Ducks in a Row: Communications and Your Company
by Miki Saxon
This week is about the effects written communications have on people’s perceptions of both companies and individuals. Today we are looking at company communications, Thursday we’ll look at the effects of communications on a more personal level and Friday discuss what can be done to improve both.
Websites are critical means of communications. Experts say that you have about two-four seconds to capture a visitor’s attention or they will leave the site.
That being the case, why in the world do companies use prose so opaque that the message is incomprehensible?
Here’s a great example from the landing page of nsoro. (I have no connection with the company and just happened to run across the site.)
nsoro is a worldwide service and solutions provider. We take great pride in supplying, designing, and supporting technology solutions to the commercial and government verticals. nsoro remains aggressive in pursuing ways to develop our expertise and improve performance. read more
Do you have any idea what they do?
The graphic indicates it is some kind of communications company.
You would expect that by clicking the “read more” link you would find out; instead, the link takes you to the “About” page that restates the above paragraph along with the following links,
A Message from Our CEO
Executive Team
Core Values
MBE Certifications
Do you know any more about what they do?
How much time/effort do you spend when you are greeted with something similar? Please take a moment to share your answer in comments.
Flickr photo credit to: Svadilfari on flickr
May 4th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
That always puzzles me as well.
I always assume that it is because the Marketing guys are overridden by the CEO and Legal :p
May 4th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Denis, You may have hit on the problem, especially legal.
I still remember what an in-house advertising exec told me; he said that he never met anyone in management who didn’t know how to write copy and that if I didn’t believe him I should just ask them!