When designing your website for the first time or working on an overall redesign make a list of your most important goals. Then make a list of the most important content that supports these goals. The rest of the design flows from these two lists. The order of priority and the visual presentation of information on your site should always follow these three simple but crucial steps.

1. Clearly state what you do and the benefits to the user
2. Follow that with an impressive client list and client testimonials
3. Have a clear call to action to contact with you now

If a user is not ready to engage with you now, find a way to capture their details to continue the conversation and for future marketing opportunities by:

1. Include an email subscribe
2. Give a great reason why the user should subscribe
3. Give something away, a chapter of a book, eBook, or an article to encourage sign ups and build trust.
4. Remove the captcha on the sign up form. The few spam sign ups are worth the hassle compared to the leads you will lose.

Anything not on the above list should be removed or reduced in importance. Tighten up all spacing. Make sure the overall design is clean and clear, make it scanable and easy to find key information quickly.

The essence of a great redesign is “no time wasters please”. You don’t want to waste your time and money creating a site that will confuse and annoy your users. Secondly, you do not want to waste these users time. It is bad form. Nobody has time to thrawl through badly designed sites that do not give us the information we need.

Follow these few simple steps and your redesign will convert more and lead you and your user on a mutually beneficial journey.

Mary

Image thanks to StreetFly JZ

Comment [1] | Spoiltchild | 13/07/10 12:55 PM

Here is part two of my landing page optimisation post. If you missed it, part one is here. I am happy to receive your comments and suggestions and thanks for your feedback so far.

To recap: A landing page is the webpage you direct traffic to from a specific email, ad or piece of marketing. Its goal is to convert that traffic into sales or sign ups.

Be Personal

When designing your landing pages the golden rule is to be personal. People like to buy from people, not computers, or websites. It’s inbuilt in all of us to relate better to other people. The more you personalise your message and offer, the more you increase the connection with your visitor. Why, because it increases their comfort and trust when buying from you. A great example is to add your phone number to your site, as Brandon Eley points out. Once a visitor realises there is a person on the other end of the phone to help, IF needed, conversions increase. The knowledge that someone is there to help is enough to reasure the user.

Likewise, if there is any way you can make your message more personal and targeted for your page visitor the better. At the most basic, you need to know where in the world they are coming from and what site or advert they are visiting from. Are they an existing customer? Do you know their name? Can you tweak your message to include these details?

Link the landing page to the advert

Here is an example of an ad for Eircom Broadband on Google. Note the wording and information contained. Yet when you click through to the landing page, pictured underneath, where is the mention of the “Value Business Bundles”?

Repeat the Promise

You need to repeat the wording of the original ad and give a clear call to action. Repeat the wording and the graphics. It should be obvious to the visitor that they have come to the right page, with the offer they were expecting. The key point here is, you made a promise in the initial advert so you must fulfill that promise on the landing page.

Scantastic

Make sure your pages are scanable. Here is the text from the first third of an Amazon product page for Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow.

This amount of information should be overwhelming but Amazon didn’t become the leading online retailer by confusing and overwhelming shoppers. Here is the designed Amazon landing page for Purple Cow. What a difference.

You can see now how design and formatting of the content makes information much clearer and easier to find. This example highlights one of the misunderstandings of landing page optimisation. Your pages do not have to be short to be effective. It doesn’t even have to be that simple. Your landing page needs to be long enough, detailed enough and clear enough to make the sale. It can be 1 page or 5 pages. No one size fits all, so you will have to test what works for you.

An interesting side note regarding the addition of review on Amazon. You have probably heard how reviews increase sales. But recent data from Amazon has shown that products with both positive and negative reviews sell better then ones with positive reviews alone.

The reason attributed to this is twofold. First, we are a suspicious bunch and we don’t trust something that everyone gushes about. The second reason is that negative reviews are not necessarily bad. A bad review from a large corporate CEO might tell a small business CEO that this is the book to buy.

Wording

Simple word changes can have a huge impact. 37 Signals wrote about some of the wording variations they tried on their Highrise CRM sign up page. Here are three types used with the percentage increase in conversions for each one.

Their original wording had the worst conversion rate “30-day Free Trial on All Accounts.” Variation no. 2 – “Sign-up takes less then 60 seconds. Pick a plan to get started!” gave a 30% better conversion rate. When you are attracting the level of traffic that 37Signal products do, 30% means a significant jump in revenue.

