On 27 Feb 2011, at 02:43, Julie Maxwell Allen wrote:
I do appreciate all your opinons, thoughts good or bad.
On your ‘Web Design’ page (why don’t you highlight the page you are on in the menu, by the way?) the spacing of the text with bullet points is odd; the second line starts some way in from the first line, when it should start directly under the first line, with the bullet point ‘hanging’ out on the right. It gives a really awkward ‘jog’ to the eye when you drop down from one line to the next. I see from the code that this is not an HTML list, which it really ought to be; that would sort it out automatically. I’m guessing you actually typed the bullet points in by hand?
Lots of copywriting ‘oddnesses’, for example, on the ‘Why choose GRW?’ page:
“We believe that each person and business deserves the same quality. Whether you are the Basic Package or the High End Package.”
That sounds really odd; people are not packages, so you can’t really say “Whether you are the Basic Package”. Wouldn’t it have been better to have said “Whether you choose the Basic Package”? Also, I think that full stop after ‘quality’ should have been a comma; it’s really all one sentence.
On the Welcome page: “We believe that a company’s brand is its number one marketing too.” 'nuf said.
On the SEO page: “I have heard many people refer to having there site”. Should be ‘their site’.
On the Business Tools page: “Business tools are a variety of communication pieces”. What’s a ‘communication piece’? Look at it in another context; would you ever style yourself as a ‘purveyor of fine communication pieces’? Would anyone know what it was if you did?
There’s a whole lot more oddities throughout the copy; missing apostrophes, gratuitous apostrophes, some lines with full stops at the end, some without, one line with two full stops at the end where it’s hard to work out if it should be a full stop or an ellipsis. A lot of the copy sounds kind of ‘over self-important’ too, like:
“Grassroots Web feels the marketing of your business is one of the most important things to do when you are starting or revamping your business.”
That kind of suggests that your clients are hanging on your every word, and that they really, really care what “Grassroots Web feels”. The sentence, too, is pretty obvious; I mean, it’s not like you’re telling them anything they didn’t think of long before you did—I doubt that any partner rushed in one morning and said ‘I’ve had this great idea for getting our firm noticed: Marketing!’. That sentence looks to me as though it might be a ‘duh’ moment for your prospective clients.
Web design page, Inconsistency: “Basic - this includes” versus “Midline - This is geared”. The second one has a capital ‘T’ for the word ‘This’. The first one doesn’t. I don’t think it’s too important which is ‘right’, but they should at least be the same throughout.
On the ‘Why choose GRW?’ page: “You want a self crafted site”. No they don’t, they want you to craft it for them.
On the same page: “We are available 24/7 to answer questions.”. Really? Your clients will think you’re barking mad!
On the same page: “But wait, isn’t everyones?”. There should be an apostrophe in ‘everyone’s’.
One last thing: the font you’ve chosen for the headings of your site is not exactly easily legible. For instance, in the header, the phrase ‘Down to Earth’ looks as though it actually says ‘Down to Earli’ because you can’t see the horizontal strokes in the type. This may be a ‘cool’ typeface, but if it’s too cool to read, there’s a problem. I’d think it a lot ‘cooler’ if you applied a bit more line-height to your body copy, for instance.
I really think you need to sort out your copy. It says so much more about you and your firm than any ‘cool’ typeface, and if it isn’t right, the rest is superfluous. If I was looking for, say, a plumber, I’d reject out of hand anyone who had ONE typo in their site. Why? Because they knew that this is the one great chance they had to get in front of the whole world, and they blew it. They didn’t check it, and if they weren’t capable of checking it themselves, they didn’t bother to get someone else to check it for them. With something this important, every word has to be correct. When I was a photographer in London years ago, I used to get letters from students about to graduate, asking me if I wanted an assistant. I didn’t, but I always used to give them the courtesy of a reply, as they’d gone to the trouble of writing to me. Except for the ones with spelling/grammar mistakes; they went straight in the bin, and my thinking was: if they can’t be bothered, neither can I.
I hope I haven’t been too bruising. I’d be more than happy to help you, off-list, with any of this copywriting, for free.
best wishes,
Paul Bradforth
Buy my eBooks at:
http://www.paulbradforth.com/books/
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