The other day I visited a website that was recommended to me by a good friend.

It’s a website for working moms and I’m a working mom so I checked it out.

But I didn’t get too far past the home page because I was so turned off by the image they used. The image, an illustration, showed a skinny, sleek, couture-clad woman who is ready to conquor the world.

I have never looked like this. Ever. Maybe 1/2 of 1% of all working moms look something like this.

The minute I saw that image I had an immediate disconnect and I didn’t want to go any further into the web site. The content might be fabulous but the image spoke very loudly to me. Here is what it said to me:

• We’re a “me too” organization. All the other websites that are trying to attract upscale, professional women use illustrations like this so we will too.
• We don’t have a very good understanding of who we want to reach. So we’re using a rather bland “catch all” piece of clip art.
• We’re not going to get too deep. We’re not going to raise sensitive issues or make our audience uncomfortable.
• We’re going to give you the same pre-digested, bland mush that every other website aimed at our demographic offers their customers

I’m not saying the creators of this website are dull, unoriginal, and superficial. They may be amazing people that I really ought to get to know. The problem is that the image they chose for the home page of their website communicated something very different to me.

The same holds true for those awful photographs that so many websites use.

You know the ones I’m talking about right? The well scrubbed, cheerful gal with the headset on who’s waiting to take your call?

Or the hip young go getter talking on his cell phone in with a glass skyscraper in the background.

The issue is this: people do business with real human beings. Not stereotypes. I don’t care how many websites use stock images and stock photos. It tells your customers and audience next to nothing about who you are and what your business is about. And what it does tell your prospects about you may be the exact wrong thing.

Love stock images? Hate ‘em? Click here to tell me.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 11:11 am and is filed under Customer Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.