Re: FN-FORUM: Provocative content theory?

date posted 8th January 2005 20:43

At 4:05 PM +0000 2005/01/07, Paul J White wrote:
>From one of Tony's link dumps that I have been working through:
>http://www.searchengineworld.com/misc/guide.htm
>"Beware of Flyer and Brochure Syndrome:
>If you have an ecom site or online version of bricks and mortar, be
>careful not to turn your site into a brochure. These don't work at
>all. Think about what people want. They aren't coming to your site
>to view "your content", they are coming to your site looking for
>"their content". Talk as little about your products and yourself as
>possible in articles (raise eyebrows...yes, I know)."
>
>I kind of see his point, but what does the panel think - especially
>the copy writers out there?


I think the company needs a good copy writer .

Customers don't look for "their content", they look for bits of "your
content" that will meet their needs. So, unless your site is
designed to attract potential investors instead of customers or
clients, keep your annual report and hard-sell marketing push off the
home page. Replace it with direct links to the sort of stuff your
site visitors really need.

You know, the stuff that:

(a) prospective clients/customers ask for in their first phone call
(Do you sell X? Do you do Y? How much will it cost? Will it do Z?
What do I do if there's a problem with the product/service I buy?)

(b) current and former clients/customers ask for after they've used
(or tried to use) your product for a while (How do I do X? What do I
do when Y happens? Why am I seeing Z? Are there upgrades available?)

If you have the time and bandwidth, you can spice things up regularly
with giveaways and entertainment to keep people coming back.


I also have a minor quarrel with the contempt the author of that
snippet shows toward brochure sites. There ARE some brick-and-mortar
businesses that benefit from brochure features on their web site.
Real estate management firms, for example, and nursing homes and law
firms and even some one-product manufacturers or small service
e-businesses that need to impress prospects with the look of a
well-established and successful company. Brochure sites can do good
things for those businesses as long as they also have *direct nav
links from every brochure-like page to real content*.

--
K@
Kat Nagel, MasterWork Consulting
http://www.masterworkconsulting.com

"If the business notion of best practices had been applied from the
dawn of human civilization, human beings never would have achieved
civilization." Christopher Locke, in EGR newsletter 15May2001

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