What Not to Wear

As with people, how a website presents itself has a huge impact on how it is perceived. While reading treehugger.com the other day, I was intrigued by one of their posts about a new product called ecoballs. The name aside, it sounded like a great idea. Using less water, washing at a lower degree and saving on detergent all sounded very nice, but also a bit dubious. Treehugger didn't now much more about the product than what was obviously from a press release or something, so I decided to check out the products website.

This is where the point of presentation comes in. Being unconvinced by short product description claiming all sorts of good things, I was expecting to find something that would convince me that the product was worth my time. If the ecoballs website is to be compared to how a woman dresses, I would say she looks like a cheap call-girl or something worse. To stay in the world of comparison, I was expecting a smartly dressed woman, probably a business woman or scientist. Someone with style and charisma telling me this product is the real deal, and that it's safe to buy.

Translating that into website terms, that would mean finding valid proof of the capabilities of the product, independent studies backing the wild claims and possibly links to respectable sites who've tested and reviewed the product. Not finding any of this, actually made me conclude that the product is most likely a scam, and not something I would be willing to pay almost 50 pounds for.

My point here is hopefully clear enough. It doesn't matter if you've got yourself an internet strategy, goals, tracking and a statistician on the line if your site sucks. If you're trying to sell dubious stuff to gullible people, then the cheap call-girl look might work, but if you're serious about trading online or about your online presence, you need to have a presentable site which doesn't scare people off. This site might not be the most spectacular site on the web, but there is a reason i didn't choose something more colorful.