New Copy On My Portfolio Page

[nemorathwald]

In response to How To Choose A Web Designer In Five Easy Steps, I have changed my professional website's call to action to read as follows:

Contact me and let's talk about why you have a website or publication, and what it can do for your business.

I intend to add more and more copy to that site to reflect this.

Comments

[stormgren.livejournal.com]

This might be a strange question, but...

Isn't something like that quintessentially anti-Matt-Arnold?

I recall you writing against this a few years ago?

Epiphany, or am I not understanding where you come from?

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

You are correct, but it doesn't matter. All my vocational training has one main way of converting into financial value, and this is it. I have found no alternative. I currently have no money, and very little food and gasoline left. I either make money, or be a burden on those I love.

[stormgren.livejournal.com]

Trust me, I understand and sympathize more than you think.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

The main problem I am overcoming is that I am unconvinced of virtually every value proposition I hear from any business whatsoever. So I would be basically selling an argument I do not believe. Let me give you an example of how I am overcoming this.

While my sister and her husband helped me move, I asked my brother-in-law if there was anything I could do for him. He said he plans to start a landscaping business and would like a website for it. I was only too happy to do so.

Now, I own no land to be scaped. Nor do I enjoy the scaping that others have done to their lands. So I don't grok the value that a visitor to his website hopes to gain. But I believe I can come to understand it without grokking it, and that I can do so in a financially viable amount of time. I have come to realize I probably would not have to spend a year living in his customer's homes and studying them like some kind of method actor. So I could still make a website that convinces them of the value of landscaping, an argument for which I am personally unconvinced.

It would be kind of like going to a private Christian school that forces you to write a paper about why the theory of evolution is false. I could do that, by saying "this person says this, and that person says that," and not framing the paper as anything I personally believe.

Also, I know many fundamental principles of directing attention and what to direct it on to. At the very least I could prevent a business from making elementary mistakes in reaching their site visitors.

[atropis.livejournal.com]

reading over a few of the information highwayman's articles, the thing that stood out to me about sales tactics was not about believing in the product, or thinking that it is the best. it's about getting some goal met; that being an end towards which a given service is a means.

"evolution's looking for good enough"

on further marketing-related reflection, experience seems to bear that out. when i'm looking for stuff to buy via the internet, i also do not find myself looking for 'best in the business' so much as 'will this do what i want it to'.

is it inexpensive? is it nearby? are the [individuals and/or equipment] that i might be working with willing to get the job done? are they well equipped to follow through with that inclination? can i contact them right away?

for me, at least, these are the things that seem to make up the reliable road to 'sold'.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

That's an encouraging thought. I like to help people get the information they're looking for.

[atdt1991.livejournal.com]

I agree with Ann. Your role can vary, as a web designer. Ideally, a copywriter would be involved who would do the heavy lifting of taking the facts of the company and turning them into good reading.

As a skeptical consumer, I do not want a website that urges me to buy their product. I want to be convinced that the company is professional, is ethical as far as companies go, will attempt to treat me well by not fleecing me and by making me happy if I am dissatisfied, and is competent to do the exact job I want.

So, when I do design for companies (without a copywriter or other staff), I think my job is to figure out who their audience is and what that audience wants from them, and figure out how to reveal those things about the company to the potential customer, and to step out of the way of commerce as much as possible.

And it is true: Return on Investment needs to be part of that discussion. If a small company doing $500 a month online wants an epic website that will take months and lots of dollars to complete, I should either have an explanation for how that epic website will improve their investment or I should discourage them from doing it.

Fortunately, there ARE ways to quantify these things without too much bullshit. And ultimately, assuming you are faithfully connecting a consumer who wants something with a producer who can provide it, you are helping people. The ethical problem comes when someone wants to hire you to be deceptive, to treat their audience like children, to convince people that they're something that they really aren't, and in those cases, your "soul" will thank you for walking away.

Just my opinion, of course. Commerce isn't inherently evil, it just provides short-term incentive for evil.