I’m looking for you (yes, YOU!) if you want to help a businessperson or entrepreneur you adore who is struggling and shouldn’t be because their product,  service or cause is EXCEPTIONAL but their website and other marketing materials are sub-par.

You won’t have to get involved in any other way than to send me the website URL of the person you want me to help out.  You can also, if you want,  mention my name and point to this website so they can look me over ahead of time. However you want to work this is fine with me.

Here are things to look for on your friend’s site:

Is it responsive? (That is, does it re-size automatically so that it’s easy to read on any size device, from desktop to mobile, so you don’t have to scroll back and forth to read a line?)  You can check this by looking at the site on your own mobile device or by doing a search on “Is my website responsive?” and typing the URL into the search field on any of the sites you find that offer the service for free. Starting April 21st this year, Google is penalizing non-responsive websites, so let me know if you know someone whose website isn’t responsive and I’ll take it from there. I know an excellent web designer (Lisa Twining Taylor, Dancing Goat Web Design) who can develop a responsive website for less than it would cost to change a non-responsive website to a responsive one.

Is it grammatically correct?

Are there spelling errors, punctuation errors, homophone errors (there/their/they’re, it’s/its, here/hear) or other clunky, shoot-yourself-in-the-foot  errors (then when than is correct or vice versa; anecdote when antidote is right, or vice versa, further/farther, etc.)? Google penalizes sites that are losers in this area, too.

Is it business-centric or visitor-centric? That is, does it come across like a brag-fest  or desperate (“We’re the best; we’ve been in business for x years; we do this, that and the other thing; come see us today!”) or does it come across as a soft place to fall–a welcoming, unhurried, conversational, relational place where visitors are encouraged to linger and get comfortable before they decide to engage further? (“People don’t care how much you know or what you do until they know how much you care about their pain, problem or predicament and them.”)  See autorepairseattle.com (Chuck’s Automotive Services) for an example of the latter. (Spoiler alert: I wrote all of the copy there.)

If your friend’s website and other marketing materials seem to you to be the major things that are keeping them from getting to the winner’s circle, I want to hear from you. Can you think of three (3) people this evening who would benefit from the help I can give them?  If so, please let me know who they are. If they engage with me and I serve them, I’ll give you 10% of the profits I make. So there’s something in this for you, too.

Please give it some thought and then send me a message so I can jump into action and help someone else live happily ever after…

Thank you!