A Website Redesign Requires Ongoing Improvements

The key to improving the performance of your website, over time, is to constantly improve the effectiveness of your conversion paths. A conversion path is the sum of steps a person takes to respond to an offer on your site while becoming a lead for your business. In a website redesign, it's important to look at your current conversion path and see where it needs improvement. 

The offer might be an eBook and the visitor might enter the conversion path from a blog post or email, as you may after leaving this site. Making ongoing improvements to each element in the path means higher landing page conversion rates and an ever-increasing number of leads.

A typical online path looks like this:

These path elements will vary depending on:

1. The original point of contact—search, email, PPC ad, trade-show, referral, etc.

1. The sales stage (top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel) the offer targets.

To improve the performance of these elements over time, you need to have a strategy and method for on-going testing and refinement. Website analytics will provide the data you need to judge effectiveness. But you’ll also need a system for keywording, creating and editing your emails, call-to-action graphics, landing pages and forms. Inbound marketing platforms such as HubSpot are the best choice for this, because they allow you to quickly and easily make changes without re-coding the pages. Also systems such as Hubspot integrate analytics along the whole conversion path, giving you a holistic view of a large spectrum of data.

Off-Page Strategies

If you’ve optimized your conversion paths—blog posts, call-to-action, landing pages, forms—and your offers still aren’t reaching their full potential, you can try other strategies for generating more traffic.

• Include offers in your email newsletters.

• Add links to key blog posts in your email signature.

• Create a Pay-Per-Click campaign that links right to your landing page.

• Use them as a part of lead nurturing after a trade show or event.

• Getting Outside Help from a Marketing Agency.

Getting Outside Help

Sometimes what you need is a fresh set of eyes to give you feedback on your site and help you discover new opportunities for improvement. Web-based user-testing services are a way to get impartial feedback from a broad range of people. These sites charge a small fee to put your site designs in front of 10-1000 people in their testing pool. The feedback you get is honest, actionable and usually arrives within hours. These services can be a great addition to the regular web design team. Here are four of the best that we’ve come across:

• Five Second Test

• Feedback Army

• User Testing

• Loop11

Your webpages should evolve and improve over time. This is especially important for your landing pages since they help convert your faceless website visitors into opportunities whom you have collected vital information about. If it sounds like a lot of work, you’re right. If the web developer who built your site can’t provide the support services you need, look for an Inbound Marketing Agency who can. At Hero, we specialize in marketing for small businesses. This means we’re adept to interpreting data and finding the holes in it. Give us a call if you can’t figure out your lacking ROI. We’d love to get you be your best at what you do. After all, that's what Heroes do.

How to Review Your Metrics Before a Website Redesign

Your Website is not a one and done deal. It requires constant improvement. A weekly, if not daily, review of your website metrics will be the way you identify areas that need work. Of course, knowing which metrics are valuable and which are just distractions is important. Where is your focus on your metrics? Do you have an eye on every angle?

Focus on Three Key Metrics:

Don’t concern yourself with metrics that track the technical performance of your website. Page load times and browser versions are irrelevant if your site is not attracting potential customers. Focus on these three metrics:

Visitors:

How many people are coming to your website?

• Is your traffic increasing?

• Look for correlation with blog publishing and new offers to identify topics that are attracting.

Where are they coming from?

• Look at trends for organic search, direct traffic and references.

• What keywords are bringing traffic?

• Can you optimize more pages or write another blog post for well performing keywords?

Leads:

How many visitors have converted to leads?

• Look at page analytics to see if people are leaving your landing pages without converting. Make the necessary improvements.

What did they convert on?

• If an offer is working, strengthen it with another blog post.

• Consider creating a similar, but slightly different offer. Instead of an eBook, offer a white paper or in-depth report.

Sales:

How many leads converted to sales?

• If sales aren’t converting, consider a strong or more segmented lead nurturing campaign.

Metrics Offer Clues

Staring at metric data is not the goal. Rather, fine-tuning your website is. Regular analysis of visitor, leads and sales metrics will offer you clues to places on your site that still need improvement. These are areas where even small changes can make a big impact.

Targeting:

Are you using the right messaging on your homepage and throughout your website? Use A/B testing methods to test different messaging targeted at your key marketing personas.

Calls-to-Action:

Every page on your website should have a call-to-action. Test the look and feel of different CTAs on various web pages.

Offers:

Offer type is important, too. Test the performance of different offers on your pages. A middle-of-the-funnel offer like a free trial or consultation might not work well on your blog, but it might work wonders on a product page.

Form Fields/Length:

For landing pages, test all of the above as well as the length of your forms and the fields they include.

Formatting & Layout:

Test different formatting (e.g. headers, bullets, etc.) and your landing pages’ layouts overall. Perhaps your website visitors convert better on pages where the form is on the left. Or maybe on the right.

