Graphic Art

(Since publishing this article the original blog post I critiqued was replaced - with the version I included in this piece below. Make of that what you will!)

Enthusiasm, it’s a wonderful thing. No seriously, there’s nothing more soul destroying than meeting with a service provider and coming away with the impression they don’t really seem to care about what they’re selling. In my view, it’s a deal-breaker.

 

I’ll tell you what else makes a world of difference, a service provider helping you to clearly understand the service they’re providing. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But I’ve often been involved with projects involving specialist third-party providers and asked, “what exactly are these guys providing?” “Oh something really important with the website, but I’ve no idea what they’re doing exactly.”

 

Reasons to be cheerful

These are two of the reasons why I like the idea behind the blog about a graph over at: http://www.scivisum.co.uk/blog/sometimes-load-testing-is-just-beautiful (re above, the original post was replaced with the version included below by the site's owner, hence it's no longer available. However, here's the text from another blog that has just as many issues!)

Whoever’s written it clearly loves their job, even if to you and me it’s an esoteric, IT Crowd type thing and really nothing to be getting excited about. They’re also really keen to share their knowledge and give new or existing customers a clear idea of what they actually do for the money. All good in my book.

 

And content wise, I think they do a great job of including salient facts that relate to real world examples of the types of challenges their clients might face. The subject matter here, the ability of an online store to cope with increased traffic, is critical to any business, so it’s worth knowing your site can handle the pressure if things start to fly. And just as importantly, worth knowing if there’s a provider out there that can deliver the critical knowledge you lack in house.

 

So, lots to like. But I’m afraid there’s plenty to dislike as well from a grammar and layout point of view. There are more colons than the average Colorectal Surgeon sees in a year here. It jumps. About: Quite disconcertingly. There’s no flow. No panache. No beauty, dare I say, in the way a worthwhile message is being communicated.

 

Horses for courses

And it’s a shame, really. And a mistake many businesses make. You wouldn’t expect a writer to perform a rigorous load test on your ecommerce functionality. So why get a techie to communicate the all-important messages of what your business does and how great it is at it?

 

I know it’s ‘just a blog,’ but it’s also the voice of the business and as a consequence should be speaking in harmony with any other messaging. The rest of the website’s largely free of the litany of layout nightmares, grammatical howlers and spelling mistakes on display within the blog. So it suggests that the business doesn’t see the blog as a ‘core communications’ medium. I think it should!

 

This could have been so much better with just a bit of editing from a professional. In fact, to prove the point I’ve cleaned it up a bit and given it a little more structure on the version you can read here.

 

Admittedly, without at least some semblance of a brief from the company itself I may have made assumptions that could be misleading, but the point is it’s more about how it could read with a bit of polishing.

 

Cost-effective communications

It didn’t take that long. I can do the same thing for your business, at an hourly rate if required, and help to ensure that whenever it speaks, it speaks clearly, consistently and coherently.

 

Read what Webwrite's editing services can do for you here.