What does your website say?

There are three points to make – let me explain.

In today’s web world we all have websites, we all do SEO and we all subscribe to Google Analytics but what does your website actually say about you? Or do I mean What do your customers read about themselves?

I don’t mean the words you use to describe your business. You might, for example, be a ‘family-run business’, ‘based in rural Oxfordshire’, or ‘a leader in your field.’

Rather: What does your website say to your customers about what you do for them? And how does it say it? Is it tangible?

There are three points to make – let me explain.

• Far too many company websites list their products and services, or talk about their organisational structure, or document their origins and history.  They are focused on themselves, the supplier, rather than on their prospective clients and what value they can deliver for them. They speak from their own, internal perspective rather than using the words that the customer on the web is searching for, and wants to see/read on a website.
• As well as speaking to customers in their language, you need to convince them that your offer is better than others.  Your website text needs a compelling and quantifiable reason why someone should choose you.
• You are more attractive if you specify, for example, exactly what you deliver, how you deliver and when as well as the price. How often have you, when faced by multiple websites with similar offers chosen the one that told you exactly what you’d get, when and how over the one that omitted key details. It’s no accident that when you buy on Amazon you are given details not just of what you’re buying for what price, but its specification, what other people think of it, what else you  might buy with it as well as the all critical delivery date and method.

Written by Bob Bradley, founder of MD2MD.