How to increase conversion with four amazing words.

Jason Fried said that they tested various phrases on the Highrise homepage for the call-to-action button. They had originally used various permutations of “Free Trial” and “Sign-up for Free Trial”. Then they tested the phrase “See Plans and Pricing” this resulted in a 200% increase in sign-ups. That’s right. 200%.

Fried believes it’s because people are afraid if they click a link that says “Free Trial” then they’ll automatically sign up for something and be trapped. However, “See Plans and Pricing” encouraged them to explore, without the fear of commitment.

Euocottage Case Study

This landing page from Eurocottage highlights a common failing for websites where they ask for too much information upfront. Ask for the least amount of information and at each step and clearly explain why you need this information in the first place. Explain to the user what the benefits are by imparting this information.

We redesigned this new landing page for Holiday Cottage search site Eurocottage.com. We simplified the process and gave users the information they needed to trust the sign up process. The new page is clearer and easier to use. It’s friendly and welcoming and is much more inviting to users. We are testing the new landing page at the moment. It will be interesting to see the performance rates for the new page. We will keep you posted.

Tools for testing

There are a few must have tools if you decide to try and measure and optimise your landing pages. Website Optimiser is a specific tool from Google for doing A/B and multivariate testing. If you use only one tool for testing this is it. Use Google analytics of course for basic numbers and tracking goal funnels.
5 Second test is an interesting site for checking what parts of your page people actually notice.

Be a pirate!

Be a pirate for your user! Sites like Amazon spend millions of Euro in usability and conversion tracking every year. Look at what the successful sites in your market are doing and copy them. No need to reinvent the wheel but try and make your own improvements. Landing page optimisation is not rocket science it is just a series of small simple tests. Devote an hour a week to it and track your progress.

Why bother?

You can spend 6 months building a level of traffic converting at 1% and to double that turnover, you can spend another 6 months.
Or you can simply test and tweak the landing page to convert up to 2% or 3% in a fraction of the time.

Recommended Reading

Seth Godin The Big Red Fez
Don’t Make Me Think – Steve Krug
Landing Page Optimization – Tim Ash
eConsultancy
Marketing Experiments
Google Website Optimizer
Which Test Won

Image above from Scurvy Pirates

| Landing-page-optimization | 08/07/10 03:02 PM

I have been working on branding a lot over the last few weeks for clients, for Spoiltchild and for Toddle. I am intrigued with how people present themselves both personally and professionally and how great companies embody great brands.

On the other hand, there is lots of hyperbole out there. Everything and everyone is described as “ brilliant” “creative” and “innovative” to the point where I’m left feeling uneasy after reading the About sections in many Blogs and company profiles.

But more crucially, I don’t know whether I should hire you or your company as your profile does not ring true to me. So more research and find someone else. Not a good result for your business I’d say.

The question is how do you describe yourself and your company in a truthful way that gives me, the perspective client, an understanding of how good you are and makes me hire you now?
Here are my suggestions.

1. Make sure to highlight recommendations from your previous clients. They know you and what you do and can give concrete examples why I should hire you now.

2. Make sure your client testimonials are believable. Avoid words like “awesome” in the body of the recommendation. Check for the bull-o-meter before you hit publish.

3. Focus on the benefits. Did you complete the project on time? Did you bring it in under budget? Did you manage the project well? Have you worked on similar projects previously? Did you win any awards recently?

4. Be sincere. If your passion is helping people then state that. Your activities and achievements to date will back this statement up.
5. There is no problem selling yourself but be a little humble about it. We can all spot half truths a mile off.

6. Include a face. As humans we really relate to faces. Add a picture so we can see who you are and recognise you when we meet next time. It is a personal touch that builds trust.

7. It’s a conversation. Your profile speaks to your customers, colleagues and friends so why not make it a conversation starter.

8. Have a read of Brooke Green’s post “Block and Tackle” http://www.caskeyone.com/block-and-tackle/ on getting the basics right and building on good foundations.

Mary

| Branding | 06/07/10 10:54 AM

To celebrate our email design feature in this months .net magazine we are offering $200 of a custom email newsletter design order.
This offer is for two days only, after which the offer drops to $100 off.

