- Video
Your website should be clear, not clever
Stop worrying about rounded buttons. Start worrying about whether your headline says what you do.
▶Play the video: Your website should be clear, not cleverYour customer doesn’t care about your awards, your marathons or how many dogs you’ve got in the business. They care about solving their problem, ideally quickly. So stop obsessing over whether a button should be rounded or square. Start obsessing over whether your headline says what you do.
Here’s a test. I call it, not very interestingly, the 10-second test. Pull up your homepage. Set a timer for 10 seconds. Imagine you’re a complete stranger and answer three questions. What do you do? Who do you do it for? What should I do next?
If you can’t answer all three, your site is clever and not clear. It’s putting looking good ahead of being clear.
We’re working on a new website for a lawyer at the minute. The top of the site says: “As specialist lawyers, we are here to help you with all of your family law needs.” Underneath that, their services. Underneath that, book a free consultation. Nothing clever. What we do, who it’s for, what to do next.
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Read the full transcript
Your customer doesn't care about your awards, your marathons, how many dogs you've got in your business. They care about solving their problem and ideally as quick as possible. So, stop obsessing over whether a button should be rounded or whether it should be square. Start obsessing over whether your headline is actually telling people what you do. There's a clear and easy way to solve this.
Here's a simple test you can run on your website. I call it, not very interestingly, the 10-second test. Pull up the homepage on your website right now. Set a timer for 10 seconds. And in that time, imagine you are a complete stranger and you need to be able to answer these three questions.
What do you do? Who do you do it for? And what should I do next? If you can't answer all three of those questions, your site is clever and not clear. You're prioritizing looking good over being clear.
A simple example of this is on a new website that we're working on for a lawyer at the minute. It simply says this at the top of the site. As specialist lawyers, we are here to help you with all of your family law needs. And then underneath that, there's all the services that they offer. And then underneath that, there's book a free consultation.
It's as simple as that. There's no cleverness to any of that. We are merely telling people what we do, who it's for, and what to do next. So rule number one is be clear and not clever.