By doing small but constant adjustments, you will be able to maximize the utility of your website so it becomes a platform for generating visitors, leads, and ultimately, sales.

Metrics are pivotal for pinpointing the problem areas of your website. Understanding how to use the data is important to the success of your redesign. If your company does not have internal staff with the knowledge and time to make metric review a part of their daily tasks, then hiring outside agency is critical. Turning data into action and action into results is what metrics are all about.  If sales aren’t converting, consider a stronger or more segmented lead nurturing campaign.

Well, that was quite a mouthful. Questions? Give us a call. We’d love to discuss metrics and analytics with you. Let's start a discussion. 

How to Review Your Metrics Before a Website Redesign

Your Website is not a one and done deal. It requires constant improvement. A weekly, if not daily, review of your website metrics will be the way you identify areas that need work. Of course, knowing which metrics are valuable and which are just distractions is important. Where is your focus on your metrics? Do you have an eye on every angle?

Focus on Three Key Metrics:

Don’t concern yourself with metrics that track the technical performance of your website. Page load times and browser versions are irrelevant if your site is not attracting potential customers. Focus on these three metrics:

Visitors:

How many people are coming to your website?

• Is your traffic increasing?

• Look for correlation with blog publishing and new offers to identify topics that are attracting.

Where are they coming from?

• Look at trends for organic search, direct traffic and references.

• What keywords are bringing traffic?

• Can you optimize more pages or write another blog post for well performing keywords?

Leads:

How many visitors have converted to leads?

• Look at page analytics to see if people are leaving your landing pages without converting. Make the necessary improvements.

What did they convert on?

• If an offer is working, strengthen it with another blog post.

• Consider creating a similar, but slightly different offer. Instead of an eBook, offer a white paper or in-depth report.

Sales:

How many leads converted to sales?

• If sales aren’t converting, consider a strong or more segmented lead nurturing campaign.

Metrics Offer Clues

Staring at metric data is not the goal. Rather, fine-tuning your website is. Regular analysis of visitor, leads and sales metrics will offer you clues to places on your site that still need improvement. These are areas where even small changes can make a big impact.

Targeting:

Are you using the right messaging on your homepage and throughout your website? Use A/B testing methods to test different messaging targeted at your key marketing personas.

Calls-to-Action:

Every page on your website should have a call-to-action. Test the look and feel of different CTAs on various web pages.

Offers:

Offer type is important, too. Test the performance of different offers on your pages. A middle-of-the-funnel offer like a free trial or consultation might not work well on your blog, but it might work wonders on a product page.

Form Fields/Length:

For landing pages, test all of the above as well as the length of your forms and the fields they include.

Formatting & Layout:

Test different formatting (e.g. headers, bullets, etc.) and your landing pages’ layouts overall. Perhaps your website visitors convert better on pages where the form is on the left. Or maybe on the right.

By doing small but constant adjustments, you will be able to maximize the utility of your website so it becomes a platform for generating visitors, leads, and ultimately, sales.

Metrics are pivotal for pinpointing the problem areas of your website. Understanding how to use the data is important to the success of your redesign. If your company does not have internal staff with the knowledge and time to make metric review a part of their daily tasks, then hiring outside agency is critical. Turning data into action and action into results is what metrics are all about.  If sales aren’t converting, consider a stronger or more segmented lead nurturing campaign.

Well, that was quite a mouthful. Questions? Give us a call. We’d love to discuss metrics and analytics with you. Let's start a discussion. 

Seth Godin Has It Right.

Seth Godin's blog is one of my favorite daily reads. Today, he writes about the client's role in the creative process. It's a great list of dos, don'ts, and straight talk about fostering innovation and leading a creative team to success through the use of a design strategy. At Hero, helping clients become more informed marketers is one of our goals. Seth's post, How to be a great client, is full of  insights every client will find useful.

Read all about it here.

Lessons From A Type Geek: Part I

Before I had my first typography class in college, I was totally oblivious to anything relating to the subject. I remember skeptically thinking, “Really? A whole semester-long class on fonts?” (for the record, I would never refer to them as fonts now, they are typefaces). To my surprise, I found the class fascinating and became intrigued with typography. I was lucky enough to have a professor who was extremely knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and expected us to know an absurd amount of information for our exams. After my initial typography course, I went on to take Typography II, do an independent study, and was the Typography I TA my senior year. Then, during my first few months (and I literally mean, it took me months) at Hero, I was tasked with reorganized the font library into classifications 
to make searching through the thousands of typefaces easier for everyone in the studio. Oddly enough, 
I actually enjoyed this task. I’m a type geek.

