In the course of preparing for the ATA conference coming to Denver in October, I’ve been visiting the websites of a lot of Denver-area businesses. Many have excellent sites, but it amazes me to see the information that is missing from some of them. Actual examples: a restaurant that does not have its address or location on its website, and several restaurants that either don’t list their hours at all or bury that information in a non-obvious location. Don’t do this to your potential clients! Prominently feature your language pair(s), e-mail address, phone number and other important information, or those potential clients will become someone’s else’s actual client!
I totally agree! Having seen tens of thousands of translator resumes over the years, I can tell you that this type of information is often left off resumes too! Make sure that you proof your materials, websites, etc. after some time has passed, and you ask others to assess it for you.
I found two typos on my own site (that had been proofed repeatedly) and was horrified. (Now they are fixed, but I was shocked – obsessive proofing is never too much!)
Thank you! That’s a good piece of advice. I am starting as a freelance translator and I’m going to check right now if all that relevant information is on my website.
By the way, I love your blog.
It might be a marketing strategy that generates compulsion through the process of searching, instead of a fault/mistake. But it usually works on famous brands only.
I’m with Eve. As a PM, it’s shocking how many resumes land on my desk that never mention a language pair. “I went to school in Germany” doesn’t tell me a thing about you. Are you native English? Native German? Neither? How am I supposed to know?? It’s the recycle bin for you, mister.
Checking and rechecking the spelling on a website is indispensable. On my website, for some as yet unindentified reason, words get stuck together every now and then. So we have to recheck the entire website everytime we add a page – usually an article.
At the beginning, I thought it was a real pain, but now, since a typo or two have been eliminated that way, I wonder if it is not a blessing in disguise 🙂