Web copywriting and design team gets serious about rockin’ new business development
Well-known firm seeks to maximize impact on new customers and shake up longtime readers—all with a sense of humor
Too many tire-kickers? James Chartrand wondered what to do about it, until hiring VisionPoints to perform a Website Audit for Men With Pens, one of the top rated web copywriting and design sites, and a magnet for aspiring freelancers.
Click here to read excerpts from Men With Pens’ Website Audit.
Who is Men With Pens really talking to? That one person who hears your voice loud and clear because you speak only to their needs? At the moment, the experience of the site is somewhat fuzzy. Clearly, this person is hip and feels youthful. Anyone who can’t handle the language or the imagery is going to click away very quickly. Do you want to toss a large segment of the populace out on their ear like a bouncer at a trendy club? Yes, quite probably, though this tripped up the user testing quite a bit. You shouldn’t aim to be everything to everyone, and in voice, at least, you aren’t.
Hip and youthful isn’t a full enough profile, of course, and that’s where the experience breaks down.
You expect to be working with new business owners or people who are new to the web and with new bloggers, and also with more corporate/ more established and discerning clients. That is a tall order. Tightening your definition of an Ideal Customer may be a consideration as you go forward. Ironically I believe the answer to converting more of each is very similar….
From the work I did for this audit I expect that the answer right now is mainly, “through being a reader/ fan of the blog,” with the exception of word-of-mouth clients. Even though it led to your earlier success, this is very likely one of the biggest problems in growing MWP. Loyal/ long-time blog readers are bad clients— “tire-kickers” in the extreme. The more devoted the reader, perhaps the worse a prospect. These folks are enjoying something for nothing and are comfortable with that “business” model. Waiting for them to be desperate enough, to have a trigger moment, or to be sure they’ll never get what they need out of you for free, creates a very long sales cycle. I’ll return to this later.
Having said that, the blog is a goldmine of Google juice, just as it should be. To capitalize on that the structure of the site needs to focus on being a new business driver—and from your stated customer profiles, you want to do this without alienating the devoted readers who do bring in a portion of your business, though slowly.
Beyond startups and hobbyists lies the greatest potential for Men With Pens, and the greatest weaknesses are revealed.
Decision makers at established small- to-medium firms need solid information to make their decisions…. While their sales cycles may not be instant, they are at your site to be sold. They are only looking at you to gather information for a future purchase or to make that purchasing decision. For dramatic conversion increases with these customers, MWP faces a need for some top-level changes….
Usability may depend on the user. For an experienced blog reader, looking to check out the blog, the site is fair on the home page and very good on the blog’s interior pages.
But these are not potential clients except in a very broad sense.
From the perspective of a potential client, usability is strained. There is no clear architecture to direct me through to a contact or a purchase. I originally went through the slide links (“What We Do,” “Need Design,” etc.) and the pages they pointed to in the order you present them, as these stood out on the home page as what you had intended to be noticed by a prospect. Often these pages did not have a clear call to action, and while some do continue to drive me through the process of answering my own questions, leading me to Yes, others seem to drop the reader without pressing for the contact or the sale—even after following the trail.
When I went back to the home page to look through the prospect’s eyes, I was able to see far too many paths. From the “slide” links, to the two-tiered banner links, scrolling through blog content and colorful, distracting sidebar aff links, and finally the banner links repeating in the footer, my choices are unclear, and many of the choices leave a new prospect hanging. Even a relatively savvy prospect might become disoriented with so many paths, perhaps enjoy some time on site and pick up some information but ultimately leave frustrated, feeling like they might want to work with you but don’t know how to proceed. This is not the experience you need a visitor to have….
Remember that people do not always come in at the same page, do not always follow the same path, and are not all convinced at the exact same moment. So always provide the opportunity for them to go further or to short-circuit the sales process and say yes.
1. You’ve got a tire-kicker issue. Some people want free like their cousin Sam would do. Mention price.
2. Some people think they can’t afford you, so they don’t get in touch. Mention price.
3. Though you’re established experts, you’re misunderstood by some. Mention price.
4. You’re trying to capture more of a budget-conscious but higher-end customer base, who may have three other decision makers in the organization that he’s got to talk to before contacting you. Mention price.
The problem is, it’s not the same price you’d want to mention. So, as you are the copywriter, I leave it to you how you’ll finesse this. (With some friendliness; with lots of emotional and economic ROI; with ultra-professionalism; matter-of-factly. No apologies, no exceptions, no “we’ll work something out.” You can’t be everything to everyone.)
If you want more business, you’ve got to mention price.
Though every user liked the look of the site, each was immediately torn as what what action to take. User #1 scrolled the homepage several times before taking any action. User #2 commented, “looks like I have to read stuff. I wouldn’t do that if I needed what they sell now,” and user #3 said, after scrolling to the blog below the fold, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
When the users had finished testing the site they all stated that they hadn’t noticed the sidebar info at all. One said, “That’s where other people try to sell me stuff. I didn’t read it.” The others were not aware there had been a sidebar! Since you have resources of your own and blog navigation in the sidebar, this is an important point. This was also true of the “slide” navigation. Though one user saw the clickable navigation next to the photos on the home page early, another didn’t notice it until returning to the home page near the end of our testing, and the other never realized the bulleted points were clickable, though all were trying very hard to figure out what action to take next….
The most telling part of the tests for me were what I call “time to know what you’re selling.” In spite of reading, out loud, [several sections of] text, only one user could say before their first click that MWP “must be a website design company for my business”—which still misses half the mark…. The very earliest that anyone understood that you provide both web design and copywriting services was at the 22 minute mark….
Usability research consistently shows visitors must know what you offer in under a minute in order to stay around to make a decision to contact you or purchase from you.
—Who do you want to work with? Who don’t you want to work with? To overstate the question, does your Ideal Customer have to like Kid Rock? It’s cheeky but fair. Eliminating the wrong customer can be just as important as finding the right ones, but I want to be sure you know this is happening now, and that going forward, you are consciously setting out to have it happen. As you think about your [two groups of potential buyers], you’ll need a plan to court them in language that makes them comfortable and excited work with you—or you’ll be dropping a great many of them. There’s no one right answer here…
—Men With Pens’ site architecture needs to be vastly simplified, or at the very least, clarified, to draw new clients in and hold their attention. Eliminate confusion and overstimulation by offering fewer choices.
—Consider simplifying the language on the site, remembering that a new prospective customer doesn’t know you, doesn’t know what you know, is not likely to want to take time to become your friend as part of the sales process….
—Four words: More calls to action. NEVER let me wonder what to do next. That alone should improve revenues.
—Immediately install a heatmapping and usability package, to get a full picture of what is going on at MWP—what’s being clicked, how long it’s taking, etc…. Obsess over the bounces, exits, time-on-page, and heat maps your analytics give you, looking for visitors’ stumbling points.
Since this Website Audit was completed, we’ve had the opportunity to work with Men With Pens several more times. James’ words in appreciation of this first project for MWP still stand out:
“Quick note:
“… you are SO undercharging. Ridiculous. I was aware of a third of this. I had my own doubts about the other third, you confirmed it. But still, two-thirds surprised me. This is very cool. It’s tough to surprise me…. This is… AWESOME. You are so undercharg-… oh, wait, I said that.”
Sometimes a simple Audit, with a professional eye to research and define the problem and provide solutions you’ll work on over time, is the jump start your business needs most. It helped Men With Pens move forward, and we’re confident it can give you a boost, too.
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