Many business people
in professional services may have a dark memory about creating their website.
It involves spending countless, painful, non-billable hours working with
consultants who they didn’t really understand and in the process spending more
money than they ever wanted in order to give birth to ‘the new website.’ Since then (if this sounds like you), you’ve
possibly tried to erase the memory, happy in the knowledge that ‘we have a new
website’ and you’re content in the hope that there’s probably no need to think
about it further. If this is you, then you might have a problem but the good
news is it’s easy to fix.
Websites were once the domain of tech experts and marketing
gurus who spoke an entirely different language to the rest of us. They were
expensive and complicated and, once created, were so difficult to update that
few bothered.
These days, however, business websites can be created by the
layman, and it can all be done for minimal outlay. In fact, if you’re spending
more than a few thousand on a website, I’d suggest you might be paying too much,
especially if your main audience are other businesses as clients (consumers and
shopping basket style websites have different features which are a bit more
complex so they will cost a good bit more). But to keep it low cost and effective, there
are some things you need to keep foremost in mind.
The critical thing now, in my view, is that websites for
businesses aren’t showcases with high pose value but a utilitarian component of
your marketing mix which needs to work efficiently. To do that you need to understand
how your clients use it, you should avoid clutter and complexity and you should
feature the sorts of things that sets your business apart from others.
The truth is that people (clients are people too) will tend
to use your website for just a few fairly simple things. The most common will probably
be as a de-facto phone book. The trusty Google search is used to find your
business website and through that your phone number or email address. Second,
they’ll probably want to know about the people in your business. In
professional services, it’s always the people that make the difference. (I’m always amazed how often companies in
this space hide their personnel from view). And third, a bit of a look at some
of your recent work will probably satisfy most users that yes, you’re legit and
you appear to have the people and track record you claim.
So if you’ve over engineered your website with a host of
long narrative which covers everything from your early corporate beginnings to
your community activity or long descriptions of your services, all written in
that dismal language of corporate speak which sounds so much like everyone
else’s, you’ve probably not only wasted your time but are wasting that of your
clients. Rather than “You had me at hello” it’s a case of losing them from the
start.
One of the first things you should start to do is measure
your website performance. Have you even looked? It’s easy through Google
analytics or other means to understand how often your site is being visited,
how long people are spending looking at it, and what they’re using it for (ie
which pages they’re looking at). If you haven’t measured how your site’s
performing, I’ll give you my guess, which is that each visitor looks at on
average between only 2 and 3 pages, they spend under 3 minutes on your site,
and the most popular page is the one with your contact details. If you have
pages and pages of content which aren’t even being looked at, think about
getting rid of them. It’s cathartic and means you’ll have less content to
maintain.
In my view, for most businesses much more than 5 or 10 pages in
total and you begin to test the user’s patience. That doesn’t mean you can get
away with five main tabs each with multiple pages attached, I’m talking 5 to 10 pages
in total. If your site has more than 10
pages, why not think about how it would work if you simply deleted the 5 least
visited pages?
Now, have a look at your content. Look at the pages which
are actually being visited. Check the narrative and make sure it’s as
minimalist as it can possibly be. Have someone edit it for you if you can, with
a brief to make the narrative as short as possible. Don’t be tempted to add but
learn the discipline to delete. Less is definitely more. Instead of long
narratives, are there visuals like graphs, diagrams or photos that will convey
things for you?
And when it comes to content, try this: imagine replacing
your company name with a rival’s. If the result sounds very much like what’s on
a rival’s website, you’ve fallen into the trap of sounding like everyone else.
Tourism marketing is a classic example of this. Words and phrases and even
entire paragraphs that are almost entirely transferrable to rival businesses in
different locations are a sign that there’s been little genuine effort to write
for the reader. Delete it all and start again.
If you are a professional services firm, check how many of
your professional staff are highlighted. In my view, websites should be updated
as new staff join, existing staff are promoted or when people leave, just as
your internal documents are. It should be quick and routine. The people you
have are what set your business apart from competitors. Logos mean much less,
I’m afraid, so if your focus is all about the ‘corporate look’ and logo land,
and ignores or downplays the role of your people, you are making a mistake. And
don’t fall for the trap of only highlighting senior staff. On a day to day
basis, junior and middle ranking professionals have just as much contact with
your clients as you. All you need is a nice photo and brief description. It’s
not that hard.
On that score, I can’t say I’m a fan of the ‘corporate
photo’ look which is highly staged and formal. Candid business casual is a bit
more ‘real.’ And if you have on your website any of those stock corporate
photos which pretend that your staff are a mix of Hispanic, Negro, Chinese and
white Americans, all holding hands or in some obviously staged corporate scene,
please please, please, get rid of them. Try this rule: use no pictures of
people who don’t actually work for you. I’d rather see a pic of your pet dog
that guards the office door than one of these stock images.
Your recent projects or assignments are also useful to
highlight, but the operative word is ‘highlight’. You don’t need to provide
volumes of information – a photo, illustration, chart or diagram with a few
brief words will do the trick.
Currency is also important. The content should be up to date
– not just personnel but all the content. Check to see how long it’s been since
you did your own content refresh. If it’s more than 12 months, you’re overdue
for a rewrite. There’s nothing worse, for example, than a ‘news’ section where
the most recent update is more than a year old. It really looks like you’ve
either done nothing in the last year, or have forgotten entirely about what’s
on your site.
And finally, the easiest thing to find on your site should
be your contact details. The office address, some contact emails, phone numbers
etc. Why is it that this basic and most popular content is so often the hardest
to find, or isn’t provided at all? If all you have for people to ‘contact us’
is one of those ghastly electronic contact forms and nothing else, I just ask
why you even wanted a web presence in the first place? Hiding contact details
and forcing people to use one of these contact forms is the web equivalent of a
business that only gives out a call centre number with a hold message that says
“your call is important to us” when you know damn well it isn’t.
Now, if all this web weight reduction sounds too depressing
and you really can’t bear to be so minimalist, you can always provide longer
documents via a pdf download. This way, anyone who’s interested in knowing a
good deal more detail is catered for. And you can also count the number of
people who download those documents, which could be a nice reality check.
Finally, a quick plug for some of the existing on-line web
design outfits. I used one called wix.com to build mine – it was easy and low
cost and even allowed me a few fancy features. There are others too, and many
offer a variety of templates which make the exercise easier still. It’s
actually become a relatively easy exercise these days and the only complexity
is what you bring to it, so you only have yourself to blame.
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