I have been in situations where a client has called me in to identify why their web site visitors are not converting their visits into sales. The diagnosis is that the web site is just fine. The problem is the person sitting in the chair in front of me. But of course, they don’t want to hear that, nor is there an easy way to tell a grown adult professional that they write on a primary school level. By and large, clients want to be told that their last web designer ripped them off, or that you know of an all-singing-all-dancing solution that will get the customers rolling in. They want someone to blame, and you can’t expect them to look in the mirror to find that person.

In one instance I manually rewrote every single page on the client’s web site, which put them on an upturn for the first time ever. I explained the basics of good content strategy to the client, and to their credit, they have adopted those principles. But it’s easy to spot anything this client has written himself under those guidelines. There are three to four grammar and spelling errors per sentence and three or four exclamation points at the end. He wants to be seen as an authority in his field but he comes across like a teenager texting. That, ultimately, is his choice.