The majority of business web sites are a waste of time. They are boring, uninformative, non-interactive, and disingenuous in their attempts to sell products and services. Most don’t even take a reasonable shot at hooking up interested buyers and sellers –hence part of the Internet’s current predicament.

Over 90% of respondents in the recent NoSpin debunker poll, "How good is your web site?" said that their sites were either "dated brochure-ware for providing a web presence" or "current brochure-ware with minimal traffic and interactivity." The same respondents said that nearly 60% of all sites in their industry fell into the same two categories (versus being "good marketing vehicles that generate ongoing sales leads" or "e-commerce sites that generate increasing sales.")

Great web sites that facilitate commerce and generate business directly or indirectly are rarely the work of one person. They entail a lot of continual teamwork, but unless the captain of the team is your top marketer, you are going to be in trouble (of course if you don’t have a good marketer, that’s also a problem).

Too often, the de facto leader of the company’s website is a so-called "webmaster"–or another techie/graphics design type in the IT, IS or MIS department. He or she controls most of what happens on your company web site–even though those responsibilities may or may not be written on the company org chart. Perhaps Marketing does have the designated responsibility, but too often, is only tangentially involved day-to-day in the company’s web site.

Sorry, but business web sites are marketing vehicles to inform, facilitate open communications, and facilitate the buying and selling of goods--or they really aren’t anything at all. Web sites belong to Marketing, not technology types.

There are exceptions to all rules, but unfortunately webmasters (or other surrogate web site gurus) make too many of the important decisions about the site itself: what it looks like, how it is organized, its key functionalities, and even what the content is. And often they even act as the primary funnel for incoming communications from prospects and customers and make decisions regarding who gets to change the site, when, and for what reasons. Typically, those in charge of web sites are engineers who know how to write html and know how to use html and web tools like FrontPage, Dreamweaver, etc. Or they are former graphics designers who think they also know marketing and learned some html along the way. By knowing html, the language of web sites, they can retain a lot of control.

Web site design itself is very important: it includes everything from the underlying html code and the tools (that enable key functionalities) to the overall look and feel of the website. But web site design has paralleled some of the dot.com debacle. It’s been fraught with hype, flash and spin--and clearly, has dominated web site "content" in importance.

Why? Because traditional marketers haven’t understood and/or have ignored the web–they left a huge vacuum. And that gap was filled by less-than-qualified "web designers" who (as mentioned, know the "secret" language and technology functionalities) became "marketers." Sort of like college kids (armed with little more than a cool business plan) becoming CEO’s within the dot.com world--by default, html programmers and web designers became the marketing gurus for thousands of companies. Unfortunately, content and common sense has followed glitz and form versus the other way around. As with other business fundamentals, it’s time for common sense content to lead again.

What to do?

If a webmaster or techie guru type(s) calls too many of the shots regarding your website, you have four choices:

1. Wrest control back from the webmasters and give it to Marketing or
2. If you do not have an effective Marketer(s) hire one before your next sales slot or
3. Or get some ongoing outside marketing help
4. Spend no time, effort, or money, put your head in the sand, and keep up the sham of your current site–but expect that you will get no incremental business in return until you come to your senses and choose among the first three.

More in the next few debunkers to help your company create a web site that is a marketing asset.

NoSpin Debunkers are free weekly online newsletters written by Tom Ranseen. If at anytime you would like to be removed from the NoSpin Debunker reader list, please Unsubscribe. Otherwise, enjoy, join the conversation, and please forward this debunker to as many friends/acquaintances as you think may be interested–or send me their email addresses. Thanks.

Tom Ranseen NoSpinMarketing 615.383.7157