As a web professional, I freely admit I am more than a little cynical. Sadly, that seems to be a positive attribute.
I was looking over a very slick and polished competitor's website recently (as a result of heading down the Facebook rabbit-hole!). I thought I'd pursue the glowing testimonials that were listed.
Now as with all high-grade PR and spin, if you carefully look at the words you'll find they're not actually wrong. No actual lies as such. It is entirely YOUR fault that you make connections, jump to conclusions, even if that is the perfectly normal (and desired) but strictly-speaking wrong thing for you to do.
Take for an example a testimonial raving about the service provided by this web consultant who shall of course remain nameless. I thought I'd track down the associated website. No link provided, but Google is good at this sort of thing.
Turns out the website is a DIY wordpress.com site (so the managed version of Wordpress, if you know what it is - they restrict the tools available but you don't need to worry about backups, upgrades, security etc). And not even a particularly good one. Oversized photos, no 'call to action' (telling visitors what they should ideally do next to get the product/service), small-text menu, and annoying page scrolling.
Yes, I agree, that customer could indeed have been very happy with the service even though the website was less than standout. But my point is this competitor's website made it sound like they do the most fantastic work such that you can't fail. Your business WILL be streets ahead of everyone else. And I completely disagree with that whole "choose us and we'll MAKE you successful no matter what" ethos. Reality isn't like that.
The moral of this semi-rant is that you should not trust what you see/read if it is going to affect your decision-making. Scratch beneath the surface a bit to verify that what you THINK you are being told is actually what happens.
It's quite an issue in the web-marketing industry. So easy to say "We are the best", a bit harder to justify such a bold statement.
Bob is cynical. Be like Bob.
