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Issue 1 > Why your website sucks.

Why your website sucks.

Chris Haddad takes a blunt look at what's wrong with far too many websites.

Most websites (especially small solo pro websites) completely suck when it comes to building a business and making sales. And it's not for the reasons you might think.

(I fully expect this article to draw flames, angry comments and hate mail. I also figure that it'll hit a lot of folks right between the eyes and lead them down the path to better marketing and a more profitable business. So I figure that's a pretty fair trade-off.)

As a freelance marketing wonk and direct response word mercenary, I get asked (and sometimes begged) to look at a lot of websites.

• Sometimes these are client sites where I'm being paid to dig-in and ramp-up conversion.
• Sometimes they're sites that friends of mine have put together.
• And sometimes they're the sites of random smelly strangers who shove their iPhones in my face at parties, ply me with alcohol and ask for free advice. (And then get really mad when I tell them the truth.)

But the one thing that almost all of these websites have in common, whether they're for scrappy little service providers, monolithic mega corps or cool little products, is that the overwhelming majority of them absolutely suck.

• They suck at engaging a target audience.
• They suck at making a compelling offer.
• And they suck at helping their owner build their company and make money.

Why do they suck? It's not because of the design (though most of the time the design is pretty darned bad… either incompetently put together or too damned pretty for its own good.)

And it's not because of the copy (though the copy is usually limp and lifeless and doing you no favors at all). No, what makes most websites suck is the attitude and the mindset behind them.

What makes most websites suck is ego. If you look at a bunch of the websites out there on the wide and wacky interweb, you'll see that most of them are all about 'me'. (Not me personally—though that would be pretty cool—but about the company or the person behind them.)

They say things like 'Welcome to Incredible Corp. We specialize in creating incredible solutions! We have an incredible background story! Check out our incredible about us page! We're really incredible! Like us!'

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