The Start-Up - Web Page Design
My experience has taught me that the simplest thing about putting up a web page is the mechanics. The hardest thing is deciding what should be on the page. I’ve cut code and I’ve done marketing. Marketing is much more difficult, because you have to think like someone you are not.
Physically, or virtually, putting a web page up on the net is not easy, but it is a lot like changing the break-pads on your car. It is mechanical. There are a limited number of right ways to do it. If you run into a problem changes are you can get plenty of advice on how to solve it if you Google it.
Decisions about what to “say” on a page are something else again. For example: The web site I’m putting up should be designed to appeal to men over 50 who don’t really know anything about yoga. The tag line or log line should be something they can relate to. “Beer, Brats and Yoga” was the first one. Its not bad, but not good either. Brats are a regional food. Yoga purists are against alcohol and meet. Not that I care about yoga purists, because my goal is to attract men who don’t want to be and never will be yoga fanatics. Still pick something else. “Beer, Barbecue and Yoga” is better because I took the regionalism out. “Beer, Football and Yoga” looses the alliteration and the meat. “Beer, Balls and Yoga” has its own appeal to the target market and its own problems which I’m sure you can recognize.
The problem with all of these is that they don’t say anything about the benefits a client can derive from participating in my web site. What are the benefits? They are improved strength, better flexibility, and less pain all leading to a better quality of life. All true, sort of succinct, but not very snappy. They won’t leave the site humming that tune.
What to do? I setteled on “Be Strong, Be Flexible and Enjoy Your Life” Not as snappy or as fun as “Beer, Brats and Yoga”, but it addresses the benefits nicely.
That is the banner on the page. It took 3 weeks to hammer it out. I’m still trying to pull together the video that will be a testimonial for the yoga exercise process and the hook.
Nothing in a pure start-up is easy because you have to think everything through from the ground up. How to think like you customers is the most difficult.
Last week I was at a writer’s conference at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI. The professor who taught my section said something about writing a novel that applies here. Marshall Cook felt that we should write books for people like ourselves, because that is who the market is. What he means is that because we write the type of books we like we are the demographic for the people who will want to read the books we write.
The same holds true for a web site. Do what is true to you and let it go at that. Heck, they’re only words and you can change them.
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POSTED IN: Computer Technology, Marketing, Starting Up
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