Your Website Is Too Big

We fell asleep halfway through your home page
 
We’ll catch flak for this one, but we’re right. Your website is too damned big. There’s too much to scroll through, the navigation is a mess, and there’s tons of junk that we don’t need to see.
 
Still with us? Pat yourself on the back, and learn something.
 
Here’s the point: Your website is not a destination unto itself. If you’re in the business of selling your services to potential clients, then why would you ever want to tell someone every possible thing about yourself on your site? Not only would it bore them to tears, but infinitely more importantly, it would leave them no reason to call you. In a word, Duh.
 
In this article, we’ll walk through some of the rules, and the ever-intriguing exceptions.
 
“But you never saw my site!”
 
Yup. That should tell you just how ubiquitous this problem is. And just in case your site already hews to best practice for brevity, you can give yourself an extra pat on the back when you finish reading this article, knowing that there was absolutely nothing for you to change or cut.
 
And look at you. You’re still reading this one.
 
Thought so.
 
Let’s draw a distinction here. We’re not talking about e-commerce sites. Amazon.com is supposed to be huge. Heck, they tout “Earth’s biggest selection.” And unlike your professional-services firm, consultancy, or agency, you’re not supposed to call Amazon if you want to do business with them. In fact, if you need to call Amazon, they’ve failed. (That’s one reason the “Contact us by phone” link on their website is so maddeningly hard to find.)
 
Still, Amazon has one heck of a challenge, and you can judge for yourself how well they succeed at it: They need to make all that inventory immediately accessible to you, even if you’re on a little iPhone 4. How many clicks before you find what you want? (This reminds us of an old Apple joke. Q: How come Steve Jobs never wears a suit? A: It has too many buttons.)
 
You, on the other hand, have about one-millionth the information of Amazon that needs to be served up. And it’s still probably way too much. Let’s look, and carve.
 
What’s essential?
 
Your site needs to accomplish three basic things, quickly and efficiently:

• You need to explain what you offer.
• You need to establish your credibility.
• You need to get prospects to contact you.

 
And that’s about it.
 
Quick, look at your website. How many pages deviate from that scheme? Painful, isn’t it?
 
Now of course, there are details. Let’s examine them:
 
What you offer. You certainly provide more than one service. But if you offer 12, can’t you simplify that by category or audience? Look at our website. Sure, we provide everything from video scripts to investor presentations—zillions of different things—but our home page contains just two buttons. Two. We’ve bifurcated our site by audience. It just took a little perspective, and some self-discipline. You can do the same.
 
Establishing your credibility. Any website has mandatories, such as the “About Us” page. Pages like this, and those that explain, say, the various industries you serve and services you offer, should all be regarded as opportunities to differentiate yourself from competitors so that visitors take the call to action and contact you. Who are some of the impressive/recognizable clients you’ve served? Why is your methodology superior to others’?
 
Think of it this way: Imagine you’re a good prospective client of your company, and you need help. What do you do? You Google what you feel are appropriate words to search on, and then you start reviewing the hits that you get. It’s like getting a stack of resumes for an open position: You want to go through them as quickly as possible to find the right one, and then make contact and be done searching. So every single page of your site should help serve this purpose, and draw this process to a conclusion.  
 
Get them to contact you. That’s why your site exists. Sure, it’s also there for current clients to check up on your latest news, but you want that phone to ring or email to chime. So in case you didn’t know, “Contact Us” isn’t just a page. It’s a clickable link that’s ubiquitous across your site. Don’t make anyone work to find it. And entice them to do it! Give them a reason. (“Start boosting your overseas business today. Contact us now to get started.”
 
Some exceptions
 
You may maintain a library of best-practice whitepapers. You may publish a “News” section, with press releases and links to articles where your firm is mentioned. You may have a blog (heck, we obviously do, and we’ve been posting, proudly, since 79 A.D.). Does that mean that these parts of your site should be abolished?
 
Absolutely not. They just need to be put into the proper context. Think of small screens (phones, tablets). Don’t make people scroll. Don’t numb them with cascading sub-menus that are utterly un-mousable. Again, think of that prospective client, who’s trying to find you. Make their life easy, not hard.
 
And you should do it in short order. Literally. 

Need help with the paring knife? Contact us. We do this kind of work all the time, and we'd be happy to help. 

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