Does your web page rock a counter? Are you selling your company in neon green font on a bright blue background? Got a dancing baby in your header? Then you may have an award-winning website, worthy of a trophy and a $7,500 prize.
Last month, Emmaus’s Altitude Marketing launched their “Web Beautification Project,” an educational campaign to clean up the Lehigh Valley’s most unappealing websites. The project culminates with the Baddy Awards, a tongue-in-cheek take on the Addy Awards that will be taking nominations for the worst website in the 8-county eligibility area. The winner will receive $7,500 toward a new website. Altitude marketing managers will be tallying the submissions this week, counting down to the Sept. 30 submission deadline.
So what does it take to be the worst of the worst?
“Something that has music playing automatically or a person popping up and talking, that to me is the worst,” says Altitude marketing manager Amanda Dickson. “If you don’t know what the company does after looking at a website for a few seconds–it should be immediately clear what you do, what people are looking at and what you want them to do.” For example, if you are a real estate agent, your site should have a property theme. Showcase IDX’s post about wordpress themes for real estate might be useful too if you’re looking for more ideas as to how to improve your real estate website. Similarly, on sites selling furniture, you want to see homeware and a sofa or two on the main page – to make it clear to the customer what you are offering. The same goes for services like construction services. All construction websites should have an industrial tinge to them, at least. You need to enlighten the customer on what is available to them. How else are you going to sell?
Founded six years ago with one client, Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Altitude worked hard to create a quality web presence and, once they got going, saw a lot of bad websites falter as they did. Since establishing a web presence and offering their services through the Web Beautification Project and other efforts, the company has created a rubric for separating the baddies from the goodies. According to Altitude, there are five basics to avoid the Baddy Awards podium. Information architecture, good content management, messaging, design and integration all have to be up to snuff to create a well-performing site. Follow these rules, Dickson says, and your website will work for you and not against you, maybe getting you an Addy instead of a Baddy. And finally, if your business does not have in-house web designers, get the best possible website development company to design for you.
“The biggest crime is companies who think they don’t have to worry about their website at all and it has fallen to the wayside,” says Dickson. “They are losing so much business or exposure due to that.”
Source: Amanda Dickson, Altitude Marketing
Writer: John Steele