As a marketing and brand strategy person, one of my chief responsibilities is to stay up to date on trends, techniques, and news in the industry. In the course of my Internet travels I run across all kinds of companies that have invested in some kind of Web presence…and that turn me off.  Here, in no particular order, are three mistakes that belong on the wall of shame:

The lights are on, but nobody’s home.  Have you ever gone to a fancy-schmancy website, only to get the feeling that it was designed and implemented by ghostly phantoms who disappeared soon after they hit “publish”?  Over the years, I’ve come to respect marketing as a living, breathing entity, much like a company’s business plan or the business itself.  If you’ve never bothered to update the age-old news on your home page or fix the multitude of broken links, the time is now!  You can’t afford to lose a client who gets bored by stale or broken content.

I don’t care.  You’d be surprised how many marketing pieces are shamefully inaccurate or boast horrid typos and grammatical errors.  I was recently at a workshop sponsored by a highly respected community organization and presented by a company that boasts a long client list and a great pedigree.  Surprise!  The collateral they left on my desk had not one, but four simple typos that, frankly, made the company descend a few notches in my estimation.  Is anyone perfect?  No.  Does spell-check exist for a reason?  Yes.

You’re gonna have to find the baby somewhere in the bathwater.  There’s a reason designers love white space.  It helps point the eye to important information, creating a pleasant user experience.  If your site is so cluttered with badges, feeds, useless graphics, widgets, ads, and irrelevant text that I can’t figure out who you are or why your services can benefit me, I’m gonna move on along with my now pitifully addled and confused impression of your business.  As Dorothy Parker said, “Brevity is the essence of lingerie.”

Photo courtesy of bolobilly

related posts:

1. wow: marketing messages from vladimir ponorovsky’s paradou tantrum
2. Is Lack of Buy-In Undermining Your Marketing?
3. this week in marketing, social media, and brand strategy (week of january 25)

Comments are closed.