If interested click here for a quote.

| | 04/06/10 12:40 PM

Myself and Mary Carty are in San Francisco this week at the Web2Expo conference. If you are around give us a shout. We love talking to new people and feel free to pick our brains about email marketing.
You can find us on twitter alanorourke and marycarty

Alan

| Business | 04/05/10 10:44 PM

We all know the importance of a good welcome. A great example we came accross this week, is our local bistro. Lots of families walk their dogs along the strand each day but it is pretty difficult to have dinner with doggie in toe.

The bistro owner has created a beautiful outdoor area where dogs can accompany their owners. Bowls are provided for water and food and doggie do do is taken care of with the placement of special bins located far away from the tables. Other diners along the strand actively discourage dogs (and their owners). What other café’s view as a problem; this bistro has turned into a selling point. Smart, effective and makes perfect business sense.

Are you making it easy for your customers to come back to you?

Image leelefever

| Business | 19/03/10 05:05 PM

Award season is in full swing and we are thrilled to announce that Doc on One won Gold at the Digital Media Awards on Saturday night. Doc on One was an extremely ambitious project. The documentary team transferred over 300 documentaries from the archives online for the very first time. Launched last July, the Doc on One has become one of the most popular sites in Ireland and the Gold for best in Podcasting is well deserved indeed. It was such a pleasure to work on this project and we hope Doc on One continues to win more listeners and awards this year.

For the curious among you, this week’s documentary is “Ten minutes from Kenema”. Have a listen here, pure listening pleasure.

Mary

| Awards | 01/03/10 03:08 PM

We had a very busy, creative 2009 so I thought you’d like to see work we launched in December.

On time for the Christmas season we created a cross channel media campaign for SafeFood. The campaign featured a festive website, email newsletter, Facebook fan page, Facebook landing page,Twitter page and a quirky competition. First, we built a new festive website for SafeFood showcasing all their fantastic Christmas content. We integrated the “I still love turkley” campaign on Twitter and Facebook to tie into the safe cooking message and to highlight all the creative goodness leftover Christmas food can make. The campaign also ran on Boards.ie were SafeFood gave their expertise to help those entertaining friends and family to make the perfect Christmas feast.

See the campaign here Safefood Christmas

“I still love Turkey” on Twitter http://twitter

SafeFood Christmas Facebook fan page.

Overall the new campaign was very successful with great traffic through the site and hopefully a few less disasters in the kitchen! It is really good to see how an intergrated approach like this can grab the imagination of users and generate lots of attention.

The SafeFood team are busy, passionate people so along with the Christmas campaign we also worked on the redesign of Weigh2Live. Weigh2Live makes it easy for anyone who wants to make changes to their diet and lifestyle. You may have seen the TV ad campaigns running on RTE at the moment. It’s a great resource for new year resolutions and for the rest of the year as well. The site also contains handy tools that will help you stay on track and keep you motivated. A good positive start for the new year for all of us.

In December we continued to work with our friends over on Rehab Bingo. Over the Christmas holidays the newly redesigned Rehab Bingo site was launched with the addition of a few new characters and extra functionality to help playability.

Have a look at the right game sidebar and you will find our new feature game Barnyard Bill. With a colourful array of farm animals and our kindly farmer Bill we are delighted with the reaction to the new game with Rehab Bingo players.

Take a look at our other feture game this month Bee Mine just in time for Valentines Day. Good luck and happy playing.

With all that creative output in December we are busy putting the finishing touches to a few more projects which we will announce in February. Will keep you posted!

Mary

| Design-work | 02/02/10 12:37 PM

The Trinity Enterprise Network invited Marketing Consultant Paul Hayes from Beachhut PR to give a talk on building an international brand. And they very nicely agreed to let me come along.

Paul was previously Marketing and Communications Director at Havok and currently works with JoltOnline among others.

Paul had some brilliant advice and war stories from his time in Havok on how they, as a start up from Trinity, had go out and sell to the leading companies in games and film. Image it seams is vital but not that difficult… or expensive.

I got a lot of great points to take away from the day and here they are in no particular order.

PR

• Start your PR locally. Use it as your training ground to hone and practice your message before you move international.
• With everything showing up on Google do not underestimate local press. A Wired journalist rang up Paul after a story in the Tipperary Star popped up in his alerts.
Develop relationships with three key Journalists and publications.
• THE trade publication of the industry.
• A national publication
• One international publication.



