"Help! I've spent several thousand dollars to create and advertise a web site, but I'm not making any sales. What can I do?"
The question was posed by the owner of a small jewelry shop, and when I took a look at her site, the first thing I noticed was there was no hook to catch my attention. In fact, the home page told me nothing other than the fact the store had a lot of jewelry to sell. While that may be important to the owner, it doesn't do anything to encourage me to look into the store. Heck, if I want to see a lot of jewelry, I can browse through the jewelry displays at the local jeweler's shop or at the mall.
But since this lady asked for an opinion of her web site, I clicked into another page. There after a rather long wait for a graphic to come in, was the kind of "gem" that no store owner should ever display. In big, bold letters listing several types of jewelry available were the words:
14 CARROT FINE JEWELRY
Now, the jewelry being sold from this page may be excellent quality, and the owners of the store are probably honest, hard working people. But an error in word usage such as that immediately marks the store as being "small," low budget, and perhaps, unable to deliver the merchandise displayed.
To avoid such faux pas on your web pages (or in any other advertising you do) be sure to have someone with good spelling and grammatical skills proofread web pages and marketing literature.
While you're at it, have someone proofread your other marketing literature, too. When a consumer has numerous service providers or stores with similar offers to choose from they probably won't make the one that offers "senior citisen" discounts or "lawn sprinklas blow outs" the first place they call (or the one they buy from.)
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