Yawn Design – Website Evaluation
Had a client ask me to check out a site yesterday, evaluate it.
It’s a good site, well done, well coded, they’re doing all the right stuff as far as inbound marketing. Seriously. They have a Twitter account, they are using it, they have a blog, they’re blogging regularly. Looks like SEO is well done. I was really pleased with what I saw.
But it had a couple issues.
1. First issue, no phone number anywhere. People hate ordering when they don’t know they can talk to a human.
2. Second issue. The design, while clean, looked like every other site in that particular market. Snore. Totally forgettable. Color palette is important. Their palette was bland and the whole thing just screamed template. They have “design” in their NAME and then do that? UM?
3. They’re trying to position on price alone. Bad idea. Someone will always outprice you. You need to be REALLY GOOD at something and then push that.
4. If you’re going to do social media, you need a clearly defined plan and voice. Just putting content out there, while okay, and better than nothing, is not enough. Right now the Guru Squad is harping on social media. Guess what? if a lot of people are talking about something, you’re already behind the curve. You need to up your game. So do social media with a little imagination and heart. Make the voice one that people connect with. Grow a personality. Make it match your new, un-boring smooth website design.
5. Flash on the home page is bad for the mobile audience.
6. Their url is exactly like a direct competitor, off by two letters. That to me feels deceptive and I think it’s a bad idea. To me it makes them the bad knock-off.
7. One of their vendors has strict rules about online sales and this site has products on there that violate those rules. You need to keep your vendors happy, not try to do things they won’t like and hope to get away with it.
So my response was, this site is Fine. And if fine is okay with you, then by all means, keep heading down the road you’re on. If you want greatness though, make some changes.
