Your website is useless
Guest Contribution
How many websites of other companies do you use? When was the last time that you went on the website of your local bakery? Let’s continue this article with a few other questions to challenge our thinking:
The serious question
Why should someone go to your website instead of looking some funny videos on youtube? Why should someone go to your website instead of taking time with his wife or her husband?
When we see websites through these lenses we see websites has something very different. Going on a website is something that takes time. And we know people have less and less time. So why would they lose their precious time going on your fancy website?
Don’t get depressed right now, your website is useless but maybe some tiny parts make sense.
The basic need for a website
In the field of Service Design, we love to use the Jobs To Be Done theory. This theory basically looks at the profound and deep motivation that people have for doing stuff. For example, people don’t visit the website of their local bakery because they want to visit it. No, they want to find out something. And for most of the cases, it’s something damn simple. People just want to know is it open or not? What’s the phone number? That’s it.
Today Google makes your website easier if you are a business owner. With Google My Business you can show your opening hours and contact information directly in the search results. What happens then? People don’t need your website anymore.
The secondary needs of a website
Okay, so your website is basically useless. Great. Now you are depressed, you just spend a whole bunch of money for nothing. At least this is true for most small businesses and many brands. But your customers have a set of other goals. They want to learn something. They have a question for which they need an answer. Some brands go and fulfill these “secondary” customers needs.
For example, a well-known pet food company has articles on its website about the gestation time of cats. That has nothing to do with the food right? But when a person who is looking for kitten wants to know the gestation time there is something else going on. This person has another “Job To Be Done” than just knowing the gestation time. This person is preparing the arrival of the kitten at home. So when this person comes on the website of a pet food company and discovers the gestation time, the brand offers a valuable information and creates the first relationship.
What are the secondary needs of your website?
You can steal this kind of thinking and apply for your own business. Which questions do your customers have at the earliest stage of their problem? If you answer those questions, in a blog post, a video or ebook, you will be the smart company that helped them out from the beginning.
Does this work? Of course. If you need some reassurances about it, the guys at intercom explain how they had huge success with it. They explain how they used the “Jobs to be done” theory for their own marketing.
https://medium.com/media/601d2b53643779495d24abc625445c87/href
Focus
Don’t get too excited. You just had an emotional rollercoaster. You discovered that your website is useless and then discovered that it still could make sense. Before you get too excited remember that the needs of your customer are really clear and precise. Not every bakery needs to have articles about which type of bread is better for health. Fulfilling the basic needs of your customer is already perfect. If you allow yourself to focus on these needs only you give yourself time and space for other elements. Instead of enhancing the awareness phase by focusing on secondary goals look at the other phases of your service. You can use the money you save by doing a simple website which fulfills the basic needs to improve the other elements of your business. It’s now up to you. Do you want to improve your service or attract more people to it? Both are good, but at this stage, you have to choose your focus.
Daniele Catalanotto is a Swiss Service Designer. He loves to share articles that question the best practices of businesses to help them focus on what really matters to their customers.
If you liked this article, it would mean the world to him you you can hit the little ? button :)
Your website is useless was originally published in Service Design Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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