Every time us Gorillas take the time to sit down and evaluate our own website, it’s apparent to us that we don’t give it the time that we give to our clients’ sites. And I guess that makes sense for two reasons. First of all, our clients pay us money to make websites, so that helps. Secondly, as creatives, we’re ultra-critical of ourselves and our natural tendency is to over-think every bit of the design and copy.
It’s easy to forget what we preach every day to our clients: focus on clean, communicative design, intuitive navigation, engaging content that people actually want to read/look at, and calls-to-action.
We just came across this article (promoting a book) by New Fangled, an agency based in North Carolina and Rhode Island that only does work for other marketing agencies. I haven’t read the book yet, but it looks like it supports a lot of what we believe. Their major points:
- Create interesting, search-engine-optimized content that is relevant to what your company does. Use that content to drive visitors to the areas of the site that will interest them the most. Place calls-to-action there that ask them to engage with you at some level.
- Don’t be overly creative. People want good content. Not flashy buttons and moving type.
- Let your portfolio speak for itself. If your work is good, people will want to work with you.
- Commit to creating content on a regular basis that makes you a thought leader.
Now I’m gonna go read that book.
