One of our local employers was on the front page of the Monadnock Ledger last week regarding a $400,000 settlement with OSHA for worker safety violations. Ouch! They not only have to pay the fines, but they also must take corrective actions & improve the safety of their workplaces for all of their employees. They have agreed to get a full time safety &...
How to Send Customers Running from Your Website
Submitted by TWP on Wed 1/5/11 11:37 pm
It's easy to create a website, brochure or other marketing document that's guaranteed to send customers running. Begin by packing information into every inch of space, using the tiniest possible font. Make your website home page so long it takes 15 minutes to scroll to the bottom; fill your brochure columns and pages with text; issue an 8 page case study on a 5 minute project.
Next, dedicate your content to praising yourself and your company. Make sure you overwhelm customers with your corporate history, mission, values and philosophy before they read one word about products or services. Scatter your personally invented acronyms everywhere and refuse to define them. And never never tell customers how your products and services would actually help them.
Use clip art. Use lots of tiny clip art, jammed into spaces where you can't fit another line of text. Especially use clip art where the people bear no resemblance at all to any of your customers. For example, if you are selling rakes to New Hampshire organic farmers, make sure all the clip art shows people in suits shaking hands in front of oil derricks.
Throw in random boldface, italics, bullets, capitalization and color. Favor white letters on a black background so readers strain their eyesight; capitalize every noun for no apparent reason; and change fonts three or four times. Place at least one line drawing, logo or photo so that it obscures the text.
Finally, if you really want to send away customers in droves, leave out any call to action. Don’t tell customers what they are expected to do with the information they’ve just read. Remember: a truly baffled customer is a lost customer—in every possible way.