Hello again,
Are you as bored with the web as I am? Has it all become depressingly predictable? The same homogenous mediocrity regurgitated time and again. The same messages, the same manipulation, the same cynical ploys to part us from our cash or personal information.
It’s not just us either. You can understand digital professionals like ourselves becoming jaded, but users are too. Consumers have become cynical and aware of the same old bullshit websites pump out at them daily.
The web has become a hall of mirrors, with each reflection becoming an increasingly distorted representation of the previous one. We see something has worked for somebody else and attempt to replicate it for ourselves. As a result, we spend more time looking at our competitors than speaking to our customers.
No wonder we don’t inspire. No wonder we fail to provide a compelling experience.
We need to be refreshingly different if we hope to stand out and aspire to provide something more for our audience.
So how do we become refreshingly different? That’s the question, isn’t it, and it’s not an easy one to answer. It is hard to break away from the road well traveled. It takes bravery and the risk of failing.
That said, I believe there is a real hunger online for refreshingly different companies. Companies, who somehow feel more genuine.
So, with that in mind, here are a few ideas from me. But I would be interested in your thoughts too. I want to assemble a collection of ideas that might inspire people, so if you have any tips for avoiding mediocrity, let me know! Just email paul@boagworld.com, and I will pull everybody’s ideas together.
Stop Looking to Others
My first piece of advice is to stop looking at the competition. You are never going to be different if you are copying others. You will never lead your sector if you follow your competitors.
But it doesn’t just stop with your competition. Stop trying to replicate the success of others. Just because it works for Apple or Amazon does not mean it will work for you. You have to find your own way.
And that includes all those articles, ebooks, courses, and other advice that supposedly shows the path to success. Sure, they might have worked once, but they become ineffective as soon as everybody starts doing them.
I am not suggesting these things have no value, but you need to make them your own. You need to give them your unique twist and tailor them for your audience and niche.
Stop Being Afraid to Fail
Half the reason people blindly follow the advice of others is that they are afraid to think for themselves and then fail. You don’t need to take responsibility if you follow somebody else’s plan. It’s their fault, not yours.
But failing isn’t bad as long as we keep the cost of failure low. We need to learn to experiment, try things and see what resonates.
Enough with the big ideas that are too expensive to be allowed to fail. Try small things, increment, and learn. Do not despise those small beginnings because bigger things can grow from those little experiments.
Use Data to Inform, Not Dictate
As you experiment, use data to show you what is working and not, but do not allow it to define and dictate success.
Too often, new approaches are not allowed time to establish themselves because they do not show results fast enough.
Worse still, many organizations find themselves paralyzed, unable to do anything for fear of undermining the metrics they have already established.
At most, metrics should be a guide. However, they should never be the goal because no single metric (or even a small group) will allow room for innovation or represent a healthy business.
Behave Like a Human
However, the worst part of chasing metrics is that it turns our customer interactions into an algorithm rather than a relationship.
We stop having conversations with our customers and natural interactions, replacing them with carefully chosen wording and value propositions. It becomes about eliciting the desired response, not meeting the needs of our audience.
We stop behaving like human beings seeking to help one another, to seeing others as an asset we can extract value from.
Seek Balance
Please do not misunderstand me. I use data; I consider value propositions and tone of voice. However, that needs to be balanced with being genuine, human, and having a sincere desire to provide customers with value from their interaction with the products and services I seek to promote.
I always seek to value the people I interact with, even when that is the users of the websites I build. I try not to waste their time or manipulate them. Instead, I seek to interact with them with sincerity, openness, and integrity. For me, that is what being refreshingly different is all about.
But it is not an easy battle to win. Unfortunately, organizations don’t embrace this thinking readily, and we need to persevere and not get demoralized when they fall back into the same old patterns of the web.
Take a leaf out of Churchill’s book who famously said, “success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Thanks
