Sometimes web designers and festival
organizers create websites that overstate what is actually being offered. All
festival and event organizers want people to come to their event. Your website,
of course, needs to be interesting and exciting enough to attract people to
first read it and then to motivate them to come to your event. I believe, however,
that overstating what you are offering will ultimately become a negative.
Here’s an example of what I mean. One
particular weekend we were looking for a festival to visit, so I went onto the
Internet to do some research. I looked at a number of sites and finally found
one that looked interesting. It sounded like a great festival with lots of
really interesting activities scheduled. The website was very detailed as to
what was being offered. We decided to go to it. The problem was, that when we
got there, the reality didn’t match what was advertised on the website. You
might say, “What does that matter, it got you to come to the festival”.
That may be true, but don’t you want your visitors to come back year after
year? Don’t you want them to tell their friends and family about how great your
festival was and that they should attend? It’s not that we wouldn’t have
visited this festival, we likely would have, but the sour taste that was left
from our disappointment meant that we wouldn’t recommend the festival to our
friends and we certainly wouldn’t go back to it. If we felt like this, wouldn’t
others?
Yes, as I said before, it is very
important to an interesting attention grabbing website, but it must be factual
and not overstated. You definitely want to draw people to your event, but not
under false pretenses. If you have special plans for your festival, great and
by all means state them on your website. But, and this is a big but, make sure
your special plans happen! If you find, as you get closer to your event that
you can’t meet your plans, revise your website the match what is actually going
to happen. Remember the old sales adages, “It’s easier to keep a satisfied customer
than it is to find a new one” and, “Every dissatisfied customer will
tell at least 10 of their friends”.
Be wise, deliver what you promise!
No comments:
Post a Comment