Interim Management Solutions provides consulting for businesses in transition. As a business grows, it passes through stages where their old ways of doing things no longer serve them well. IMS can step in with solid advice that comes from years of experience to help guide businesses through the choppy waters of change.
IMS is itself going through some change. They want to upgrade and improve their website so that it does more than passively profile their business. It should give a visitor valuable information, promote IMS as the best solution, and sell their business.
IMS is working with Neil Burtt over at You Promote LLC on their website upgrade. Neil specializes in creating promotional websites for small and medium sized businesses – websites that get results without breaking the bank.
The first step in the transformation of the IMS site is rebuilding the home page, starting with the copy. Neil called me to see if I would work on it.
The original copy was descriptive, but unfocused and a little bogged down with management book jargon. After a half hour interview with Ed Jaferian, one of the owners, I crafted some strong copy that is much more accessible so that the reader will quickly grasp what IMS does. These descriptions will ultimately be linked to other pages where the visitor can get more detail and see and offer for consultation.
As I told Ed, when I write copy for business sites like his, I target three major areas:
- Eliminating jargon and using plain English
- Using direct, strong, simple language in the active voice.
- Writing with short well-structured paragraphs that can be easily scanned and understood.
- Promoting and selling your business with benefits and regular calls to action.
Ed was so happy with the result that he wrote me an email, saying, “You have done a great job in capturing the essence of what I have been struggling to say.”
We are exploring improvements to the rest of the website as well, including fresher graphic design, stronger copy for the other pages, and search engine optimization. In particular, we are suggesting an email capture feature, where IMS will offer a useful report or “white paper” in exchange for the email of the visitor. This is the beginning of Relationship Marketing, a model that I think has huge potential for IMS down the road.
Be sure to click on the Link to view the current home page of IMS.