Posts Tagged web sites

do as they say not as they do

Posted by Chris Houchens in advertising, online on June 30, 2009

Q. — As a general rule, what industry (as a whole) has the worst web sites?
A. — Ad Agencies.

I’ve noticed most agency web sites have a few common characteristics:

  • Rule #1: Flash!
  • Staff / Management Bios: Wacky, fun, and meaningless. There is a über-creative photo of the person pretending to have fun.
  • Site Navigation: Not at the top, bottom, left, or right. In order to click around to the other pages on the site, you’ll need to take a bus to another location.
  • Contact Info: Phone numbers, emails, etc hidden on the most illogical page possible.
  • Office Pictures: Two ways to go here. 1) If it’s an “agency” of one guy with a Mac in his bedroom, then you’ll see some creative use of stock photography. 2) If it’s a real “agency”, the wackiness continues with pics of the foosball table, the aquarium, and the video game area to show potential clients how their billable hours are being wasted while creativity happens.
  • Philosophy: Starts off with “We’re a new type of agency.” and the rest is filled with meaningless jargon and buzzwords.
  • I don’t think we can say it enough: Flash!
  • Portfolio: Just a few logos. Maybe a shot of an ad. The ROI is never mentioned. This link is always called “the work”
  • Blogs: All staff members seem to take turns “writing posts” by copying / summarizing chapters out of the advertising textbooks they couldn’t sell back to their college bookstore.
  • Content: It seems everyone shot down everyone else’s ideas until there was no content left
  • Timeliness: Site is never updated. (except for every few years when the whole thing is torn down and replaced with something similar.) Rinse. Repeat.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few. Your thoughts?

UPDATE: I published this just a few hours before CP+B launched their new agency site. Looks interesting. http://beta.cpbgroup.com/

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Do you have any idea what’s going on?

Posted by Chris Houchens in strategy on August 2, 2006

It’s all big. And it’s getting bigger.

Your organization.
Your business.
Your website.
Your blog.
Whatever.

It’s growing. I assume that’s what you want it to do.

But with growth comes troubles. In the beginning, you had time to personally order the URL, talk to the web guy for several hours about what you wanted, and spent gads of time going through the site. In the beginning, you sat down with every new client, personally dealt with any new issues, and were still in touch with what your customers felt.

Today, you’re busy…cause it’s “big”. You’re meeting with clients, dealing with issues, etc. An issue with a client that used to mean a personal visit now gets a phone call or an email. There may be pages on the website you haven’t seen in months.

But while you come through the employee door in the back, the front customer door has a loose handle that annoys customers. There’s a redirect forward on the website that goes to a page that was deleted three months ago and leaves visitors in an online dead-end. The person who answers the phones puts people on hold for too long.

When was the last time you had an expereince with your business as a customer? I tell clients and audiences all the time that they occasionally need to do an actual physical walk-through as a customer and actually try to navigate through their website looking for something. Are there any customer barriers? If there are, get rid of them. As I have said, (even before Seth) get big, but stay small.

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