Talking about customer goals is the biggest mistake a website can make is. That’s how you lose the impatient customer.
A couple of months ago we needed to find a new office cleaning service. We went to lots and lots of office cleaning service websites and became more and more frustrated. The typical website had a big silly picture of someone smiling out at you.
Hello marketers. Anybody home? Can you please, please get over the jaded, print marketing, old school hero shot. It’s the Web. It’s the 21st Century. Wake up, please. Do you go to Google and see a sexy woman smiling out at you saying. “I’m having such fun searching. You should try it too.”? Do you go to Twitter and find a handsome man smiling out at you, saying: “Communication is such fun. You should try it too.” Do you go to an airline website and see a happy couple smiling out at you, saying: “You need a break. It’s such fun booking a flight. Try it!”
So, we were at an office cleaning service website and this lady was smiling out at us with her hands behind her head. Hello. We need a office cleaning service.. She’s not going to do much cleaning for me if she has her hands behind her head. And she’s saying to me: “Book a cleaning service and get time for you.”
That was a big breakthrough for us. For years we’ve had a office cleaning service and we never really understood why. But this website educated us. It’s all about time. And then this hands-behind-her-head-big-grinning-lady asks us: “Are you looking for a office cleaning service?” Well, duh. Actually, no. we’re looking for a set of golf clubs, but for some wholly unfathomable reason we typed the following text into our search bar: “office cleaning service”.
Then the lady says: “We clean your office so you don’t have to.” A major milestone for us in the evolution of our thoughts as to why it’s a good idea to have a office cleaning service. Before that extraordinary sentence we had a weekly panic. “The cleaner’s coming tomorrow! What!? Tomorrow? Quick! Clean the organize the office before the cleaners get here.”
The cleaning websites we went to told us truly useless things we already knew but didn’t tell us the things we really wanted to know: hourly rates, whether they worked in our area, whether they cleaned on weekends.
These websites wasted our time by telling us that our time is precious. They kept talking about our goals. We know our goals. By the time we’re at a search engine, we know our goals. We’re on the Web because we have a task that will help us fulfil our goals. The Web is about doing. It is active. It is task-focused.
Focusing on the goal is a huge mistake marketers make again and again. And the pretty pictures and swirling, shiny ‘interactive’ objects that are placed on black backgrounds. And the grey text. Marketers and designers think these things are cool and impressive but they are the exact opposite. Customers sneer at these old school brochure marketing tactics.
The Web is about tasks.