Blah Blah Woof Woof

In the last month we reviewed 4357 websites in Scotland as part of a major client project.

It was a fairly monumental task but it gave us a huge insight into what is happening in the online community in Scotland – the bad and the good.

Whilst anyone can pick holes in other people’s work (and it is always easy to snipe from the sidelines when you don’t know the brief or the budget) there can be no doubt that a significant number of websites out there suffer from some fundamental design and communication problems.

For example – a large number of businesses simply did not say in plain English, in letters 10 feet high, what they actually did.

“We are experts by experience gained from operating competitive businesses and providing services for more than twenty years.”

“We share our knowledge with Europe, local and national government, the private sector, social enterprises and third sector organisations to help improve business effectiveness and demonstrate impact.” 

“High quality technical services to clients, from small business to corporations”

Those are all direct quotes, lifted straight from the home pages, of some of the websites we reviewed. That was basically all they said to describe the purpose of the business and the website, along with some images of people with nice teeth of course.

It is entirely possible that visitors to their websites already knew the company and knew what they did…but even so, surely it is better to say what you do, say why you do it, and then say why that it is important to whoever is looking at that page.