I was looking for an eye doctor in the St Louis area.

If you need a niche to sell some quality web work in STL, there it is.  Lotsa bad websites (see http://www.stlvision.com)

Clarkson Eyecare has a form to schedule an appointment from their website.  I filled out the form, including the field “best time to contact you”.

“after 5pm Mon. – Fri, all day Sat-Sun”.

Any guesses what time they called to schedule my appointment again?

11:41am.

The “schedule an appointment” form really just means send an email to schedule a sales call.  No big deal, but I am using their website.  If I wanted to schedule an appointment on the phone, I would have called them initially.

They may want to revisit their website soon.  I think they are missing out on a lot of business for various reasons.

Flash navigation. Yikes.

Accessibility issues galore on a site whose target audience includes those with visual impairments.

Bad marketese copywriting. Not rewritten for the web.

Conversion pages with high barrier of entry. All the forms are complicated.

I know they paid out the ass for those green-screened, auto-starting video monologues that I pause as soon as I can find the  button.  That money would be better spent testing variations of their pages, forms and special offers to optimize their site for conversions.  That’s the cool thing about money, you are free to spend it however you please.

They have a lot of calls to action, which is good.

I ended up going to Clarkson Eyecare, anyways.

They showed me a picture of my retinas, which was pretty crazy.  They also didn’t dilate my eyes to do that exam or blow air in my eyes for glaucoma testing.  I got a good deal on glasses, too, and the sales lady was really helpful.

Crappy website. Less crappy than most area competitors except maybe Crown Vision.

Good in-office experience.

I would, however, be willing to help along their online presence in exchange for say… Lasik.

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