I spent the afternoon at a norming session for the college where I teach. Yes, it was just about as exciting as it sounds, but important. Anyway, in the course of it, a witty colleague suggested that a student paper we were reading did in fact have a point and some persuasive arguments in favor of that point, but the reader had to seek them out and put them together. It was, he said, “sort of a DIY argument.”
Is your website like that? Somewhere in there, you have all the information a visitor needs about what you have to offer, how they can get it, and why they should get it from you instead of your competitors — they just have to track it all down?
We see sites like that fairly often. There is perhaps a hint on the homepage of what the company does. The location of their brick and mortar shop is on the Contact Us page. Information about their qualifications is on the About Us page. Something like “Meet Your Host!” contains details about the features of their products and “Checklist,” a subpage of “15 Years!” lists the benefits. “Products,” “Services,” and “Solutions,” all subpages of “How We Can Help,” describe an overlapping group of offerings, and somewhere in the “Terms and Conditions” page there’s a text link to the pricing, with the anchor text “here.”
Unless your visitors already really love you, they’re not going to go to that much trouble. Your website can’t be a do-it-yourself kit or a treasure hunt. You need to organize it all properly so that visitors can see immediately what you do and why they should let you do it for them. After all, the image here is also an exquisite poem — you just have to put it together from the parts included. No search engine will ever offer it in a search for poetry, and I’m pretty sure you didn’t get much out of it, either.
If you need help in getting your website in shape, call Rosie at 318.572.6002 and get on our calendar. We do this all the time, and we do it fast enough that it won’t cost you nearly as much as you fear it will.
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