Websites are so easy to design and write – if you know what to do. Unfortunately, the VAST majority of sites stink. Why? Because they take themselves too seriously and fail to show photos of the people in the firm.
The world is overwhelmingly visual. People want to see you. If you don’t show them a photo of you, they think you have something to hide or that you are hopelessly introverted and/or socially maladroit.
I’ve just completed a tour of about 75 sites – both small and large firms. Approximately 70 of them have no photos of the people. Some don’t even have stock photography of smiling models. All of them read like the principals take themselves VERY seriously. What does that tell you? “Stay away.”
There is lots of research explaining how people’s eyes move when they’re reading a website. Maybe 1% of the websites we ever see use any of that information. Why? It seems that web designers are more interested in making things pretty and exciting than actually doing the right thing for their clients. It seems that copywriters have never learned that words = psychology. So, they miss the psychological boat by miles.