Today on the Burn! Blog guest author Sara Lancaster of The Condiment Marketing Co. shares her thoughts on the website mistakes many fiery food brands make. Don’t worry. It’s not all bad news. She gives solutions too.
Mistake 1: Yah, you’re hot. We get it.
Read three hot sauce company home pages and you are bound to see the words intense, hottest, and heat. Yes, your product is probably all these things, but it doesn’t tell your customers how you’re different or why you’re the best.
Solution: Create a document with terms and phrases that describe who you really are and what your product is all about. Reach into this document whenever writing marketing copy. For inspiration, look at your customer testimonials.
Mistake 2: There are no people at your business.
The faceless business owner is an epidemic raging across all industries on the web. But for consumer brands this could be especially detrimental. YOU are one the biggest things that sets your brand apart from your competitors. Also, people buy from people, which is why it’s critical to humanize your company on the web.
Solution: On the about page publish a picture of yourself along with your team. Write the website content in the first or second person. Tell us about the history of your company. Tell us who runs the operations. Tell us why you continue to make the product after all this time.
Mistake 3: We don’t recognize your product on the shelf.
This is not a common mistake, but it is easy to overlook the obvious. You need a professional product picture on the home page and product web pages. A logo is not enough. Seeing a big, vibrant image of the bottle/package on your site means we’re more likely to recognize it on the store shelf.
Solution: Easy. Have a photographer or graphic designer create various sized images of your products and incorporate them onto your site frequently.
Mistake 4: Does your sauce pair better with chicken or beef?
You might think, “Everybody knows how to eat barbecue sauce!” But think again. Write a mix of commonly-known and innovative recipes and serving ideas and you just might get your fans to return to your website again and again.
Solution: There’s no better place to feature recipe ideas than on your website’s blog or on a web page dedicated to serving ideas.
Mistake 5: Your website looks like it is 1999.
Consider these two things:
1) Web technology advances fast.
2) Web users are impatient.
It is guaranteed that you will lose website visitors fast if your site can’t be viewed on a phone and if the user has to scroll…scroll…scroll past hundreds of words and dozens of pictures to find the information they need. Keep with the times. This proves to your visitors that you are in business and ready to serve the modern food lover.
Solution: Update your website design every five to seven years. You don’t always need a major overhaul, but you do need to be current.
Sara Lancaster is the owner and creative director of The Condiment Marketing Co., a Denver-based online marketing agency. The Condiment Marketing Co. helps specialty food companies spread their brand across the web through web development, content writing, social media, blogger outreach, and much more. Contact Sara at sara@condimentmarketing.com or @SaucyDipper on Twitter.
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