Where’s the Passion?

Seven years ago, I had a brief stint at a B2B marketing firm who offered web audits. It was a fairly new idea at the time. Our IT team would conduct an audit to evaluate the usability, content and overall feel of a site. We saw some doozies. But to be fair, people loved Flash at the time. There were a lot of single webpages because manufacturing companies knew they needed a web presence but they felt their catalog already got to all the right people. Yes, catalog. (We still did a lot of catalog layouts. Those days are certainly over.)

The point is, what we were talking with people about was matching the look and feel of the company to its presence online. That conversation hasn’t changed all that much. But what amazes me is how many businesses out there today still don’t invest in their website.

I went to a networking event this week of all biotech companies. The ideas spinning around that room were amazing. Really groundbreaking, life changing stuff. The next day, I went online to find the companies I spoke with to get a sense of the research they were releasing. The passion and ingenuity I heard the night before was absent from a lot of their sites.

How is that? Is there still a gap between what happens in a lab or manufacturing plant and what the online world gets to see? I think we’re missing out. I’d love to hear from the under-represented businesses.

What is the apprehension all about? Or is it just hard to creatively communicate the business of diagnosing, researching, discovering, manufacturing?