davidamerland David Amerland is the manager of Web Design That Works a web design studio dedicated to offering cost-effective, high-quality web design to small business. He is the CEO of Amerland Enterprises Limited, a print and digital content company whose activities range from producing controlled circulation publications to creating high-end eCommerce websites for corporate clients. View all articles | Contact author

Now we all know that "There's more than one way to skin a cat" but apply that to the net and it begins to get a little blurry. What exactly do you mean? How would you apply it? And will there be any virtual cats involved? Are just three questions which immediately spring to mind and if they do then the mind in question is not engaged in what it should really be doing which is deciphering the multi-layered, time-honoured, lingo-coded message you imparted when you first used the phrase.

It's very much the same when having a web site (or a magazine, or a newspaper, or a company brochure). Far too often online content communication is fudged, overloaded with clichés, burdened with supporting words which do nothing to enhance the content of your site or the perceived quality of your products and services.

Here are some easy examples: "An unforgettable destination for your holiday" (from a travel website), "Our products are designed by experts" from a leisure shoe manufacturer or, my favourite from the opening line on the homepage of a large fashion site "There are a lovely selection of gifts up for grabs from XXX's charming shops in Warwick and Stratford-upon-Avon and avaliable online."

The reasons these don't work is simple: surfing experience. The easiest mistake everyone makes on the net is to forget that online while visitors may be looking for a product that does not mean that they have decided that online purchases have stopped reflecting upon themselves as consumers.

Walk into any High Street shop and what do you see? Artful displays and subliminal messages everywhere: Buy this vase and your living room will look cool. Purchase this holiday and you're going to have the most relaxing experience of your life. Buy this pair of jeans and you will become irresistible to every member of the opposite sex. Shoppers don't just buy goods because goods, these days, are commodities. One pair of jeans is just as good as another. One vase is similar to a million others. One packaged holiday destination is much like another.

What makes shoppers shop and more importantly what keeps them coming back is differentiation. The fact that shops work so hard to create an ambience that projects a particular image. Cool, aspirational, trustworthy, trendy, cutting-edge…whatever. The point is that the moment you have successfully differentiated yourself from your competitors you have won two things: 1. Loyal customers and 2. The right to charge a little bit more.

It's no different online. Those who come with the express aim to buy your product or service could not really care less if you sold it from a void directly connected to the sub-molecular dimension hidden inside the event horizon of a black hole. They want it. They will buy it! (Which is how Ticketmaster works so well with a basic site and simple design). The rest of your online population however needs to be convinced, pampered, impressed before they decide to whip out their credit card and click on what you're selling.

This is where design and content come in (http://www.amerlandent.com). The website you run doesn't just have to be unique (you could colour it all brown and achieve that), it has to subliminally sell your service or product as well as you do. It has to engender trust and win sales. And to do that it has to stop the eye and engage the mind.

Which neatly brings us to the examples I used earlier and the waste of just putting clichéd copy on a website. Every holiday we take is intended to be an unforgettable destination even if it's to Costa Del Sol. I don't know of anyone who starts planning their holiday with the express intention of making it a forgettable destination. I personally should hope that the leisure shoes I buy have not been designed by some guy who works at McDonald's and spelling mistake apart (why or why didn't they run a spell-check first?) the last of the examples does not even tell me what the website does, what the gifts are or why I should stay there more than a nanosecond.

Newspaper and magazine editors who have to work hard to retain their readers know that content readers read works only if there is a payoff. The reader has gained a fresh insight, learnt something new, had their interest piqued by the slant of the articles, or discovered a new way to do something.

Because print is such an 'old' way of getting a message across readers (and editors) understand what the dynamics of the game between them really are. Editors know what the readers need and readers have a right to expect this implied content-delivery contract between themselves and the publications they read.

The web is new. Because it's new it tends to blind those who run websites to the dynamics between visitors and the website they visit.

What visitors really need is the pay-off. They need access to sound, lively, informative copy that makes them feel that their invested time has given them something back. They want a website that's pleasing to the eye, reflective of the image they have of themselves and their lifestyle values and easy to navigate.

Give them that and…well, you're onto the path to Nirvana, because what you're then doing is what study after study tells us is nearly impossible to do online: you are creating loyal, repeat custom that keeps coming back drawn by more than just the price tag.

Skinning cats thankfully fell out of fashion some time ago and while there may be a myriad ways to present information: print, web, emailshot, company brochure, snail mail, leaflets, flyers, carrier pigeons and old-fashioned bricks (with paper and string attached) the fundamentals will always be the same: the reader (or online visitor) have to feel that they got something back. That you gave it to them and that they now trust you and you're cool. If the payoff is not there, then no amount of 'skinning' is going to create a website that really works the way it's supposed to.