Any new client that comes on board with Sponge NB gets a thorough MOT and servicing. Not only do we kick the tires and check the oil, but often we also punch the doors in and then set fire to the sunroof.

Abandoning this immediately prohibiting metaphor, one of the aspects of working with Sponge that seems to fire up all new clients (besides some STUNNING new business development, obv) is having an outsider tell them honestly how they look to the outside world.

If the “About Us” page is a sprawling 20-minute read that we feel should be culled, we’ll be way more honest about this than any friends, colleagues or nans would be.

if you’re not quite ready to bring us on board (you short-sighted fools) then there’s an easy way to hold a mirror up to yourselves, and that’s to take a grumbling look at your competition. Pick the three “other ones” you keep crashing into and take an emotionless tour around their world. Fire up their website. Do they immediately launch into case studies? Do you? Which of you think has the most impact in the first five seconds of contact?

Do any of your competitors’ sites immediately spark up a full-screen showreel that leaves you in no doubt as to the work they’ve produced and the brands they’ve served? Does it impress you? Why don’t you have one of those?

Are their site and creds littered with glowing testimonials while yours is full of self-penned hyperbole? Which do you think has the most impact on a first-time visitor?

It’s very easy to sneer at competitors and ‘know’ that you are better, but the fact is they are also somehow still in business because a potential client of yours did their due diligence and didn’t choose you. It might not be down to how you appear to an unguided visitor, but why not give yourself every chance to do better.

Give your team a task: visit five of your competitors’ sites and make a list ONLY of things you prefer about their site to yours. At worst your team are now more familiar with the landscape you operate in. At best, you might find it uncovers some failings in your self-presentation that you wouldn’t have rectified otherwise.

Good luck out there; it’s a jungle (and some of it is in HTML).