Online Visibility Step One: Branding

I have just read an article in "BtoB, The Magazine for Marketing Strategists", about web sites and the usability problems that plague business-to-business sites in particular. Branding, text legibility and information overload seem to be the biggest issues. There are so many businesses out there using their web sites as tools to sell their products to other businesses and falling terribly short. What’s wrong with this picture? What can I do? Where do I start?

I am currently taking classes for Online Visibility to answer exactly those questions. This blog will be of how I apply the strategies that I learn to bring a b-to-b company in the forefront of its competitors.
This is a new venture for me and my hope is to inspire others to do the same. I’ll let you know the successes and failures as they happen so that you, the reader can fine tune your approach, hopefully leaving out the failures!

So here it goes: Step one: Branding

The first challenge I found was company branding.
“Who is the company and what do they do?”
I researched several business web sites, software companies in particular, to educate myself on who they were and what they did. My first impression was ok, I see their name…but what do they do? It was like reading another language.
All I could tell was that they were a software company, but what kind?
I interviewed one of the owners and told them my frustration with their web site; their explanation was that their software was specialized and that only people in the field would understand it. Big Mistake!
Lesson #1: Branding who you are and what you do in plain English! It shouldn’t take an expert to have to figure out who you are and what you do, maybe how you do it, that’s different.