One of the many questions that I get when working with small businesses and their websites is “What should I put on the site once the design stage is complete?” or words to that effect. The answer I always give them is that in most cases “Simple is best”.
Here’s my list of what’s needed:
- Company name – in text
- Company address – in text
- Company phone number – in text
- A succinct description of what you do / what services you provide
- Your USP – Unique Selling Point
- Stuff that’s of interest to your prospective clients – not you!
And what isn’t needed:
- Lots of bells and whistles!
- Flashing lights, moving text, self starting movies, etc.
- Pictures without text captions or “ALT” tags
- One loooonnng list of products and services
An anecdote on how NOT to approach this task:
I was asked by a client of my preferred IT/Web hosting company about creating some copy for his new website. This guy had NOTHING – no content at all, no brochures to copy from, no handouts or flyers to use as a base to work from, nothing! Apart from the “It’s going to cost how much?” question, his main concern was to have a flashing banner or something similar for when people landed on the site to make it look “cool”. I could not explain to him that no amount of flashing banners or twinkling lights or moving text were going to attract people to his website if he had no content. Sadly he just didn’t get it, I didn’t get the job and as far as I know 18 months later his website is still an empty shell.