It is the frickin’ springtime here in Orlando, Florida. Spring has indeed sprung. The grass has indeed risen and the birds are crapping all over my car again.
It’s such an inconvenience to have to clean off pollen from my car on a daily basis. I know you folks up north have no sympathy for me because you are cleaning off snow, so you can tell me to suck it — I get it.
Spring is always a great time for us to take stock, take inventory, and clean shit up. Walk out into your garage and look at the crap all over the place. I can’t stand chaos. I can’t stand disorder. I am weird like that. Naming and claiming it and owning it is a huge part of growing up. I own the fact that I can’t stand messy places.
As we think about spring and new life coming forth (and birds crapping on our car), there are certain clarifications that need to be made.
More Website Noise = More Chaos and Less Clarity
I look at a lot of websites, as you can imagine. On a daily basis, I am seeing websites just crammed full of crap. The homepage is splattered all over the place. The “Look Here. Buy Now. Check this out. Go Here. Go There.” Big, red, H1 bold fonts screaming at me telling me where to go, telling me about the fish fry this week. Yes, I am picking on churches, because they are typically a culprit for this. Also schools. I know you have a lot of things going on in your website, and I know you have to tell parents a bunch of stuff, but cramming all the stuff on that homepage creates chaos. For neat freaks like me, it’s like “oh my God, what do I do? There is no flow.” It’s noisy. The more noise we add to our websites and media channels, the more chaos we create, and the less clear we are.
Our job as marketers is to pull people through our website. To pull people to our presence. We can’t do that if it looks like a cluster…it’s chaos to people.
Here is my encouragement for you as we embark upon a new spring. Look at that damn website. Is it a mess? Is it chaos? Has Sarah gone in and edited it, and then Mike came right behind her and changed something, and now we have 15 different fonts all over the homepage?
Spring Cleaning is Here: Time to Refresh Your Website
People, it’s time today to take stock and look at that website and do what the cool kids call a “refresh.” It’s not really a redesign. It kinda is, but people just don’t want to pay for it usually when they talk to me, so they call it a “refresh.” But, maybe it’s time to look at that website with a new pair of eyeballs. Realize you are not just talking to existing website visitors. If you are a school, it’s not just your parents you are talking to — you are talking to prospects. If that prospect comes upon that website and just sees a disaster, your odds of converting them or even getting them through your website to get to that contact form, are unfortunately slim to none.
It is time. Take a look. Clean it up. Spring is an opportunity to get things right.
On Target is an Orlando based Digital Marketing Agency that helps brands stand out and rise above the noise. Through great storytelling, On Target turns companies into thought leaders. Founded in 2005 as a search engine marketing (SEO) firm, we’ve evolved into Orlando’s only agency that specializes in creating remarkable online content. If you’re looking to refresh your marketing strategy, contact us today.
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About the Author:
Tom is the Chief coffee brewer, CEO, digital marketing strategist, and kickass content creator for brands across the globe at On Target. He loves nothing more than helping small to medium-sized businesses find their online voice and growing their leads, prospects, and sales.
