There’s a really simple test that I picked up from Malcolm Auld during his presentation at Marketing Week. While primarily to do with copy, it is nonetheless a simple and effective way to assess if your website’s home page is hitting the mark.

1. Call someone with no prior knowledge of your business
2. Introduce yourself and tell them what you do by way of reading back your home page copy verbatim

If they can understand what you do, you’ve passed. If not, it’s to the glue factory for your website.

90% – and that’s being generous, the real number is probably far higher – of corporate websites would probably fail this test. Far too often, they get so caught up with their own corporate hyperbole and double speak that they miss the point: Nobody cares about your product or service. They only care about how your product or service will improve their lives.

When you take this test into consideration with the importance that users place on good web design (of which weak web copy was likely to drive 25% of survey respondents away), you can see how critical it is to get your web presence right.

Literally giving your customers what they want can be risky, especially if they aren’t exactly sure what they mean. Ignoring them altogether is just plain suicidal.

In Homer’s case, when he says that he wants a car with two bubbles; one in the front, while the one in the back is for quarreling kids, and comes with optional restraints and muzzles; all he is really saying is he ‘more privacy’.

The challenge for marketers is to translate what their customer’s are saying into workable insights that provide the basis for consumer-centric product designs that meet the needs of their customer’s.

http://think.squareholes.com/2009/08/customers-dont-always-know-what-they-want/