Keeping it Relevant
The past 10 years has seen some very successful businesses built on an online platform alone. Amazon, eBay, PayPal, even Google are just a few of the more well known successes. Although it is a simplistic view, these sites all have a common thread as well as an amazingly simple and single minded premise.
Amazon gained fame by providing the world with an easy and efficient way of buying books – a simple product, an easy interface and very little fuss. The bells and whistles weren’t added until the site has a strong base and its core offering was bulletproof.
eBay has a similar story. Its idea however went beyond books and even beyond the buying process, to offer the ability to sell and more importantly be part of an empowered online community. After 10 years of successfully trading, eBay still keeps it simple. Even with the countless additions to the sites functionality, its main function of bringing traders together is still the driving force.
The nature of the internet and its ability to reach a mass audience at very little expense can easily generate confusion as to what it is a business should expect from their site.
A website, for any business, should keep at its core the same values, experiences and delivery as any of its more traditional marketing avenues.
Just because you can write 45 pages of content on achievements, awards and company philosophy, doesn’t mean you need to or should. Just like when you meet someone new, impressions are made very quickly and can be long lasting. No amount of beautifully crafted prose is going to talk you out of a bad first impression – especially if you are relying on the user to read it all!
Relevant content is infinitely more important than all the beveled edges, drop shadows or flash animations combined will ever be.
Take the time to think about what it is you want your site to do. Distill maybe 3 things that are most important and write your brief based on those. If your ultimate goal is to get phone leads – then your content should guide the user to the phone rather than expect them to read every page, hunt for contact numbers or find the time to search for your competitors.
Perhaps you are trying to avoid phone calls – what are the main things your customers are asking? How can you give them the info they require and keep them feeling good about your product or service? What simple ways can you add value to their time on your site?
Putting another big issue of Branding to one side, providing content that appeals to your customers, delivered in a way they’ll understand and respond to, will go further to building your business than a 25 second flash introduction or an elaborate, graphically intense site.
My advice to anyone thinking of building a website for their business or re-designing their current web site is to first work out the basics of the content, keep it relevant to your user and your business objectives and remember that for many businesses, less is more.
