What comes to mind when you think of Wikipedia or Las Vegas. Personally for Wikipedia, I think of lots of text, lots of great information. Las Vegas, I think of flashing lights. What comes to your customer’s mind when they visit your website though. Which style is better, a Wikipedia style site or Las Vegas?
If you ask me, I’d say neither of those styles are acceptable. Some time ago, people thought it would be a good idea to stuff a homepage with lots of paragraphs of text. I really don’t ever think this was a good idea, but this is just how web design used to be. Yes, content matters, so the text is relevant. However it’s most often not arranged well and at a font so tiny Derek Zoolander would throw a fit. The worst part is, there was never anything for a visitor to do afterward. No call to action. Nothing to motivate me to “call now”, “contact us” or “buy now”.
Or there were multiple slideshows all over the homepage, and particularly the above-the-fold area (first part you see). Nothing is more distracting than having 3 different animated boxes of pictures and scrolling text everywhere. There were more colors than in a box of Trix cereal. Colors have been known to play a part in one’s emotional connection to what they are reading or viewing.
So what is a better style website? I build minimalistic websites. I build websites so they are designed to convert visitors into customers and customers into promoters. For most businesses, when the customer journey reaches the part where they visit your website, they’re usually either at the top of the buying funnel or somewhere in the middle. We want to bring them down that funnel as quickly as possible. What we don’t want, is for a customer to arrive at your website, to get lost in all of the words and flashy colors and text everywhere, and then not find what they are looking for, which is usually to get in touch!
We take this funnel theory a step further by introducing dynamic content, or as we call it: Smart-Sites. Smart Sites auto-magically change the content on your website based on visitor behavior. This allows us to guide the customer down that funnel more effectively. So for instance, the first time a visitor arrives on your website, we’ll assume this is the first time being introduced to your company or brand. Let’s have your website display a welcome video or an initial promotional offer perhaps. However, it would be silly to display that to them the second time they visit your website. You wouldn’t meet someone in real life for the second time and say: “Hi, I’m John Smith, nice to meet you.” In website terms, you want to display different content. Appropriate content for wherever they are in their buying cycle. So perhaps we display them a message something like this: “Welcome Back. Contact us about that last product you were looking at”.
This greatly increases the chance they will contact you and thusly do business with you. This is because you are creating personalized content for them. Personalized content isn’t hard to do, but it’s a great way to change your website without actually having to change it day to day. Your website does it for you! Well, ours will do it for you. I can’t say the same thing for “the other guys.”
If you haven’t updated your website in at least the past 18 months, it’s time for a refresher. Contact Us Today (see the call to action there?) for a free website evaluation. We’ll compile a multi-page report showing missed opportunities for your website and marketing.
A 30 minute consultation could be just the next big thing your business needs.