Did you recently receive a letter from me? Thank you for checking me out.
Recently, a friend posed the question: “What is a good web site?”
A web site that gives you more return calls and with clients that are closer to your expertise is a “good web site”. As a marketer I look for how well the site functions.
As I have spent the last several days looking over psychology today adds, therapist web introductions and in many cases web sites several things have occurred to me.
When I looked at the sites I looked first as a marketer. The question I posed to myself was – is this a site I can help make more efficient? If the answer was no, then I did not send a letter to that person.
Here are some of the criteria that I used:
Is it a full featured web site? The more information on the site the better.
Is the therapist’s “voice” clear? It is important for the reader to hear where this professional comes from in their practice.
As a marketer do I get a sense of who this therapist wants to work with? Each therapist has some strengths, and the site should speak to those strengths very directly.
Is this a site that can be part of a more full featured marketing campaign? The more generic the site is, the less it can be used in a fuller marketing campaign.
Which leads me to a quick note about template based sites. There are literally thousands of companies that offer templates to build a web site. The more customizable the templates are, the better. Overall – template based sites are great. It allows everyone to get a web site up fast. There is a huge downfall with these sites, and that is if the text on the site mirrors text on other sites. IE, you did not write the text on the site yourself. This is a downfall for several reasons. First and foremost – your potential client will not hear “your voice” when browsing your site. So you will not distinguish yourself. The other reason this is not a good idea is that search engines will never pick up sites that use too much repeat information. The search engines are programmed to throw those sites out.
You are welcome to start browsing my site on the “online marketing” tab. I look forward to hear from you in the near future.
Warm regards,
Malene
