How logistics companies get it wrong with their online presentation

One of the many things I would love to be able to help our members with is their presentation. At the moment I don’t mean slide show presentations or face-to-face presentations, though I would love to help them there too. I am thinking right now of presentations on their own websites and other marketing materials. I will do a little bit of website coaching right now.

When I start to think of how many ways people shoot themselves in the foot with their online presentation I almost don’t even know where to begin. So I will pick out the few things that stick out the very most.

First of all, though punctuation doesn’t matter to many people, there are some people who it matters a lot to. It should be supposed that when you hang your website you are putting your best foot forward. However, if in doing this you are loaded with spelling mistakes and punctuation errors you are subliminally telling the entire world that you don’t have much attention to detail. And guess what? Attention to detail is extremely important when handling cargo. (Or am I the one missing something here?)

Glaring mistakes that people make include:

• USING ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME
• never using capitalization at all
• Adding unnecessary punctuation to addresses (such as ending lines with periods, etc.)
• Overly using bold, italics and underlining in places where the emphasis isn’t required
• Sloppy spelling, grammar and writing style

These are things that are all avoidable by firstly having the person who is writing the content for your website to watch for these mistakes themselves then secondly asking more than one person to pass their eyes over it. And don’t forget, many word processing programs have spell check and even grammar check. Use them!

Another presentation area on the website I have noticed that can often be improved is that many people use low resolution pictures and logos. And by the logos this not only includes their own but also of networks and associations they belong to. When you use low resolution it looks as if the website was simply put together on a whim, kind of like a twelve-year old boy would make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when he got home from school. And if you are going to add logos other than your own company logos to your website, such as membership logos, not only should you use higher resolution JPG’s but you should also make sure that these are hyperlinked to the organization’s own website. By doing so you are able to better show the reason why your membership in that organization would be a benefit to the prospective client or prospective agent.

*Note on hyperlinks: If they aren’t linked to another page on your website it is always good to have them set to open the page in another tab. Otherwise you are sending people away from your website for no good reason.

I know that this is only just scratching the surface but I do want all of our members to look professional to the outside world. When you look good, we look better. When you look good, you get not only more business but a better class of business. When you look good you look like a winner. And that is what we all want.

Gary Dale Cearley is the Managing Director of Advanced International Networks Ltd. (AIN), one of the fastest growing and most dynamic business-to-business networking organizations in the world. AIN’s networks include AerOceaNetwork (AON), XLProjects Network (XLP), and AiO Logistics Netowork (AiO). Gary Dale has been in many facets of international freight forwarding for more than two decades from operations to sales to the owner of the first 100% foreign owned freight forwarding company licensed in Vietnam. The companies that he has been involved with have been both generalists and specialists. He has also worked from large European and Asian multinationals (Danzas and Hankyu Express) as well has small start up forwarders. For the past ten years Gary Dale has owned and operated AIN. He has lived in several major cities in four different countries and he is multilingual. Currently Gary Dale runs the AIN operation from Bangkok, Thailand, but travels the world over.

Gary Dale welcomes all sorts of interactions. If you have questions or comments about anything Gary Dale has written here you may contact him directly by e-mail.