This was a critique I did as an exercise, hence the company
details being changed:
Our
service has a four pronged philosophy:
Personal: Our business motive is service before
profit. Our aim is to provide the best, most appropriate and
informative [products] - and spread awareness that solutions do
exist in the process. We treat our customers as friends, which
is why we go to so much effort to find exactly what you are
looking for. We'll source any [needed product], including ones
not currently covered in our catalogue - and if we cannot
supply [it] personally, we'll tell you who can! We also listen.
Your suggestions mean a lot to us as we build and shape [our
business].
Professional:
Our skilled and
experienced staff will answer your calls and emails the
same day where possible and certainly within two working
days. Orders and queries are processed accurately and
efficiently. We operate a confidentiality policy and will
not pass your details to any other
organisations.
Practical /
adj: "of
or concerned with practice or use rather than theory;
suited to use or action; designed mainly to fulfil a
function (practical shoes); feasible, realistic;
concerned with what is actually possible (practical
politics; practical solutions)." Concise Oxford
Dictionary
Principled: We are committed to sustainable
principles and best achievable sustainable practices in line
with (and beyond!) Agenda 21 protocols.
The
Changes:
The first thing I did was to take
out the headings Personal/Professional/Practical/
Principled.
I did this for a couple of
reasons:
- The website visitor
doesn’t care/need to know what categories you put them
in.
- There were too many good
ideas lumped in together and so a lot of good ones were
lost in the crowd.
- The ‘practical’ heading
didn’t really make too much sense.
- Also the reference to
‘Agenda 21 protocols’ mightn’t make sense to everybody,
even to people in the target market.
So the revised message reads
as follows (superscripted notes are explained
below):
Here’s our1 promise to
you.
2
- We’ll put service before profit, because
we know that ethical profit only comes from offering the
best service. 3
- We’ll provide the best and most
informative [products] available so that you can find the
solutions you need.
- We put a lot of time and effort into
sourcing the best [products] for you. For every x
[products] we include, we reject y as not being good
enough. 4
- We commit to help you find what you
need. We'll source any [product], including ones not
currently covered in our catalogue - and if we cannot
supply [the product] personally, we'll tell you who
can! 5
- We'll listen to you: to your needs,
desires and suggestions as to how we can serve you better.
A lot of companies make this claim - we really do it. Try
it out and see for
yourself. 6
- We'll answer your calls and emails
the same day where possible, and certainly within two
working days. 7
- We'll process your orders and
queries accurately and efficiently, and on the very rare
occasions where we get it wrong, we’ll make it right by
[whatever you do to make it
right] 8
- We'll guarantee the absolute
confidentiality of your
information.
Notes:
- It’s a big decision
whether you say ‘my’ or ‘our’. There’s no shame in being a
one-man/woman band if you are, and people often like that,
especially if you play up the personal service aspect, so
you could say ‘I’.
- The whole statement is
much more personal, intimate and above all conversational
when you say, “My promise to you”, than “Our service has a
four pronged philosophy”. My example promotes connection
and trust. It’s person-to-person.
- The ‘service before
profit’ motif is very good; but you need to acknowledge
that you do make profit. It sounds very strange and almost
untrustworthy otherwise, as in
too-good-to-be-true.
- I don’t know if this is
true. But I presume it is, and if so, you’re losing out on
a LOT of credibility and added value if you don’t say
it.
- I really don’t recommend
the ‘treat you as a friend’ statement. Website visitors
aren’t looking for more friends, they’re looking for
information in the first instance, and good service once
they decide to buy. You can and should offer and promise
the good service, and let them decide they feel like
they’re being treated like friends. (In fact, you should
have a testimonial page too, that’s another
discussion.)
- I added the statement, ‘A
lot of companies make this claim’, because a lot do, and
that’s what the reader will be thinking, probably with some
scepticism. So putting that in acknowledges their
scepticism and deals with it, as much as it can be dealt
with until you get the chance to prove
it.
- That commitment to
getting back to them promptly is important, and deserves
its own line.
- You need to admit you get
it wrong sometimes. Again, people won’t believe it never
happens and it undermines your credibility to say that.
Acknowledge that you sometimes get it wrong and give a
strong statement of how you fix it.
If you'd
like me to critique and improve your own website, with the
ultimate aim of making it easier for website visitors to
become customers, just click here.
Or, if you'd
like a website done from scratch, click here for
information on that.
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