This is both a physical and an emotional question. The physical aspect is explained by comparing your website design to an artist completing a painting. While most of the work will be close-up, the best artists also know to step back from time-to-time, to assess how their work will be viewed at a distance. Emotionally, that artist may be painting a subject close to their heart, delivering an emotive and personal piece of work. While this level of closeness might work for an artist, it can cause problems when designing a website for your business. Both the physical and emotional closeness between you and your company can affect how you might design, present and inform through your online presence. Here are three areas to consider: The language you use Your intimacy with your area of business probably leads you to often talk in jargon and other technical terms. You, and the people you speak to within your organisation, know and understand this 'shorthand'. Many of your potential customers might not, be a little unsure, or wary of being talked down to by experts. It's important to take that step back and appreciate how you need to express your information for such non-insiders. The things you say Another possible problem is that, through an understandably proud closeness to your products, services and people, the content of a website can focus on what you want to say, rather than what prospective customers need to know. However great the service you provide is, they are more interested in what it can do for them, what needs or wants it meets, the problems it solves etc. The step back this time is into the customers' shoes! The missed signposts A third possible problem is that the familiarity of how you operate means that, when trying to present this to others, steps can inadvertently be missed out. A simple example of this, for a physical store, might be in not providing full opening hours, payment methods, and physical location information. The writer knows all these instinctively, and can forget that others don't. A standing-back partner Our creative team can work with you to provide this vital step back analysis, among all the other services we provide to make sure your creative strategy and website design works as hard as it possibly can. To talk to us about yours, simply contact Mark 2 Creative.