I am passionate about website design.

As part of my work, I spend countless hours looking at websites developed by other companies. There are many websites I greatly admire, but the vast majority of the sites I’ve looked at have major issues with navigation, design and content.

These aren’t mere cosmetic issues. These problems lead to poor traffic, high bounce rates and a major loss of revenue.

Every website designed by Blue Fountain Media is built with these ideas in mind:

• Clear Messaging
• Clear Calls to Action
• “Stickiness”- Content that is fresh, useful and compelling

Web 1.0 versus Web 2.0

When a user comes to your site, you have less than 3 seconds to get your message across. Unless you make it worthwhile to stay, visitors are a mere click away from leaving your site… forever.

When businesses first started going online, their online strategies were mere extensions of their offline marketing strategies. The websites were essentially online billboards or brochures. Companies felt like they could simply deliver their message to an online audience and the audience would buy their products. This was the essence of Web 1.0.

Today, successful websites are the ones that focus on the user experience. They are the ones that provide the following:

• Give visitors value
• Relevant information
• Entertainment
• Special offers
• Provide clear calls to action
• Make it simple for them to transact business

This is what Web 2.0 is all about. Your visitors come to you with a problem or need… and you solve it for them.

To illustrate this, I’d like to compare two websites: Anthony.com and Amerifit.com. Both are e-commerce site, but they go about their messaging in very different ways.

Amerifit.com

According to their website, “Amerifit Brands is a privately owned, consumer health and wellness company that develops, markets and distributes branded products that support natural wellness.”

When you go to their homepage, though, this essential message never gets across. The centerpiece of their homepage is a rotating illustration with this message “Committed to improving the lives of our consumers through innovative and effective products.”

What does this mean? What kind of products? Why am I visiting this site?

Under the three second rule, the vast majority of visitors are gone long before they get the answers to any of these questions. The homepage then provides tiny product illustrations with even tinier descriptions. The four products illustrated are: Estroven, Azo, Culturelle and Cardistat. What are those products?

It takes way too much work for the visitor to get the answer to these questions. Take a look at their home page for yourself:

Problems and Problem Solving

Visitors to this site come because they have health concerns and they want those concerns addressed. This site clearly fails to do that.

The home page needs to have clear titles and messaging that quickly shows visitors that you have the solution to their problems.

Rather than just showing a box of  Estrogen, you should present in large readable text:

• MENOPAUSE SYMPTONS? TAKE ESTROGEN
• URINARY TRACT INFECTION? TAKE AZO
• DIGESTIVE DISTRESS? TAKE CULTURELLE

Another huge mistake made by Amerifit is that the homepage offers no practical information and nowhere to go for such information. When people have health issues, they want detailed information on their condition. Nothing on the home page indicates that such information is provided anywhere on the site.

A great way to get more traffic and more sales is to give visitors the opportunity to share the information from the site with their friends. Amerifit.com offers no such viral marketing opportunities.

To make matters worse, when you click on one of the featured products, you go to an entirely different site. To get back to the Amerifit.com home page, you have to use the back button.

Amerifit’s products may be terrific, they may deliver on their promises, but the poor messaging on their website will result in poor branding, reduced traffic to the site, high bounce rates and depressed sales.

Anthony.com

In stark contrast to Amerifit.com, Anthony.com- an upscale men’s skin care company- delivers clear messaging, useful information and forceful calls to action.

As you can see below, products and product categories are clearly presented. Calls to action are prominent and all messaging is short, sweet and to the point.

The home page navigation is not only simple, it funnels visitors quickly and effectively to the site’s e-commerce functions. When you go to “Our Products” and click on “Shave” this is where you are directed:

As you can see, you are on a shopping page that not only makes buying simple; it also offers practical advice (“The Perfect Shave”) which also serves to funnel visitors to more buying opportunities. This kind of practical information keeps visitors on the site and keeps them coming back again and again.

Other key user-friendly features on Anthony.com include:

• Great customer service through “Live Chat”
• A “Grooming Guide” tutorial
• A store locator
• Special gift packages
• E-Gift Certificates
• Social Media links (Twitter and Facebook)
• “Recommend to a Friend” link

Since Blue Fountain Media redesigned the Anthony.com site with all of the above functionality and features, traffic on the site has gone way up, visitors to the site stay longer and, most importantly, sales have increased substantially.

In Conclusion

The best websites are the ones that best serve the user’s needs. Businesses that fail to keep that in mind get exactly what they deserve: poor branding, poor traffic and poor sales. Blue Fountain Media has designed, developed and marketed successful websites for businesses in a wide variety of industries. To discuss your business’s online strategies, please give us a call at 212.260.1978.

Tags: Blue Fountain Media, gabriel shaoolian, Online Marketing, online messaging, stickiness