhelm the reader with unnecessary detail about a product or service. In other words, keep it simple.
On the next piece, the appearance, aim for clean and uncomplicated. Otherwise it looks like you’re trying to squeeze 10 pounds of you know what into a 5-pound bag.
In other words, keep it simple. (Yes, we said that already with the text. Noticing a trend here?) We need to resist the urge to throw everything out on to the home page of a website. A visitor should look at the site and know it was designed by a professional designer, not a programmer.
Where the programmer comes into play is in that third piece, the usability and navigation of the site. The home page should limit the user’s choices. Sites with too many possibilities often overwhelm visitors, causing them to leave quickly.
The site should also present easy choices for navigation that are intuitive and make it easy to get back to start. (Hmmm … dare we say it again? Keep it simple.)
Remember it’s not about us or you; it’s about your soon-to-be customer.
By breaking down each of those pieces — solid content writing, quality graphic design and thoughtful usability — you can create a website that leaves a great first impression without all the “gotta, wanna, coulda, shoulda.”
The Department of Marketing is an award winning, world-class boutique marketing agency. We are small enough to have a personal relationship with every client, yet big enough to tackle the largest projects. Specializing in strategy and interactive marketing, we have built our business on our contributions to our clients’ growth. We are headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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