Alexander Craig's blog

When I was at school, one of the things I enjoyed most was showing my friends and family what I’d done.  Everything from English essays to artwork and stuff I made in design & technology lessons.  Likewise, when I was racing bicycles, I loved having friends and family there to see me compete and (on occasion) win.

Showing was always much better than tell.  Somehow, it doesn’t feel as good to rely on words to paint the picture.  I guess the old adage is true: “seeing is believing”.

So why, I have to wonder, do people and businesses consistently and repeatedly manage to forget this simple but so universal fact of life?!

I’m thinking in particular of corporate web sites of a technical bent.  It all comes off the back of a job I’m currently looking at for a friend of mine.  He runs a network solutions consultancy and wants to improve his web site.  The question he asked was, “what should he put on it”?  And it turns out to be a good one.

You see, all the other sites I’ve been looking at for comparison, inspiration and ideas seem to have one thing in common.  They do a lot of telling you about themselves and nowhere near enough showing.  I’m not for a moment suggesting I don’t take the claims about their services seriously, but it would be much nicer to see what it all looks like when they’ve done it for other people.  They say a picture speaks a thousand words.  I’d say a testimonial or case study is worth 10 times its word count on self prepared “our services” pages.

It’s probably worth considering that this may be a bit of a sector specific phenomenon.  After all, I know some types of business are very good at putting their money where their mouth is as it where.  In particular, the better marketing and design agencies will have a portfolio or showcase right at the centre of their on-line presence.  This is because they understand that their potential customers (and existing customers) want to see what they can do rather than just be told about it.  This of course works very well when your business is creating highly captivating and visual interactive products and services.  But if you don’t do that, having your existing customers share their experiences with your market place is the next best thing.

So, perhaps it’s time the technology service sector did a rethink, refreshed it’s approach and started chasing all those satisfied customers for sound bites and stories of their experience.  You never know, what they have to say may do a better job of selling you than you could do yourself!