The 3 questions every Web page must answer

If a page is designed for marketers, not customers, it’s doomed to fail

The most important thing a Web page can do is be crystal clear about what you can do on the page.

The best word to describe people when they are on the Web is “impatient.” They are particularly impatient when they arrive at your site for the first time. They are asking themselves the essential question: “Is this a website I can actually do something on quickly and easily, or is it just marketing?”

I’ve heard the following phrase from customers many times: “This is just marketing. I don’t have time for this.” On the Web, people are developing banner ad blindness, but they are also developing marketing-speak and communication-spin blindness. They see marketing as stuff that gets in the way, content that is annoying and unnecessary.

MarketingExperiments is an excellent research organization. It recently stated that the first seven seconds a person spends on your website are crucial to success. “Millions of dollars are won or lost in these first few moments a visitor spends on your site,” it writes. It goes on to state that everything it has learned about website optimization can be summarized by these three words: Clarity Trumps Persuasion