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Here's a little test for your company and your website. Is it easier for me to work out what the hell you do by looking up your company on Wikipedia than it is

Here's a little test for your company and your website. Is it easier for me to work out what the hell you do by looking up your company on Wikipedia than it is is by looking at your website. A surprising number of companies fail the Wikipedia test, because marketing and management somehow feel that simple language sdescrtibing what they do somehow devalues the importance. "We're valuable because we're complex. Our marketing material needs to make what we do seem very complex".

Tepix 7y ago
It's normal for a company website to fail this test. After all, explaining what a company does is the sole purpose of a wikipedia article about a company. The company website on the other hand has many more objectives.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  What objectives are these? I have had quite a few occasions where I tried to look up what a project does and couldn’t figure it out from the website. I only learned that the product is really cool and makes young, diverse and good looking people happy.
  - goatherders 7y ago
    Its easier to sell a product that is really cool and makes young, diverse, and good looking people happy than it is to sell what a product does. The purpose of a website is to sell things. That's why the "About Us" page isn't the home page.
    - bagacrap 7y ago
      It's not like "about us" has anything relevant either. Usually it's some origin story about the positive change the founder wanted to gift to the world.
      - scollet 7y ago
        In other words, a bagacrap.
libertine 7y ago
You make the assumption that: - the ones who wrote/edit wikipedia articles for random companies aren't the the Marketing/PR departments of such companies; - Marketing and management feel that simple language devaluates the company importance; When in reality, any company should keep an eye on their wikipedia page - if not them, then who the hell has the best knowledge to update it. Sucessfull companies have pretty straightforward and simple communication, that's why they pay specialists to do it, or do it in house with specialists of their own. Unless you're talking about a random company where the marketing is done by someone who had to fill for the marketing guy that left the week before, because he said in a lunch break that he had graphic design course in colege. If that's the case, then why bring it up as a generalization, since is a bad practice, and indeed the exception to the rule? Or the goal is to state the obvious: there are bad marketers/managers like there are bad developers/artists/electricians/MDs/nurses and any other profession done by people.

Tepix 7y ago

It's normal for a company website to fail this test. After all, explaining what a company does is the sole purpose of a wikipedia article about a company. The company website on the other hand has many more objectives.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
What objectives are these? I have had quite a few occasions where I tried to look up what a project does and couldn’t figure it out from the website. I only learned that the product is really cool and makes young, diverse and good looking people happy.
- goatherders 7y ago
  Its easier to sell a product that is really cool and makes young, diverse, and good looking people happy than it is to sell what a product does. The purpose of a website is to sell things. That's why the "About Us" page isn't the home page.
  - bagacrap 7y ago
    It's not like "about us" has anything relevant either. Usually it's some origin story about the positive change the founder wanted to gift to the world.
    - scollet 7y ago
      In other words, a bagacrap.

libertine 7y ago

You make the assumption that: - the ones who wrote/edit wikipedia articles for random companies aren't the the Marketing/PR departments of such companies; - Marketing and management feel that simple language devaluates the company importance; When in reality, any company should keep an eye on their wikipedia page - if not them, then who the hell has the best knowledge to update it. Sucessfull companies have pretty straightforward and simple communication, that's why they pay specialists to do it, or do it in house with specialists of their own. Unless you're talking about a random company where the marketing is done by someone who had to fill for the marketing guy that left the week before, because he said in a lunch break that he had graphic design course in colege. If that's the case, then why bring it up as a generalization, since is a bad practice, and indeed the exception to the rule? Or the goal is to state the obvious: there are bad marketers/managers like there are bad developers/artists/electricians/MDs/nurses and any other profession done by people.