Why Are Websites So Bad?
Three meditations: something to think about, a “how-to” resource, and a marketing deep dive. Ommmmmm.
Note: these first two resources will feel like they are ONLY for marketers, but they are really for CEOs and Founders too.
In my experience, there’s nothing quite as creative as building a company.
Something to Think About
A confession: I stole this from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. You should subscribe to his newsletter.
Chuck Close was one of those artists we all loved in High School for his wacky self portrait from 1968-69. You can almost feel the nicotine stains. Chuck passed away in 2021 at age 81. But first he gave the full quote below in an interview:
“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to do an awful lot of work.
“All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”
Source: Interview (March 2007)
If you’re a creative, an excellent book in the same spirit is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Highly recommend.
"How To"
I was on a networking call this week and Dean Wayeran a short exercise rewriting headlines and LinkedIn profiles. He’s very good.
Then to my delight, he busts out a link to his free copywriting resource!
I’m happy to share it with you all.
Check it out.
You won’t be disappointed.
A Marketing Deep Dive
Top 3 Reasons Most Websites Stink
Why are there so many terrible websites?
And is yours one of them? (Yikes!)
Here are my top 3 reasons:
1. They aren’t focused on conversion.
Or really any single goal.
As the Arab proverb says, “An eagle chasing two rabbits catches neither.”
These sites are trying to do too many jobs.
In so doing they aren’t doing anything well.
The content is a directionless mish mash.
A good book (and website) about this is Essentialism by Greg McKeow
2. They’re about you, not your customer.
It’s an almost forgivable trap it’s so easy to fall into.
I mean walking in our own shoes takes less effort than walking in the shoes of those we serve.
And we often have LOTS to say.
So much that we lose sight of what our customers need to hear.
The amount of text can be a good proxy.
Nobody writes monolithic walls of copy about someone else.
But if we’re talking about ourselves?
We can really obliterate any shred of white space.
3. We settle.
Improving our website takes dedication and focus.
That’s hard to do if there is any semblance of conversion happening.
If the site converts at 10% it can be so tempting to call that good enough.
To not do the work of getting it to 20%.
Or more.
One of my favorite Tony Robbins quotes is, “Where the focus goes, the energy flows.”
Think about it.
With dedicated focus, we can do a LOT.
Pick any of your goals and ask yourself how much progress you could make if you took a week off from all other concerns or obligations and ONLY focused on that thing?
How long would it take to revamp your website if it were the only thing you needed to do?
A few days?
A week?
But instead the site goes unchanged for months or even years.
Why?
Because competing priorities win out.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
And urgent squeezes out what appears to be sufficient.
Yet if you really needed to…
… you’re probably only a few days away from much better performance.
Think about it as you make the trade-offs in your everyday work.
And…
Sometimes outside help makes it easier to get over that hump.
Until next time… namaste.
Chad Jardine, CEO
CMO Zen
