Don't forget to explain who you are...

Some organisations don’t need to explain what they do.

If you’re Mercedes, say. Or Microsoft:

But if your brand hasn’t achieved QUITE that level of global recognition as yet, then one of the really basic things your website needs to do, is explain what you do.

Sometimes, it’s obvious from your organisation’s name:

But for the rest of us…

But if you’re not in either of those categories, it really matters that your website explains what you do.

Not deep in the ‘about’ page, or in some nicely crafted paragraphs on the home page, but succinctly, in the header, on every page.

When someone arrives at your page, you absolutely DON’T want them flailing around, thinking ‘what is this?’ and ‘where am I?’ and ‘who are these people?’

Disoriented and confused is not how you want your potential customer to feel…

Nice examples

Here are some examples of website straplines with nice clarity and simplicity.

They’re from brands that are big enough that you’ve probably heard of them, but not so big that they’re going to assume that absolutely everyone already knows what they do:

And this would be great if it were big enough to be legible:

All of these tell you, in upbeat but reasonably straightforward terms, who they are.

Or can your menu speak for itself?

If you’re clever enough when you craft the menu items in your header, they may do this job for you:

I actually didn’t know until I visited SSE’s site, looking for examples, that they offered phone and broadband services. But they’ve got that message across super-clearly in their header, using their menu items.