Justin’s Manifesto

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say I am tired of businesses and organizations that do not have anything remotely close to an adequate website. It is 2015.

If you’ll allow me to complain for a moment, there are certain things every business must do:

1. Tell me your hours.
2. Tell me your prices and in only rare cases is it acceptable to say “call us for pricing”. Rare instances.
3. Tell me your products plainly and directly.

The same goes for organizations of various kinds:

1. Tell me your hours.
2. Tell me what you do, plainly and directly.
3. Tell me how to get started.

Again, it is 2015. My phone has more computing power than the Apollo missions. I want to use it.

Because if your website does not do these few things, I will automatically assume the following:

1. Websites without hours are intrinsically or sorta open all the time. In some cases this is true, like our own.
2. If you blather on about “offering solutions” and not much else or “Leaders in enterprise” or some other equally vague, unhelpful, weasel phrase, I get to assume you do overpriced meta work. It’s likely you have no clue what your niche is or purpose for coming to work is.
3. If you don’t include prices or costs of delivery, I assume your service isn’t that great and you need to get a sales person on the phone with me so you can keep following up, begging, pleading, pressuring, and cajoling me. To be fair, some services do need a conversation, like ours from time to time. But we at least try to publish a few overarching guidelines so we’re not wasting anyone’s time.

And lastly, I am offended by bad design.

If your billboard is ugly and over-filled with text, or your flyer cliche, or your cover photo blurry, I get to assume you have no standards. I get to assume you have no attention to detail or desire for quality. At the very least you could change the font or just not publish anything at all.

A group’s marketing and outreach should be treated like food. If you don’t want to eat it yourself because it’s bad, burnt, or fell on the floor, don’t serve it.