Web Critic

So Poulters lost a client and the business caved in. Having looked at their website, www.poulters.com we can see that their knowledge of digital may be close to zero. Who else would put up an all flash site that is inaccessible to nearly 50% of corporate customers? Why, oh why, is that then? It’s because so many corporate servers do not have flash installed…it stops the staff looking at YouTube all day! Their website was truly awful…inward looking artistic nonsense.

I read an email from them to a mutual client about doing “the search engine marketing” bit after the site was launched. They also bundled SEO into this as an afterthought. Just in case anyone still thinks SEO is a “bolt on” product after launching the website, you are wrong. It is done at the beginning of the process. SEO is also not a technical or code “trick.” It is many other things including good copy writing, accessible sites and plenty use of the YOU word. My industrial website with over 140,000 visitors per year is still number 1 for all my chosen key phrases after 6 years and I haven’t refreshed it or changed it in anyway. So watch out for “we’ll refresh your website”…it could be a disaster delivered by someone that is now out of work.

Print or flat media experts can’t do web media…it’s different…that’s why traditional Ad agencies struggle. For the millionth time…”pushing old marketing messages through the new medium of the web does not work!”

So Poulters, sorry to see you go but you had it coming.

Till soon,

Yours digitally,

TWC  

As an example…an online clothing website.

1. The copy is centred around the features of the product…no lifestyle or aspirational copy.

2. No Calls To Action  (CTA)

3. The page titles are the same…written in blue at the very top of your monitor.

4. No staff photos or “Helpline personnel” on the site

5. Using your bank’s payment gateway, not your own customised one.

That’s just 5 mistakes but Jo Public and Jo The Ad Man are very creative and continue to come up with new ways to make a mess of websites.

If you think it’s like print or even a bit like print and you think this web stuff can’t be that difficult, call me and tell me that you have been more successful then me. 9 out of 10 web sites are suffering from an Internet Tragedy and Google can tell you what that is.

Stop mucking about and get some proper advice! Or you can always stick knitting needles in your eyes, it’s nearly as painful as having a lousy website but it’s not as expensive.

You have a choice.

Till soon…

TWC,