Quick, ask someone who doesn't know you to look at your website for only five seconds. Can they tell what you do?
We consistently look at sites that are hard to understand. Not necessarily hard to navigate (that one deserves a stand-alone article), just hard to understand. There are so many choices on the Internet today; why would anyone spend time trying to figure out what a site does? As soon as the user lands at your site, they take one look and if they don't get it immediately, they're gone.
So why are companies stuck with home pages that make the company's products and services hard to understand?
- Company politics. Sometimes, you have to keep not only the designer, the developer and the marketer happy, but you have to work with their bosses and even the CEO's spouse.
- Budget. Maybe you know that it has to get fixed, but don't have the money to fix it.
- Technology. You may be working on a "template platform" that only allows certain kinds of changes.
- Critical pathing. (Define) This is one we understand all too well at LunaMetrics. We are dying to move our blog over to our site and make the site wider and move the email marketing sign-up box above the webform sign-up box (because then they will both be above the fold.) But if we wait until December, when we're having coffee with the tech team from FeedBurner, we can learn the best ways to move our blog without a major disruption. This is incredibly important, because our blogs gets about eight times as much traffic as our site does on an average day. That means that coffee with the FeedBurner team is on the critical path.
- Disbelief. If the CEO and the marketing manager understands the site, everyone else does, right? Site owners have this same problem with the copy - we use terms that we understand and don't realize that others don't get it. Psychologists call this an "expert blind spot."
So how do you deal with a site that can't convert visitors into leads or buyers because few people understand what it does?
- Figure out if you have a problem. There really are great sites out there, and maybe yours is one of them. Do that five second test described at the top of the page, and when the user doesn't understand what your site does, don't rationalize ("they really don't understand my industry.") On the flip side, if they get it, go out and celebrate -- you absolutely deserve it.
- Make changes incrementally. The best place to start is often your tag line. Tag lines that say, "Solutions begin with us" or "We change the world" don't add to the understandability of your site. Tag lines that say, "Unique Lighting Products for Your Special Needs," make it clear what the company does. Ditto for "Do-It-Yourself Email Marketing."
- Make sure that your home page is general enough that the reader doesn't exit with the belief that you can't serve his needs, but specific enough that it actually says something. For example, the Cognos website is so bland that you don't understand what they do (other than integrate with other large software companies.) On the other hand, on the day we wrote this article, the Oracle home page announced Unbreakable Linux in a box that was so large, it seemed that they only do Linux work. (In fact, they are one of the largest software companies in the word, with their hands in every kind of software possible.)
- If you sell online, make that clear by enabling the customer to start purchasing right on the home page. Be sure to have a shopping cart icon by "my cart" because the visitor's eye will catch it. This is probably the biggest problem that less professional e-commerce sites have - it's not clear that they sell something until you get three or four clicks away from the home page.
- Try to use art that explains, not just happy people. Yellow Page studies show that ads with people in them sell better. However, when someone goes to the Yellow Pages, they have already chosen a category and know what the company does. On the web, visitors are guessing whether your company will fit their needs.
- If you have the luxury (time, money, number of visitors) -- create an alternate page and do some A/B testing. At the very least, put up some free Crazy Egg code and see what is happening on your home page (and a few others.) While you are at it, be sure to get some free web analytics from Google or ClickTracks and then read them every month/week/day depending on your size.
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