YIPPEE! WEB! or yawn, web?
I’m doing a web marketing plan for a client so I’m once again cruising a lot of web sites in a specific industry. And, once again, I’m finding many absolutely terrible ones. Key here is the difference between YIPPEE! and yawn. It’s easy to spot the sites where the people only have one because, “Well, [yawn] everyone has to have a web site don’t they?”
YIPPEE! The site owner regularly reviews their web stats - and revises content accordingly.
Yawn: “What are web stats?”
YIPPEE! The site owner regularly updates their own content.
Yawn: The site owner pays a techie to add text a few times a year. (And neither of them understand that writing for the web is different than writing for print. “Keywords? Links? Why? What? What? What’s wrong with an all PDF site?”)
YIPPEE! The home page is designed to speak to many different personalities, and grab eyeballs in those crucial two to three seconds. Crisp, clean, to-the-point, yet conversational.
Yawn: The home page looks like a dumping ground. It’s got unwieldy, ugly piles of info everywhere and goes on forever. (I half expect a virtual junkyard dog to come out snarling from behind some of the piles.)
YIPPEE! The site changes frequently - new information, new photos, new educational pieces. It may not be perfect, may even break a few of the “web rules” but it’s obvious the owner is trying and learning.
Yawn:The site hasn’t changed since - oh - 2004. And, the last “news” posted is from two years ago.
YIPPEE! The site owner is also an active blogger, writing frequently, posting comments on others blogs - and really enjoying being part of the conversation.
Yawn: The site owner has a blog (”Oh, that new thing, guess I’ll try it.”) but writes infrequently (and blandly) or simply uses it to post press releases and dry announcements.
Remember: Yawning is contagious. If you do it, your customers will start…not a good thing. (I’m finishing my third cup of caffeine - and I started to yawn just looking at this photo…)
Related Posts:
Five Reasons You Can’t Blame IowaNew Mexico Web Developers
Small Biz: Make Time for Web Marketing
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Tags: ecommerce, web development, web marketing, marketing troubleshooting, entrepreneur sanity check
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June 7th, 2007 at 8:17 am
Mary, I love this post. Makes me think of an alternate venue for many of your posts…Ever think of writing a column in the biz section of your local paper, Blog Herald or Huffington Post or…? You have such a great voice for this kind of market. Just a thought.
Keep up the great work.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:30 am
Don’t forget the cheap web template with the huge picture of smiling mulit-racial 30 year olds in business casual dress doing a team hug that tells us nothing about your business…
Excellent post…
June 7th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Lisa, Thanks so much for the kind words! Actually, I do write the occasional guest column for New Mexico Business Weekly and The Albuquerque Journal.
And, I’ve got a couple of more in the hopper that should be published this quarter.
(The really great thing about the Biz Weekly is that it’s a part of a nationwide syndicate so an article can well show up in Seattle or St. Lours, or, or…The power of da Web! Note to lurking readers: check out your local biz weekly, biz journal - it could well be part of this syndicate.)
You can see some of my articles over in the News and Views section of this site.
June 7th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Mark,
And also don’t forget the”arty” angle of some big city building (that’s not the company’s…)
I can’t speak for all - but the dirt-cheap web site templates I’ve seen look just that way: dirt and cheap. (And, they’re broken from the get-go - due to differences in browsers and such. Testing? Nada, nu-huh.)
June 8th, 2007 at 9:36 am
I agree completely. Not all templates are bad, but for the most part the product is a cookie cutter type site that has no bearing on your particular business.
June 11th, 2007 at 5:53 am
My industry (Funeral homes) suffers from this same compulsion. It seems just when I finally convince a funeral director that he needs a website, I have to disabuse him of the notion that his has to look like all the others.
It’s one of my most constant battles these days: explaining to my audience that people who visit funeral home websites don’t care about a historic building or how someone turned their furniture store into a funeral parlor in 1887. And they cetainly don’t care where your assistant funeral director went to school or how many kids he has.
Funeral website visitors are looking for two things: directions to your firm or details about a specific funeral.
Too often, a website developer begins a discussion with a new funeral home client by asking about the people who work there and the history of the firm. Why? Because it’s easier to talk about “me” than “them,” as in the people who will really use the site.
I guess as long as egotists (read: humans) are in charge of hiring the web designer there will always be a struggle between doing what feels good and doing what will actually be good.
June 11th, 2007 at 7:12 am
[…] 11 Jun 2007 Typical Funeral Home Websites: Yawn! Posted by finalembrace under Client Relations , Our Philosophy , Recommended Reading , Advertising, Technology Mary Schmidt, Business Developer and Marketing Troubleshooter, shares a recent experience (YIPPEE! WEB! or yawn, web?) on her blog: I’m doing a web marketing plan for a client so I’m once again cruising a lot of web sites in a specific industry. And, once again, I’m finding many absolutely terrible ones. Key here is the difference between YIPPEE! and yawn. It’s easy to spot the sites where the people only have one because, “Well, [yawn] everyone has to have a web site don’t they?†[…]
June 13th, 2007 at 6:11 am
[…] As a follow-on to my recent post, YIPPEE! WEB! or (yawn) web?… a tip of the blog bowler to Mike Sansone of ConverStations for pointing to: Voices from the Community, Corporate Websites are Irrelevant […]
October 11th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
[…] Toddlers With Loaded Guns Start-Up Success: Break The Clocks! Start-Up Suicide: Fear of Heights YIPPEE! WEB! or yawn, web? Stupid Brand Tricks (Why on earth did KFC decide they needed a logo that can be seen from space?) […]