Archive for July 4th, 2012

I am sure that in the last 12 months, you will have received many emails offering web design or SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) services.   I am sure that like me, you deleted the majority of them as soon as you spotted the term SEO in the header or text.  But did you ever see one or two that made you stop and think if you should be doing more on with your web site?

I don’t want to take about SEO companies today.  But I am using them as an example of companies that don’t eat their own cat food – a term given to companies that are ridiculously bad at the services they are trying to offer to you.

Take these SEO specialist companies.  If they are so great at getting web sites to the top of Google or Bing, why do they have to spam you?   If you Google “SEO companies” – why are they not on the number 1 spot of Google?

What about accountants?   Would you trust an accountant who has final demand letters on their door mat when you visit?   Or what about marketing companies that are trying and failing to gain customers?  What about cleaning companies which are based in the dirtiest office imaginable?

A copywriter to improve my own site
The reason I talk about this, is that I have started looking for copywriters to improve the content of my own company web site.   I was recommended and visited a couple of sites of copywriters, who talked a good talk.

But their web sites were shocking.   Some examples of problems I spotted when visiting including:

• Missing any calls to action on their site (where are the “call or email me” buttons?)
• Very basic Typos (and if I can spot them, they must be bad)
• Mixed quality of graphics all over their site (some photos, some graphics, some line art, some appear to be scanned)
• Examples of text inviting me that if I am “Interested? Sign up on the right.” – When there is nothing on the right.
• Spaces missing in their text, so words merge together (and become a jumble)
• Lots of uses of “We”, “Us” and “I” when they all say a web site should use “You” or “Your” (the very things I am trying to correct)

I could go on.   But the point is, they are advertising a service to improve web sites and web site copy (words), but their own sites are in a terrible state.

In most situations, web sites are the initial introduction to the world – if a copywriter can’t get that write, why would I even think about paying them to change mine?

So I ask again, are you eating your own cat food for the service you provide?