How"s Your Web Sight?
Copyright © Michael W Crank
You have a web site and you're ready to establish your presence on the Web. You have either put a certain amount of time and effort yourself into creating the site or you have opted for a cookie-cutter site that was pre-made for you. You have written an article or two, submitted to search engines, built back links---all the stuff you need to do to get noticed and start bringing in traffic. You're really proud of your accomplishment---and you should be.
But, let's say, I find your site and I go to it and the first thing that hits me is the glaring misspelled word in the bold headline one the front page---or the grammatical errors scattered throughout the content---or the wrong form of various words that disrupt my reading---I do not come away with a very positive impression of your web site or your business, so I move on.
Trust me when I tell you, I see this type of thing on a consistent basis. It astounds me how sloppy people are with their web appearance---and I inwardly wonder if this is how they are with their own appearance, as well. Image is a very critical element to any business and it is no less true for a home based business or a work at home job---if you work from home and have a web site, you are projecting an image of yourself, as well as your business. In my mind, at least, laxness in how the business is presented will carry over into laxness in how the business is conducted.
One of the most common blunders I encounter is the usage of "lose" and "loose". For the record, you don't loose your command of the written word, you lose it---and it is quite apparent that there is a considerable number of people who have lost it. Another quite common mistake I see is the usage of "your" and "you're". Again, it is not you're image that suffers when this happens, but your image.
Have you ever had your picture taken, only to exclaim later, "I couldn't possibly have looked like that!"---but you did; the camera simply recorded onto film exactly what it saw---it did not alter the image in any way. The servers that host your web site don't alter the site in any way, either; they simply display on your monitor exactly what you had originally transmitted to them.
It's even more unbelievable when you consider all of the editing tools that are built in to today's software. Granted, computers can't exercise judgement, so if everything is left up to the software to detect, some things will slip through---that's why it is important to personally check your work.
While there are a number of factors that contribute to poor English usage, they are contrary to my purposes here, so I won't go into them. My point is that such things adversely impact both your image and the image of your business. It's simply a matter of how you want those to look.
As a side note, abuse of font styles and wacky color schemes don't score any points, either. When I go onto a site that is difficult to read, I leave it. Don't put up something tacky and then expect stellar results. Just put forth that little bit of extra effort---it's worth it!
You have a web site and you're ready to establish your presence on the Web. You have either put a certain amount of time and effort yourself into creating the site or you have opted for a cookie-cutter site that was pre-made for you. You have written an article or two, submitted to search engines, built back links---all the stuff you need to do to get noticed and start bringing in traffic. You're really proud of your accomplishment---and you should be.
But, let's say, I find your site and I go to it and the first thing that hits me is the glaring misspelled word in the bold headline one the front page---or the grammatical errors scattered throughout the content---or the wrong form of various words that disrupt my reading---I do not come away with a very positive impression of your web site or your business, so I move on.
Trust me when I tell you, I see this type of thing on a consistent basis. It astounds me how sloppy people are with their web appearance---and I inwardly wonder if this is how they are with their own appearance, as well. Image is a very critical element to any business and it is no less true for a home based business or a work at home job---if you work from home and have a web site, you are projecting an image of yourself, as well as your business. In my mind, at least, laxness in how the business is presented will carry over into laxness in how the business is conducted.
One of the most common blunders I encounter is the usage of "lose" and "loose". For the record, you don't loose your command of the written word, you lose it---and it is quite apparent that there is a considerable number of people who have lost it. Another quite common mistake I see is the usage of "your" and "you're". Again, it is not you're image that suffers when this happens, but your image.
Have you ever had your picture taken, only to exclaim later, "I couldn't possibly have looked like that!"---but you did; the camera simply recorded onto film exactly what it saw---it did not alter the image in any way. The servers that host your web site don't alter the site in any way, either; they simply display on your monitor exactly what you had originally transmitted to them.
It's even more unbelievable when you consider all of the editing tools that are built in to today's software. Granted, computers can't exercise judgement, so if everything is left up to the software to detect, some things will slip through---that's why it is important to personally check your work.
While there are a number of factors that contribute to poor English usage, they are contrary to my purposes here, so I won't go into them. My point is that such things adversely impact both your image and the image of your business. It's simply a matter of how you want those to look.
As a side note, abuse of font styles and wacky color schemes don't score any points, either. When I go onto a site that is difficult to read, I leave it. Don't put up something tacky and then expect stellar results. Just put forth that little bit of extra effort---it's worth it!
