Content Marketing Today

Don’t Drive Your Visitors Crazy like This Website Does!

Third Eye Management and Marketing must be blind to Internet realities.

Let’s be visual. This week we critique a marketing company that has completely misunderstood online visitor behavior. It’s all about misunderstanding the use of visuals. 

I can understand why an old-line manufacturing company might fall for some smooth talking Web design Company’s advice. “We’ve got to show them some eye candy. This flash graphic is so compelling that your visitors will be willing to wait for as long as the 30 second Budweiser commercial to see what you’ve got cookin’ on your site.”  I can just hear 76 trombones playing in the background.

But this is a marketing company were talking about.  Surely they cannot afford to be this clueless.

Here’s what goes wrong:

1. when you get to their site, you see a big white page with a circle that has some kind of likeness to an eye. And, in little tiny, pale gray, barely legible letters, it says, “thank you for visiting www.thirdeyemamagement.com.” Yes, but who are you people?  We have been no idea what they do, apart from the fact that they mention management and marketing in their name.
2. On the same page, also in little tiny gray letters, you see the word “enter.” If you are Web savvy, you’ll figure out that you should do something even though it doesn’t really look like a button or anything that you would logically click.  My guess is they will already have lost lots of visitors before they ever decide to click through.
3. When you do click a new window pops up that takes almost 20 seconds to download on a very high speed cable connection.  You are treated to a monotonous musical background and a seizure inducing circular pattern of size changing dots. Again in little tiny letters, it says “click circles for menu.”
4. There is no rhyme or reason to the color or size of the circles.  Until you cursor over a circle you have no idea what information might be hidden away behind it. This is truly a case of a company that has no interest in making it easy for Web visitors to make a positive decision to learn more–and possibly to become a client.
5. Assuming you’ve gotten this far, since most visitors will have given up long since, you may click on an the ‘what we do’ circle. Here is all that you will learn: Third Eye Management works with business owners to achieve their vision to develop their dream I helping turn their good little business into a great business! Founded in England in 1988 now has Associates in 22 countries–everyone united by the vision of “thinking global and acting local.” Believe it or not, that is the sum total you learn from this section of the website. But, I guess if you’re interested in threadbare clichés, you have come to the right place.
6. All the while, as I write this, that the mindnumbing music continues to the point where I’m inclined to throw something across the room.

Learn what not to do from these guys.  Learn what you should do from online players who are a lot smarter than all of us. 

Since I have just returned from a content packed two days learning, among other things, what really works on the web today, this website is especially appalling.  As a simple exercise in logic, you might ask why doesn’t the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal show people equally obscure opening pages.  My attitude has always been that since they spent millions of dollars designing their websites that are designed to get people to the information they want immediately, they probably know what works. 

So, if you have a website that hides what you do behind multiple layers of meaningless stuff, you really need to rethink what you’re doing.  Make it obvious from the get-go exactly what you do and how you can help the visitors who come to your site to solve their problems.  A great visual design can add enormous value to a website but only when that design makes it easier to understand the content that makes the business relevant to your needs.