Enemies of obfuscation
A while back, I wrote about one of my favorite all time store names: Smokes and News. I had seen the store sign from a freeway in Oregon and it caught my eye. I liked how the sign briefly and completely captured the store's purpose and function. One glance was all it took and you understood the central message of the enterprise. As marketers, we should be enemies of obfuscation. Leave obfuscation to military strategists. For us, we want everyone to understand our mission clearly.
That's why I believe that when you are looking at your website critically, asking yourself "is it really doing the job for our organization?" you should first examine the home page and see if your message jumps from the page. If it doesn't, if it must be teased out of links and menus, excavated from beneath a lavish layer of graphics and javascript animations, then you need to revise. That's not to say the home page can't have other functions, but job one should be page one. If you're not sure what your central message is, see my previous blogs on defining your mission as an organization.
As you further evaluate your website, stand back and judge its overall appearance. Is it attractive and appealing? Pleasing and attractive design is the capture device for the human brain. As part of appraising overall design, erase the words on the home page from your mind and feel what message the graphics alone deliver. Are the graphics in rhythm with the central message? What message do the graphics convey? Do the graphics direct your eyes to different elements on the page in a meaningful way, like well-designed streets, or is it all a hopeless jumble?
Finally, mentally insert the words back onto the page and ponder readability. Have you used inappropriate technical jargon, mysterious acronyms, insider catch phrases or other barriers that stand between you and the reader? Try to speak to the reader in their own voice about your mission. A common error made by many web writers is to employ language that creates distance between themselves and their clients. It's a tempting thing to do because of our desire to put on our professional persona and speak with authority. Your job as a writer is to figure out the voice which best moves the client to action, and most always, that voice is an echo of their own.
When you are evaluating your own website, is it "Smokes and News" or is it just smoke?
Guest blogger Dennis Mathis is a long-time resident of the Four Corners who nurtures an interest in writing, marketing, technology, reading and business. About a year ago, he retired from a public relations job and is now formally self-managed. It is a harder job than he imagined it would be. He and his wife, Nancy, live in a log cabin near Lemon Lake decorated with birdhouses, and when the water is calm, they kayak along Lemon's graceful shoreline.
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