October 14, 2009

Last week I told a friend I would help him marketing a new product. One of the things I did was visit websites of similar products and those of prospective clients. There was nothing close to media in any of these companies.

As is usually the case, consulting someone else's business turned out to be a good exercise for my business. I found myself uncomfortable with well over 50% of the websites. They assumed more knowledge of the product than the average viewer, they were difficult to navigate, and the most annoying thing was they had too much "stuff" like flashes, animation, video, etc. that slowed down the process and left me tapping my toe waiting for the download.

It turned out to be a great exercise when I went back to my websites with a more critical eye. I found a lot of things that probably were discouraging potential viewers.

I suggest you do two things:

1. Check out some non-radio websites and look for negatives, then see if some of those same things are happening on your sites.
2. 2. Find some regular folks with no ties to radio (who are not fans of the station). Have them look at your sites and give you a critique.

You'll find some good ways to improve your sites.