Do Website Owners need to be Smarter than their Subscribers?
If you’re operating a website do you need to be smarter than the next guy or gal running a website ?
Well if my experience is anything to go by, it would seem not.
If you’re running a website do you need to know how to create one, or know how it works ?
No not that either, at least not these days. You can put up a business website in a matter of 15-30 minutes and not have a clue how it works.
If you’re running a web site do you have to be smarter than your subscribers ?
This is a question I have had cause to ask myself over the past few months. Why ?
Because I have been dealing with quite a few website owners over the past 12 months and been trying to help them with their website design and promotion.
OK nothing unusual in that, but what has surprised me is how many of them seem to know less about how a website operates than either their visitors or subscribers.
I’m not referring to how a website works behind the scene’s, I’m talking about website owners being able to follow instructions and directions just like they would expect their visitors and subscribers to do when coming to their website.
Let me give you an example as a website operator, you have a list of subscribers and you email your subscribers some information. The email requires the subscriber to read it then click on a link for more details.
Nothing too difficult so far, but then you receive a few emails from subscribers saying they don’t know what they are expected to do when to your mind you’ve explained everything clearly.
So, what’s the problem, you check what you have written, you check it with other people to see if it’s clear to them. They say yes, it’s clear to them. So you’re left scratching your head wondering how else what you wrote can be explained to those subscribers who don’t understand it.
They say you have to write to people who use the Internet, like they are still in the 7th grade, so that must mean like they are 12 years old.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be written to like I’m 12 years old.
Now depending on who your subscribers are of course, you have to make adjustments, but in my case, my subscribers are all adults with ages from 18 to 70 and all running websites. This means if my subscribers don’t understand what I write, I must have some subscribers who are 7th graders and also running websites.
So to answer my earlier question, if you’re running a website do you have to be smarter than your subscribers ? Once again it would seem not, in fact it could be a disadvantage.
After all, I clearly have website owners who are like 7th graders, then surely they can’t be smarter than their own subscribers who could also be 7th graders. Hmmm, I wonder if anyone reading this will understand what I mean ?
Tony Simpson
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