• Wired is THE publication for a technology company and it took Havok a year from initial contact to getting covered in the magazine.
• The easiest way to get international PR is to get on a plane and go have a drink with a Journalist and start a relationship.
• Journalists do not write for their readers first. they write for other Journalists and their editor. Remember this when pitching a story.
• It’s easier to get coverage if you ‘promise’ to take out advertising in the future. Most trade magazines are run at a loss to maintain an audience for other business activities, events for example. So do not stress too much if you are unable to take out advertising for a long while.
• Third paragraph PR is better for credibility. The public are very media savvy. They recognise a PR piece about a company for what it is.

  However if your opinion is mentioned in an overall industry piece it lends more credibility to you being an industry expert.

• You are the best person to tell your story. Do not use a PR firm to be the middle man. It annoys Journalists.


Business


• The first sale was for $1 to get past the ‘First Customer’ credibility problem.It was a marketing deal in return for using the customer in PR, Marketing and Case studies.
• There is value in everything you produce. Watch out for opportunities. Havok had an artwork tool to help users of their main product. 3dStudio Max wanted this for their application and it generated $18 million for Havok over 3 years.
• Paul believes Tradeshow stands are a waste of money. Think smarter or of a ‘Meta Stand’.Instead of a stand Havok would organise wacky transport (with a bar) carrying VIPs from a tradeshow to the afters party and again at the end of the night back to their hotels. A fraction of the cost, and more memorable.
• One horror story in the early days of Havok involved spending half a million on a stand, intending to make a splash. They ended up wedged between Microsoft and Sony who each spent about $10 million to launch their next gen consoles. It almost broke them.
• At a tradeshow in Calais they rented a $20k Yacht and moored it outside the event instead of spending the $200k cost of a stand inside. They also got to save costs by sleeping 8 people and eating on it as well.
• For a tradeshow all you need is you and a laptop walking around. Just as effective.
• In most cases you are not selling your features. What you are selling is reduced risk.Customers assume that your product works. They want to know you will be around in 3 years and will not make them look bad to their piers and boss.
• And last was a question from the audience asking if the Trinity name helped them abroad when making contacts and selling. He said at the time no but after the very successful companies that have emerged over the years including Havok and Jolt Online it can open doors now.



Alan


| Business | 01/02/10 02:33 PM

They say there is a time for every season and situation under the sun. For us last year was a time of intensive learning. At the start of 2009 we set ourselves a goal, to push outside our comfort zones and to learn as much as possible. We wanted to develop new thinking and expand our competencies in areas of finance, strategy, marketing and business development. All of this work coincided with the running of business as usual and producing what we believe and you have told us, is our best work to date.

As 2010 begins I thought I’d review how we got on and how this new thinking has impacted on our business, our personal and professional development and the lessons that are bearing fruit for us now.

Last year, as many of you know, Alan completed the Hothouse Programme in DIT. From the intensive nature of the programme together with a fantastic bunch of like-minded entrepreneurs, who supported, encouraged and facilitated much refining and aligning of our business model, Hothouse enabled us to present a fully rounded, well executed business plan that was highly commended at the Seedcorn competition this year.

While Alan was busy in DIT, I completed the Advanced Diploma in Management Practice for the Arts with the University of Ulster and Business to Arts. Again it was a fascinating course and opened up my thinking on strategy and business development. It also facilitated meeting a fantastic group of people who work in the Arts in Ireland, they continue to inspire and inform my thinking.

Alan and I were then accepted onto the amazing Enterprise Ireland iGap programme that has pushed our thinking and our business forward at breakneck speed, most importantly, at the perfect time. All three programmes are proving to be an incredible experience and we will continue to reap the benefits well into the future.

And the final reward; as the last days of 2009 came to a close, our very first Innovation Voucher landed in the mail box. It will be used now a new development phase that has been well considered and researched thus using these funds to their optimum potential.

To sum up, taking part in any programme can be daunting but the clarity it gives, the perspective you gain at one remove, of your structures, product, customers and your thinking is worth the effort. The biggest benefit we have received is focus and clarity and a plan to make our business better by working smarter not harder.

As I said earlier, there is a time for everything. And as the world grapples to put Humpty back together again, maybe it is time to learn something new or improve skills you have already. It may be uncomfortable at first but will certainly stand to you in the end.

Mary

Image brianjmatis (CC)

| | 21/01/10 03:24 PM