The Horror Of Website Design By Committee

Let’s discuss the overall design of the new home page, which you see on the screen there. What does everybody think?

OK. OK. One at a time. Jerry, let’s start with you and go around the room.

Too soft. We should show more product images instead of wasting all of that white space. I look at this page; I can’t figure out what we’re selling.

I don’t know … it looks elegant to me. Very consistent with our brand image. Actually, I think it would be better if we got rid of that big block of copy. Having no words at all on the home page would be really different, really cutting-edge! And we should make the logo bigger. Much bigger.

Keep in mind we need the copy for SEO. The reason we’re re-doing the site is to get more traffic and leads.

We have to make the tech support phone number much, much bigger. Customers with problems need to know how to reach us directly.

Yes! And we need a bigger phone number for our new Employee Benefits Hotline. The home page would be a terrific way to promote it. Our department would love it! I’d like to see a block of text under the header image describing how it all works.

And while we’re at it, we need to have a few legal disclaimers and some compliance language added to the page. I’ll get you the exact wording from Legal.

Let’s do the home page with white ink on a black background. My daughter showed me something like that last night on one of her shopping websites. Very powerful. Compelling. We should make the fonts smaller, too, to squeeze more stuff up higher on the page.

OK, thanks for the input, everybody. We’ll take this back to the design team and have another go at it. When is everyone available for a second look?

OK, I will schedule the next meeting six weeks from today. Let’s talk about the content for a few minutes. Did everybody have a chance to read the Word document with the new service page content? How did it look?

Too short! We talked about hardly any of the details of our service options. All we did was mention a few major benefits.

Keep in mind, Jerry, we are only trying to get visitors to phone in. We want the new site to generate leads, not replace the sales department.

Yeah! I like what you just said. We don’t need all that copy, unless it’s for that SOE thing. Anyway, our new logo speaks for itself. If we just made the logo really big and had a line or two of cutting-edge copy, the phones would ring off the hook. I’m sure of it.

Interesting. Do you have any campaign data to support that?

Not really.

I don’t think the copy has enough factual information. Benefits are fine, but we have all kinds of statistics and charts and historical data that should be incorporated into these pages.

Do you think prospects would be interested in reading all of that?

I don’t know, but the department has spent months formatting our new reports and the team is going to be quite disappointed if none of the information gets into the new site.

I didn’t have time to read the document, but it’s very important for the tone to be warm and welcoming.

I have to disagree. I did read the document, and the style definitely needs to be changed. We need a formal, businesslike tone. This copy sounds like we’re talking to people on a phone call or at a social event.

A lot of data indicates a more personal style is more effective in getting website visitors to convert.

[Sniffs.] Well, I suppose if visitors don’t like the way we present ourselves, they shouldn’t do business with us.

Let’s compromise. We’ll do a rotation — one page with two sentences, one page with lots of benefits, one page with lots of data, one page written informally, one page written formally, etc. And I will email you a list of 10 items about company history I want added to each page. The writer can figure out how to phrase everything. *

OK, I’m a little concerned all this variation will confuse visitors and make us appear erratic, but I’ll go over it with the writer and take a second run at it. We’ll discuss again in six weeks. Thanks, everybody.