Chocolate and Gold Coins

Saturday, May 21, 2005

About Us


About "Acme, Inc."

Company History
Since 1981, "Acme, Inc." has successfully designed and implemented numerous projects for commercial, industrial, and governmental clients throughout North America and abroad. Over the years, its success and growth can be attributed to flexibility, strong business partner alliances, and an extensive knowledge base. These attributes enable "Acme, Inc." to execute virtually any project on time and within budget constraints. …

If you don’t quite understand what Acme does, that’s the point. Gongol (an excellent blog) found this actual example of a typical company website “About Us” post.

I have often found similar company websites and wondered: “what do you do?” Why should it be that hard for company to explain what they do, after all, they do this for a living don’t they? The other thing I can never understand is why don’t these companies quote prices? Am I really going to do business with a business that is afraid to quote prices? If it is hard to state exactly what you service will cost, give an example. This gives the customer some information to work with.

If you expect your website to bring in customers, put some effort into it.

4 Comments:

  • This is because a lot of companies don't really do anything at all.

    The website isn't supposed to draw in new customers. They have salesmen doing that.

    By Blogger Half Sigma, at 6:46 PM  

  • Hi Calico Cat/Half Sigma
    A good website can bring in customers. I know that I'm more likely to contact a company if they put more effort into their website. And their sales force can only sell if they find me or I contact them. They won't find me, and I'm not contacting them, so they can't sell me anything.

    By Blogger Michael Higgins, at 6:06 AM  

  • Of course a good website helps to convey the professionalism of the company.

    But for the websites you speak of, where you can't figure out what the company does or what its prices are, this company figures that they are not going to get business just from the website, it merely augments their salesmen.

    The more expensive the thing that a company is selling, the less likely the website will bring in new unsolicited business.

    By Blogger Half Sigma, at 10:03 AM  

  • Hi Calico Cat/Half Sigma
    I think that the "Acme Co" of the above example was not too big, (I think it was 160 employees). Most of the companies that have the really poor web pages a small companies that don't know how to make and use a good web page.

    Some of the big companies' web pages have really cool things. They might have video you can watch. If their service is complex, they might use the web to good effect by really explaining what they can do.

    By Blogger Michael Higgins, at 11:54 AM  

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