UnMarketing, 2nd Edition

27Your Website—Old School versus New School

We wish we could delete this whole chapter, and that everyone had learned. We wish all websites were accessible, informative, and creatively designed. Maybe by the fourth edition.…

For now, not much has changed since we wrote the words contained in this chapter back in 2009. While many companies have made Facebook their business hub online, the value of a good business site has remained. We urge you to be careful building your online home on someone else's platform—where the content belongs to someone else and rules can change overnight. On Facebook, earning and keeping your customers' focus is almost impossible—there are just too many distractions. Use your Facebook page to stay in front of your market with helpful posts and then bring them to your website.

Your site should feel like walking into your online door—clear and informative, clean and easy to take in, and helpful to those who enter.

The hub of most businesses—the website—is the most poorly done thing of them all. After reviewing countless sites, most were guilty of the same old-school mistakes.

Brochure versus Hub

More than half of the websites we reviewed had nothing to give, only to buy. No information to learn, the sites were simply digital brochures. Where are you aiming on that pyramid? If it's just to sell stuff, keep doing this: buy or good-bye. But your website should be the hub of your business—the place where people can go to learn about you and to learn ...