If you got mail in the office with the words, “Finally – The Cure For That Nasty Genital Itch You’ve Had Since That Drunken Weekend In Vegas Last Month!” plastered on the front in enormous red letters … would that be mail you’d open and read?
Or would you shred it, toss it, do ANYTHING HUMANLY POSSIBLE to get rid of it before someone saw it?
Undoubtedly you’d choose the latter. Yes, even if you did have such an affliction. Because it’s nobody’s damn business. Kind of a private thing.
Yet that’s what so many of us do when it comes to our websites.
All me to explain before you think I’m off my rocker or have been hacked by spambots.
I got a notification of a new lawyer signing up for the Legal Practice Pro Newsletter. As I often do, I went to Google and typed in the domain name of the lawyer’s email address. It’s always nice to know who’s chosen to sign up, and it interests me to learn more about the people who are reading my work.
The lawyer’s site is uneventful. It’s boring, looks like a stock template and provides no worthwhile content. Pretty standard stuff, so I’m not shocked. I click into a new browser tab to check out something else and, a few seconds later, begin to hear what sounds to be an advertisement for a car dealer coming through my laptop speakers.
Odd, sayeth I. I’m not streaming any music. So I begin clicking onto each one of my 12 open tabs to see if perhaps there’s some multimedia ad playing in one of them.
You know where this is going, right? Of course you do, smart reader that you are.
The audio was coming from the lawyer’s website. You see, he apparently does a call-in radio show and puts the audio onto his website. Excellent idea.
But the audio auto-plays when you hit the site. Super-duper bad idea.
Why?
Think about it – where some of the places (aside from home) that people surf the web?
- The office
- Coffee shop
- Public library
- Place where there are other people
If I’m in my cubicle working on my TPS reports, I may decide that today is the day I want to find out how to solve some nagging legal problem. So I take a 5 minute break and hit Google. I find your site and surf on over, only to be hit with audio content. Maybe it’s some car ad that leads into your call-in show, or perhaps it’s the actual audio or video talking about your firm and how you can solve my problem.
I’m embarrassed. Freaked out someone is going to hear about my woes. Maybe my boss. Maybe the office gossip.
What do I do?
I’m gone, baby. Never to return. You outed me as someone with a major problem. Not cool.
What are you doing to embarrass your potential clients? Maybe it’s time to stop – they’ll thank you.
Photo credit: bruckerrlb (Flickr).
Did you use the new cover sheets for the new TPS Reports? Didn't you get the memo?