It’s one possible approach, certainly.

Whether you manage a law firm, a medical practice, or some other business, it’s likely that you have a large, specialized technical vocabulary. And that’s absolutely appropriate: when working within your profession, you need a level of precision that’s only available from a special set of words and phrases.

You can’t assume that the general public is familiar with this vocabulary. In fact, you can take it as given that most of your potential clients or customers don’t know these specialized terms. If you cover your website with this technical jargon, you risk scaring off readers who can’t understand your writing and who feel you’re browbeating them with your specialized knowledge.

How to respond to this situation? Many professionals have followed the same course that you suggest here: they have purged all technical vocabulary from their business websites. That’s one way to go, but it may not be the best.

A Word of Explanation

Don’t forget that one of the key elements to convert web visitors into leads (and ultimately into clients and customers) is the informative value of your website. Using your website to explain the technical terms of your profession is an amazingly effective way to add value to your site. Rather than using jargon to distance yourself from your readers, a blog post or FAQ column that explains a fundamental term builds inclusiveness. It reinforces your website’s educational mission, and helps establish you as a local expert in your field who shares knowledge unstintingly.

Above all, this approach can get you better clients—those who most resemble your ideal client. Consider these:

  • A personal injury law firm webpage that explains the meaning of “liability.”
  • A podiatry website that explains the difference between bacterial, fungal, and viral skin infections and why they require fundamentally different approaches.
  • A product sales website that explains the environmental risks that competitors ignore in the manufacturing process—and gives a detailed scientific explanation of how its corporate managers respect and protect nature.

By educating potential customers and clients, you make sure the people who contact you later are actively engaged in trying to understand and satisfy their needs. They will be primed to view you as a trustworthy and intelligent partner whose advice ought to be followed. Providing information predisposes your best customers to seek you out.

Every Page Is a Gateway

There is only one downside to this approach. Remember that every page on your website is a potential entryway for new readers, and a portal to everything you have ever posted.

That’s normally a good thing. Over time, you have dozens (and eventually hundreds) of doorways leading potential clients and customers to engage with your site. However, if you represent a law firm that has devoted one page to explaining the concept of liability, you cannot guarantee that any new reader will find that page early on. For any other page that talks about the concept, you will want to have a brief summary of the idea and a link to the page where the concept is explained in depth. Remembering to put in all those required bits can be tedious.

Optimize Your Website to Inform

A website that packages information and delivers it generously to visitors is the best way to elicit a favorable sales response. It’s also the vision behind everything we do at Foster Web Marketing. Informative websites engage contacts and convert them into passionate customers. Keep that concept in mind when you write material for your site—or, if you can’t spare the time, contact us at 888-886-0939 to learn how we can provide fresh material written to your specifications.