As much as I enjoy typography, every once in a while as I drive by a storefront with awful kerning (the space between two letters) in their signage, I like to daydream about what it would be like to be type-naive again. Along with a knowledge of typography comes the ability to notice the little mistakes that the untrained eye wouldn’t look twice at, like bad kerning or a match-up of two unflattering typefaces or a font that historically doesn’t fit with the design it’s being used in. Typography is a lot more than just letters and words and something that looks pretty. It has history and meaning and when used correctly, can add something wonderful to a business card or direct mail piece or company signage. That’s why, while I like daydreaming about being naive again, I know that there is something much more powerful to knowing. Understanding typography gives you the ability to use it correctly and effectively.

While I can’t explain in one blog post everything there is to know about typography, I can and will, over the course of the next couple months, provide a multi-part series of blog posts that will provide a basic overview of typography. That way, next time you are looking for a typeface to use or trying to explain to your designer what style of typeface you are thinking of, you will have a basic knowledge of what you are asking for and understanding as to why the usage of that typeface is appropriate for the design.

Part I: Overview of Type Classifications

In order to understand type classification, you will first need to understand a few terms:

Typeface vs. Font

A typeface comprises as set of characters including letters, numerals, punctuation, and various symbols, that share certain design features such as x-height, serif shape, stress, and contrast in stroke weights. Helvetica Medium, Helvetica Black and Helvetica Bold Oblique, for example, are typefaces. (Typefaces in turn belong to type families. The previously mentioned three faces belong to the Helvetica family.)

A font is a particular typeface in a particular size and style. For example, 18-point Helvetica Medium or 10-point Futura.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif

Serifed faces have small tapered finishing strokes called serifs found at the end of main vertical and horizontal strokes of its letterforms. These are reminiscent of  brush marks made by stone carvers as guides by which to carve, which flared at stroke ends and corners, creating serifs.

Sans-Serif faces do not have serifs; “sans” meaning “without.”

Other helpful terms:

Bracket-a curved or wedge-like connection between the stem and serif of some fonts. Not all serifs are bracketed serifs.

Modulation-contrast in stroke weights (aka. the amount of variation in between thick and thin strokes) of a letterform.

Point-unit of measurement used to measure the height of type; 1 inch = 72 points. Point size is a legacy from the letterpress system, where each letter is held on a small metal block. The point size actually refers to the size of this metal block, and not the actual size of the letter. The letter does not have to take up the full area of the block face, so two fonts with the same nominal point size can quite easily have different actual sizes.

Rational- mechanically and scientifically structured.

Stress-the direction in which a curved stroke changes weight.

Type Classifications

Typefaces can be broken down into different classifications based on their physical attributes. The classifications are based on the historical evolution of calligraphy and carving to printing to digital display. This evolution can be seen in the shift from humanistic, naturally structured typefaces to mechanical, scientifically structured typefaces.

There is a decent amount of discrepancy when it comes to type classification because the history of typography is not entirely clear and typefaces do not always fit within the rules of just one classification. There are individuals who would include additional classifications or break down these classifications further, but in general these nine classifications are recognized as suitable for a basic overview of type classification.

Transitional (1750-1757)

References:
http://www.fontshop.com/help/glossary.php
http://www.publish.com/c/a/Graphics-Tools/Font-vs-typeface/
http://www.alexpoole.info/academic/literaturereview.html
http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/type_basics/default.htm

Information Design For All.

The idea of "design for all" continues to work its way into our lives. Especially our denver design agency and business lives. Magazines like Fast Company and Good are bringing smart design to the forefront of business thinking. In fact, I'm not sure that either are actually business titles anymore. They both seem like some new version of CommArts that connects the dots between creative ideas and business results. In our head long rush towards measurable ROI, maybe this is what designers will be taking into the bathroom instead of the Print's regional design annual.

Information Not Rhetoric.

My favorite part of this new design/business amalgam is the Fast Company blog called Info Graphic. Everyday this blog posts insightful looks at global problems, political issues, business trends through the eyes of information designers. It's reductive design that brings real understanding to the kind of problems that often promote rhetoric, simply because nobody can see the whole thing at once. These powerful graphics, like A Chronology of the Gay Marriage Debate put information into a context that people can see and understand. I look forward more pervasive uses for info-graphics in our lives, like explaining who is making money in a healthcare system that is failing us all. I'd like to see that one in a data map.

Link:Fast Company/Info Graphic Blog

Larimer Square Gift Guide Launches With Hero Denver

Today we launched a new project with our friends at NetNewsdesk, The Larimer Square Gift Guide. Hero provided design and web development within NetNewsdesk's (NND) online publishing system. Larimer Square is a long-time client of NND and Hero Denver is happy to be part of the project.

The Gift Guide is an online catalog offering selections from 20 different merchants located in Larimer Square, Denver, Colorado. Today's launch is the first of six issues that will be published throughout the holiday season. Take a look and find a gift for someone on your list. You can sign up to receive a free day-parking pass and a chance to win a $200 gift certificate.

