About your websites, brochures, flyers etc.

We live in a time where everything goes fast, faster and even faster.
Well they even now proved (although they think) that E-MC2 is not true and it’s possible to travel faster than the speed of light, making even time travel “maybe” possible. So what does this mean for us people… well for one we get a load of information on our plate. When I look at myself I feel this every day, and I think it’s positive. Before the iPhone for example I hardly ever read a newspaper, it simply took too much time, with the iPhone however when I wake up the first thing I do is run 3 news apps, one for tech, one for normal news and one for the more fun news. That’s the start of my morning. In between I check mails, G+ and Twitter to see if there is something that needs my attention. What a few years ago was my “resting” point in the morning (you know what I mean) has now been transformed to Doorhof central for the morning, or in other words my first working time of the day…..

But does this also means there will be problems, well actually yes and big ones.
In this section a few observations I’ve done during the last few years and some tips how you “might” solve some problems.

People don’t take the time to read
Well actually I hope it’s this, because other wise it would mean that people actually are becoming very dumb.
Let’s start off with a REAL example, and yes I know this sounds made up, but trust me this is 100% true and actually happens at least once a week :

“Hi Frank, love your work… do you also teach workshops ?”
“Hi, thanks for your mail, actually I do.. as you can read on http://www.frankdoorhof.com I have a special site for that, surf to http://www.photography-workshops.eu and you can find information, dates etc.”
“ok, thanks”
“Hi Frank, can you give me some dates on which the workshops are held ?”
“Hi, see the menu option DATES, and you can see all the dates including the workshops that are on that date ?”
“ok, thanks”
“Hi Frank, I see the dates now, but what is discussed during the workshops ?”
“Hi, no problem, please go the menu option ABOUT THE WORKSHOPS and you can see a small description”
“ok thanks”
“Hi Frank, I would love to do a workshop, how do I register ?”
“Hi, go to the menu REGISTER FOR A WORKSHOP or just drop me a mail”
“ok thanks”

After registration the student gets an email with all the information about location, what to bring etc.

“Hi Frank, can you please tell me where I have to be for the workshop tomorrow ?”
“Hi, in your mail the address is shown, did you get this (you must have because you did do the payment to the bank account in this mail”
“oops, thanks, see you tomorrow”

Well ok I told you this was real, and indeed it is but this is a worst case scenario which maybe happens once ever month or two months, however the questions in this example are really what we get in our mailbox several times a week. If you ever mailed me with something like this PLEASE don’t think I make fun of you in this blogpost because really you are not alone, and this example is only used to exaggerate what I want to make clear in this blog post.

It’s an information overload and YOU have to act
Today it’s very simple to loose track of what you’re doing, I’m working on three screens, one I’m typing on now, one is for my emails and one shows tweet deck which shows me the updates on twitter and Facebook. This means that I get all sort of impulses that can take me away from my original task of typing this article….. I have to be honest that I can concentrate on what I do pretty well but I also have to be honest that it’s a lot harder than let’s say 10 years ago, and for some (maybe most) people it’s getting harder and harder to really concentrate on what they want to do, but most of all time is getting less and less, there is so much to do, so much to read and so much to discover that we simply don’t have the time to really look for something.

I remember that when Internet was just starting I could spend literally hours looking online for articles and when images became more and more uploaded for nice images, I also remember that I only got 2-3 emails a day, and some days none. (yeah that was still a dialup connection, and not even local). Now we are online 24/7 and we stress when we have 10 minutes without connection, oh my maybe we miss the end of the world ??

This has a huge effect on how websites and communications have to be made.
I find myself more and more forwarding mails to an assistant that are too long or not nicely formatted, in other words when I can’t see the whole story in less than let’s say 1-3 minutes I’m not interested enough and I will forward it to someone that will read it for me and tell me in short what it’s about. And trust me I have no problem with reading or other handicaps, it’s just that I also see the other mails and I’m afraid that I miss something important when I have to “rush-read” an email.

So when you make a website or flyer etc. you will have to take into account that people don’t take the time to read anymore. I never was a fan of the flash websites, some sites took me about 1-2 minutes to figure out and to find the menu. Now a days when I visit a website I want to see directly where I can find drivers, where I can find the products and to be honest when I can’t find it within 2-3 clicks I’m already thinking “pfffff I hate this site”.

When you look at my sites, I always try to make the menus as easy as possible, but I also make sure that everything can be found quickly, some people advised me to make one menu on the top of my site containing all the pages, and I said “no”…. well actually I did try it, the amount of mails asking if I teach workshops was doubled, people simply didn’t go the effort of clicking on the button Menu… they probably thought, that must be a menu with some information that is not interesting….. so within a few weeks I “again” placed all my buttons nicely on top of the site. There are some menus that fold down but those contain the information that I are not “making money”. And even when you try to make everything as easy as possible and accessible within 2-3 clicks, there will still be people that cannot find something, read over it, or simply don’t know how to click a link, and that is no problem of course, those are your clients also so always reply in a nice way and make sure you “guide” them through your website.

Some tips
Please remember I’m a photographer and not someone who studied for this, however these tips are the things I use and they seem to work rather well (most of the time).

Website name
Make it easy to say and to remember.
I have given up on http://www.frankdoorhof.com, somehow people will call me : doorhoff, doorzon, doornhof, doorzet etc. so they will not remember the site. For this we use a different site, if I don’t have business cards with me I always use the website http://www.jouwfotoshoot.nl (in english yourphotoshoot) or http://www.studiofd.eu these are easy to remember and will guide the visitor to my main site.

Easy menus
I strongly believe that a good website should be easy to navigate.
Make sure everyone sees the menu, don’t use a hidden menu that will pop up when you’re mouse goes over it, it looks cool when you demonstrate it, but trust me you will loose customers when they don’t see the menu within 10 seconds. Also I believe in easy menus, meaning everything in a menu bar on top of the site, not a pulldown called MENU, but just all the options next to each other, people can see directly what you do “Hey he also sells DVDs” and you don’t have to hope they click on your menu and navigate to the page SERVICES and click through to EDUCATION. However do make sure that it’s not a “jungle” if you have to…. combine pages for example BIO, CONTACT, CV, SERVICES could be in one page called ABOUT. I know it sounds weird but it cuts down on pages and people will find it easier to find.

Clear language
I love to write longer articles (that’s why I blog) however these blog post are here to read and contain information. My website is the opposite, I only “share” what I think is the bare essentials needed to trigger your interest in my work and to read on or mail me.

Be quick with replies
I hate it when I have to wait for a week on an email reply.
We live in a time were we have email,  make sure that every day you go through your mails and sort them, I use a folder called “to do” for the longer mails that I still need to do and I will start with the smaller ones that are easier to answer. And when you reply make it readable. Use the enter key to make sure the mail is easy to read, no-one likes to read 40-50 lines without breaks typed after each other.

Will it change ?
Sorry I’m afraid it will only get worse.
Prepare for people that will be overloaded more and more with information and get more and more confused with the information they have to work through, so make sure you stand out. Use a strong color in your signature that runs through your website etc. this way there is some form of recognizing for the reader. Make sure you answer quick, to the point and accurate, and use the correct topic header, the modern mail clients are great in sorting replies.

I hope that with some of these tips you can work and get a bit more visitors or clients. It will get harder in the future to draw attention, but most of all to keep the readers attention. So good luck, we are all gonna need it 😀