How many web sites have you been to that just blather on, and on, and on, and on….
It’s bad enough that these sites are full of information we need to know. What makes them worse are that they’re full of information we don’t want to know. How many times have we read Since 1872.. or we have 25 employees, 20 offices and great hair!
What were they thinking when they wrote that crap?
It’s like that first time you ever walked into a candy shop as a kid. Remember what it felt like? You were in the shop, peering over the counter at all those endless rows of jars full of jawbreakers, lollipops, gum drops and more. There was so much to choose from that you just bought as much as your little hands could handle.
You get home, your Mother sees you and reminds you that if you eat them all at once, you’ll get sick. So you tell her ‘OK’, go to your room and gobble them all up. The result? You get sick.
It’s the same thing on a web site. In this situation, the candy is the information. When you write your own web content, you want to include everything because you think it’s important. After all, you’re proud of what you’ve accomplished and for all intents and purposes, you have every right to be. But the problem is you’re missing the point. Your reader only wants to know what you can/will do for them. They don’t care about anything else. If your web site is overloaded with needless material, your reader gets sick of it and then they’re going elsewhere.
The moral of the story is that you need to be sparing with your information. In this case, less is more. Tell your reader what you can do for them and no more. Blow them away with your expertise and experience when you meet them or when they call you up on the phone. Use your web content to get them to pick up the phone, send you and email or communicate via smoke signal. First thing’s first, kids. Don’t clog up your site with information that only you want to read.
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