Everything but the kitchen sink

Occupational hazard, but I look at an awful lot of websites - primarily B2B, primarily technology-related.

An awful lot.

And they can, in fact, be an awful lot.

Part of what makes so many of them so awful is that they’ve got way too much going on.

We’ve all gotten pretty much inured to the clutter of consumer-oriented, retail, and media sites. With time, you get used to where to click, when to search, and what to ignore (which is probably most of it). Need to know basis only, thanks!

But I’m surprised to see so many high-end B2B websites that fall into the TMI trap.

It’s one thing to have a lot of information available via drill downs and/or downloads, but home pages should be pretty straightforward, shouldn’t they?

They should say:

• What the company does
• Who they do it for
• What the folks they do it for get out of it

This is, of course, easier said than done, especially with companies that have multiple audiences and multiple products. But there should still be some clean, clear, concise expression about what you do - an umbrella message that all those multiple audiences and multiple products fall under. And, hopefully, that umbrella message will not be so broad and vague that the prospective customer comes away scratching her head, going, "I think they do something for somebody, but I’m not quite sure what or who."

If you have those multiple products and audiences, please organize your home page so that someone coming there for the first time knows where to go - and that shouldn’t be to your competitor’s site.

Another trap that I’ve noticed on websites is catchy-catch-phrase-itis.

Me, I love a good, catchy phrase, an interesting tag line. I like clever. I like humor. I like words.

But when I see more than one tag line, I have to ask myself whether the company has an identity crisis going on. Are you the folks that treat your customers right, or the bargain hunter’s paradise? Are you the nothing’s-more-important-than-quality people, or the nothing’s more important than speed?

By all means, create compound catch phrases and taglines. You may be the cheap-o depot that still manages to keep your customers smiley-face happy. Anything’s possible. But I don’t want to read under your logo "Customers ‘r’ us," only to have a headline further down the page screaming, "SAVE BIG BUCK$!"

It all seems so obvious to say that just because you have everything but the kitchen sink doesn’t mean you need to put it up on your home page. But it’s obviously not all that obvious, given some of the websites I see on my day in day out trudge around the ‘net.

---

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically each day to your feed reader. If you don't have a feed reader, you can always have these articles delivered to your email inbox every day. Click here to sign up.

The Opinionated Marketers | Powered by WordPress | ElegantBlue is a custom theme by Nathan Rice