Is Your Website Answering Questions or Simply Looking Pretty?
People are looking for answers online.
Does your website provide these answers?
Your website needs to deliver: Information. Clarity. Truth.
Your website should be a window into the soul of your company:
1. Anticipate your customer's question.
This is why you must embrace persona-based writing.
2. Answer the question transparently.
Statements that don't ring true will score against you.
3. Make the answer easy to find.
This is a function of website architecture.
Does it surprise you to learn that most website programmers think exactly backwards from how customers think? An organizational hierarchy that's perfectly logical in the mind of a programmer is often frustratingly illogical in the mind of a customer.
Your website architecture dictates your customer's experience. Architecture has nothing to do with graphics. Did your website have an architect? Or was it designed by the programmer? By the graphic artist? By you?
A programmer asks, "Does it function?"
A graphic designer asks, "Does it 'feel right' and represent us well?"
An owner asks, "Does it say what I want it to say?"
An architect asks, "Did the customer find their answer?"
Mass media says, "Create traffic first. Answer their questions after they arrive."
Search engines say, "Create answers first. Store traffic will be created by the answers you provide."
Your website should be a relationship deepener. Having already interacted with your expert, open-all-night website, customers will walk into your store the next day already sold. We're seeing it constantly.
Are you?
CONFESSION: Most of what I've shared with you today was gleaned from my daily chats with the Eisenberg brothers. A few minutes with these guys saves me a lot of time and money.
Jun 30, 2008