Web Developers In Trinidad Missed The Pivot Train
SEO no longer spearheads how someone connects with your services. Design does!
Good design is alive, it cuts through the noise and inspires action. But on the lips of a developer, design can sound like a funeral service: colors, fonts, and imagery. That’s because developers focus on mechanics, not dynamics.
It reminds me of an old story my pastor tells about a man who took his Chevrolet to the garage to be fixed. Despite the best efforts of the mechanic: renewed parts etc, he just couldn’t get the car to start. And being pressed for time, the owner of the car began inquiring about retrieving his vehicle, to which, the mechanic nervously replied, "I'm doing all I can do."
I guess, out of respect for the mechanic's expertise the owner of the car waited a little while before making a suggestion. But eventually, he said, "Why don't you just touch this? You're not getting any current."
Thankfully the mechanic didn’t let his ego get in the way of trying what the owner of the car suggested and voila: the car started!
Well, a good design is like current when relevance is the focus of your website. But the devil is in the cock n bull stories you tell yourself: the noose around your design that kills your potential to connect with the people searching for your services. And that’s where I see developers in Trinidad believing the website is the lifeblood of a business, missing it.
Storytelling, the reflection of what’s illustrated through design (also known as visual branding) is the lifeblood of a business. That’s the current web design trends: the dynamics of the mechanics that make the website work; not animations or flashy scrolling carousels, and certainly not SEO. Those things don’t help you stay top of mind. But the right story captured visually and expressed thoughtfully, can tell someone you’re not a peddler.
So, if for example you’re finding it difficult to put into words what you want to bring across more than anything on your website, you’re stuck because you don’t have clarity on your brand. Which comes first, the title or the story?
Prospects Are Either Confused Or Paralyzed
The belief that a clear message means talking about everything is making the attempt at an emotional connection, difficult to put into words. It's admirable that you "would not put out something that you won't use", but you're missing the point of The One-Page which is to convey the main idea: what you do and what differentiates you. Being irrelevant will get important information tuned out hindering your chances at the right connection.
Needing help isn't a bad thing. Each person has a purpose that’s connected to their strengths: without the thumb, lifting a cup of water to our mouths to quench our bodies of thirst won’t be without great difficulty, and the same is true for design. Without it, those social media posts will have no voice, and your optimized web pages (even with all its featured selling points), will all be reduced to nothing more than a corpse. And that’s what we’ve got locally, a bunch of corpses revived by old SEO tricks like “swiping keywords from competitors in order to rank on Google”: ZOMBIES! They may mumble a few terminologies, but it’s zombie language mostly because their mechanics have no dynamics.
That’s why I believe the local online space should be known for necromancy because outside visual branding end users are only communicating with the dead.
Common examples of this locally sound like "I provide braces and clear aligners such as Blah, blah, blah, blah" or "I work with high-end clients to help them get clear on their goals". You may have well said I use cutting edge technology or just admit you have no idea what those goals are specifically because there is nothing hyper-focused about those statements that tells a story (to the people who may need your expertise) of your previous experience. Not the case with the cover of Cru Nonpareil's digital book cover. The image is designed to tap into the frustration his ideal clients feel, and convey the most important message his brand wants to send. The connection isn't on the basis of how much he talks about, but what his brand empathize with. He understands something specific about their situation, they don't: why his ideal client does business with him. Get the point?
It's said that Michelangelo, so astonished by his sculpture of Moses, struck it and told it to speak! It's visual branding that awakens a feeling in a potential client that says you're the person to work with — building momentum around your services is simply about building on that feeling.
There's Too Much Friction In The Buying Process
If there is one thing I'll recommend to local web developers and designers it's to stop looking to contact pages to seduce potential customers to buy-in to our clients services online. Those things aren’t enough anymore. Instead...
Let a sliver of their expertise (their knowledge of where their ideal customer needs them to meet them) be felt on a conscious level by those they intend to exclusively work with. Then, let its character and the value it provides merge into a name that suits what their services are all about.
Position it so at a glance it tells a story about their approach to the project.
To the client: If you loosely base your perspective on how static electricity and current electricity work, you’ll understand the different levels you’ll be connecting on.
The build-up of electrical charges on the surface is the product taking care of the superficial needs of your customer
The electrons moving inside the conductor is the product addressing their deeper needs.
This is the invitation your ideal clients need in order to feel understood by you, the execution of which positions you in their minds as someone who’s working with a plan; who knows what they are doing. It’s the difference between someone with an approach to call their own, and someone without one – strategy.
I am the Founder and Visual Brand Strategist at The BrandTUB
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