I Nearly Cliched My New Website
It never rains on July 4th in New York. Until it does.
And this July 4th's storm was a doozy. Nothing to do all day except....re-do my website. I had put it off for a long time because the one I created on GoDaddy a few years ago was painful and ugly. I was dreading the task. But the time seemed right.
Someone told me about WIX, and I visited their site a few months ago. Of course, after that, I saw almost nothing but WIX ads on my Facebook feed and other places. I guess the advertising worked because that's where I went when I was ready.
I dove into their easy-to-use tools, inspired by their simple homepage imagery of rotating photos of business owners (like me!).
In about an hour, I had selected a template, inserted new photos, cut and pasted copy from my existing site and edited it, and was just about to press "Publish." But I couldn't do it. I had this image, from among WIX's stock image library, inserted into my new home page:
I could have gone with the handshake, the meshing gears, and omigod, this:
As eager as I was to publish the site, I stopped myself and thought about my friend Tom Stein, CEO-Americas of SteinIAS, a leading global digital ad agency. Tom recently gave me a book the agency published called "101 Cliches: B2B's Most Notorious Faux Pas." It's a great compendium of the terrible and oft-repeated cliches of B2B marketing. After reading the book, I couldn't go through with committing a high marketing sin.
Hours passed. What image to use? Then, as I was taking one of my 47 Facebook breaks of the day (okay, 72), it hit me: The photo I use as my profile page wallpaper was the perfect visual. It's a photo I took in Paris atop Le Printemps department store at twilight, with a view of the Eiffel Tower in the distance. It's my favorite photograph from my favorite city in the world. I think it looks great on my new homepage. What does it have to do with business coaching? Nothing. But at least it's not a cliche. Thanks, Tom.
