Beauchamp
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GraemePitman wrote:
Douchy? That's a bit of a stretch, no?
I think the term 'investment' is applicable. It's a major purchase, which people are putting a lot of time, energy, and money into in order to have a product that will appreciate in value throughout their life. Sure it's a tangible product, but I still think it applies.
It's not uncommon to hear people talk about other products like that too. "I would definitely invest in a Mac instead of paying for a cheaper Dell, because in general they retain their value longer, and have fewer bugs." "If you invest a little more energy into your studies, ..."
Parse out and dissect the term how you want, but I think in our vernacular people are used to hearing it used in that way.
That said, my website uses 'Pricing'....Show more →
re: Douchy
Yeah maybe a bit of a stretch. It's not really a nice word for polite conversation, so I should have phrased differently, but I stand by my opinion. My apologies to all who use "investment" on their site.
Here's the thing. I think there are two conversations happening in this thread, and people should make the distinction.
1. Using "investment" as discussed by the OP, is a website navigation menu item, plain and simple, and that's what I'm railing against.
In that context, it fails miserably at what a navigation menu item is supposed to accomplish: namely, creating an intuitive entry point into another part of the site. It's not intuitive to a client who is simply looking for your rates, prices, pricing, or packages. As mentioned upthread, changing from "investment" to one of these alternatives is likely to result in fewer people contacting you for your prices because they will (gasp!) finally be able to navigate to them intuitively.
For this reason alone, I want this trend to die a fiery death. It is a barrier to effective communication and navigation, and consequently a web-design worst-practice, in my opinion (full disclosure: I design websites).
As a navigation menu item, it doesn't communicate effectively, and once people figure it out, they pretty quickly realize that it's meant as a way for the photographer to make their services sound important. Some people might get this, probably because they already think your services are priceless, but plenty will think of it as weak-sauce sales-speak. They'll probably click anyway, but you're not really conveying anything meaningful by using that one word.
If you really want to communicate these ideas there are a hundred better ways to do so than simply using the word "investment" and thinking people will now value what you do more and grasp the nuance and meaning you think you're injecting into your website navigation menu. Why not write a short paragraph about how important it is to invest in your wedding photographer, and put that at the top (or bottom) of your price sheet? Or better yet, why not infuse all of your branding with the subtle idea that what you do is priceless?
Difficult? Sure. But what isn't?
2. Using "investment" as a more general concept relating to capturing priceless memories is something I have no issues with. If you want to frame conversations around that concept, or put into prose on your site in one or more places, I think that could make a lot of sense.
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