Larimer Square Gift Guide - Issue 1

Hand Done Type-tastic Thursday

This week I've been really into Nate Williams' Letter Playground website. Users upload funky hand done or non traditional letter forms. The website is a celebration of type as illustration and there is a lot of funky goodness and inspiration to be found while poking around. Letter Playground has nifty features allowing users to upload their own found or drawn letters, the ability to "favorite" letters, sort by letter and to comment on other's letters. Some of my favorites include this robot-tastic set by the user Banu:

 

and also this angry looking stegosaurs 'D' by Heath:

Letter Playground...

SEO from 10,000 ft - Creating A Content Strategy

SEO. What is it?

Search engine optimization is, quite simply, optimizing your website to be more searchable by search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Here’s a pretty good definition of SEO:

Search Engine Optimization is the process of building, designing, creating, or updating a website, or its contents, in order to increase visibility within search engines, and improve placement on search engine results pages, for a desired set of keywords terms or market segment.

What does it do?

Search Engine Optimization increases your chance of attracting new visitors to your website by placing it higher in search results. The search results we’re talking about could be “sponsored links”, which are paid advertisements, or “organic links”, which are everything else you see on the results page.

How does it do that?

Well, the optimization in SEO applies to many different parts that make up a website. Each of which needs to be created and structured in the way that is preferred by search engines. Most of this hinges on the quality of your site content. Engaging content that attracts visitors is essential to web marketing success. Your content must use keywords within it to build relevancy to the words people will search on to find your site. It must also have a structure that is easily searchable. Once you have good content you can build the other parts of your website and SEO strategy around it.

These parts fall into two buckets:

On-page:

The actual parts of your site you can see, the coding that makes it visible and organized. These include:

• Site architecture - the pages and how the link to each other

• Information architecture - how your content is divided and linked
  within the site

• Keywords - their placement and density

• Title tags - the visible title of each page

• Meta tags - additional descriptions of your content

• HTML tags - the structure of your content on the page

Off-page:

Content and links coming from outside your site. These include:

• In-bound links - links from other sites that find your content useful and recommend you to their audience

• Social Media links - self-promotion links within communities such as Facebook and links from others who like your content and pass it on to their networks

• Paid search - pay-per-click advertising, such as Google AdWords, that attracts site visitors through keyword search

All of these parts need to be tuned, or optimized, to the algorithms used by search engines to decide which web page, of the billions that exist, is most relevant to what the user is searching for. Algorithms you say? Higher math? Yes, the voodoo behind search engine technology is the algorithm which decides the relevant quality of one web page or another. That’s how they end up in those tidy little lists. There are hundreds of variables in these formulas and they are closely guarded secrets. No-one knows but gurus on the mountain.

Some of these things, such as Title Tags, are common sense strategies and are included in what Hero calls Foundational SEO. These strategies should be part of any professionally build website. We’ll elaborate more on Foundational SEO in a future post.

Other SEO strategies, such as Paid Search, require greater insight and on-going refinement to create real value. We call this Extended SEO and it benefits greatly from the focused attention of a contracted specialist who can monitor performance weekly and make the necessary adjustments. Hero works with several SEO specialist who can provide this kind of Extended service for sites our studio has built.

Does My Website Need It?

Yes. Every website needs some level of SEO incorporated into their content strategy. For our clients, we recommend building sites with our Foundational approach. Based on industry best practice, this builds into the site all the basic elements needed to perform well in search results. It also prepares the site for more advanced optimization in the future. Making a website successful in SEO is like baking bread. Once you mix all the ingredients together, you have to let the dough rise for awhile. New websites need time to rise, too. They need time to collect data on who is visiting, how visitors are finding you and what content do they like best. Once you know those things you can move on to more ambitious SEO strategies.

Where Do I Start?

Now that you’ve got the ten thousand foot view of SEO don’t loose it. It’s easy to get caught up in the minutia of click-throughs and conversions but don’t let those distract you from the big picture for long. Start at a manageable level of complexity, review your site data regularly and publish quality content. Doing those things you will find website success. Should you discover you need some assistance along the way, give us a call, we’d be happy to help.

Print Design: You Had Me at "Curiosities"

This week I'm swooning over the print design in Pictorial Webster's A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities by John M. Carrera, published by Chronicle Books. The title alone is enough to make me want it, and after perusing the interior pages it is clear that the title is fitting. This book is awesome. It features over 1,500 original engravings from 19th century Webster's dictionaries. Images range from "the entirely mysterious to the classically iconic.” It is the perfect balance of art, history, and science with an added bonus of oddity (which might be my favorite part). Right up there with the visual dictionary are Pictorial Webster’s Wall Cards and Stamp Set. I could spend hours looking at all three, and I might do just that.