How a Redesign Can Take You Backwards

I love Rackspace.  We have been with them since day one.  I have a good relationship with their founder Pat Condon and have to credit Pat with convincing us to rename our service to FreshBooks.

Earlier this year, Rackspace redesigned their web site. Cautiously I wrote Pat and hinted that I thought the redesign was a step backwards.  Apparently, Dimitry agrees.

Why is it a step backwards?

The focus of the site has become RACKSPACE, not Rackspace’s customers.
How do I know?  The language is all about THEM.  It is navel gazing.
I’m willing to bet their internal marketing department prepared the content.  It’s a classic mistake.

Prospective customers care about themselves – not about YOU or your company.  Your web copy should use the word YOU to connect with the visitor, and you should avoid the words WE/ME/US/I.  Here is a tool you can use to measure how customer centric your copy is.  To learn more I recommend this book.

At Rackspace they have a concept they call “paper cuts”.  It’s not one mistake that causes a client to leave them, it is a series of paper cuts.  Their goal is not to die by papercuts.

I sincerely hope that this redesign at RackSpace is not a sign of things to come…because death by paper cuts sounds like a pretty awful way to go.