Imagine for a moment that you have an employee who’s employed to tell the world about your business. They work around the clock for you, for very little salary. Sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it?
The trouble is, this employee unfortunately stands at a busy intersection and shouts complete nonsense at everyone that passes.
Now, put your website in the role of employee. Does your website shout nonsense at people? Or does it communicate succintly and carefully with the people that you want to talk to? Is it standing on an intersection of the web, doing damage to the credibility of your company?
If you had an employee acting like this, you’d go out into the street and advise them of the error that they’re making. And if they continued, you’d fire them.
I was with a company a while ago that had an obvious grammatical error in the first headline of their home page, and it had been there for a year. That’s actually a mild example. In other cases I’ve spent a few minutes trying to work out what a company does from reading their website and been baffled.
So why are people so careless about the messaging on their websites? Why don’t they see their websites as valuable partners in their businesses, and treat them as such? Make no mistake, getting your message sharp and relevant isn’t easy – but it’s essential. It starts with crafting your value proposition.