Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Dear Mondonson,

Consider ditching the animated introduction. It serves no one but you.

Next, on your home page HALF your store window is taken up by a scrolling Flash animation of snorkeling adventure, surf adventure, and so on. Again, this may be doing you few favours as in truth, it tells potential customers NOTHING about them, AND because it just scrolls and scrolls, it becomes annoying.

To convert visits to sales you must convince, persuade, compel and connect. Your message must mesh with people's emotions.
Your information must be up front and easy to find.

People don't want to hunt for this stuff, they want it peeled, chilled, and ready for them on a silver tray. So ask customers what they're looking for and then GIVE IT TO THEM!

No one likes to think they're being sold anything. So don't sell. Invite. Cajole. Tease. Entice. But don't sell.

Get people to IMAGINE themselves doing whatever it is you're offering as a series of activities and the trips will sell themselves because people will want to buy—people will have seen themselves doing the things you offer and they're only going to do this when you give them delicious, bite-sized chunks of sexy, appealing, mouth-watering copy for them to sink their eyes into and for them to project onto the wide screens in their minds.

This means doing away with phrases along the lines of "More Earth Activities Comming Soon!" when you have nothing to put on those specific pages.

Stuff like this KILLS SALES. The worst words ANY marketer can use on ANY website are "Coming soon!" or "Under construction!"

So all in all, your story lines need to be meaty, juicy, and more compelling because those are the things that will attract people.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

In addition to Gary's great advice:

Add analytics (such as Google Analytics) to determine if you're getting visitors (but no sales) or no visitors (and no sales).

Make your contact information more obvious. I don't know if you're a government organization, a for-profit business, or an affiliate sales organization.

From a design perspective, it's hard to know where to focus. Simplify simplify simplify. Start by getting rid of the image background. It detracts from the navigation elements. (On the blog, too.)

Under Vacation Planning, since there are only a few activities, keep it as a list on just one page. Until you have a long list of any one activity, it's easier to see everything at one glance. At least, in my browser, it starts as one list and then jumps to the tabs view. That was annoying. I preferred the one list.

As far as your positioning, you could be much clearer on the home page that you're all about water, wind and nature adventures in PR. It's what makes your offering unique. And you only whisper it in tiny type in the burgundy bar. Easy to miss.

Some of your links (e.g., News in the sidebar) are not working. Makes you look less professional. As an outfit that is taking tourists on risky adventures (even low risk), you need to look reliable.

Get someone to proofread your site (e.g., "Clicke Here to Book Now!").

Good luck with your business. It looks like a great time for the lucky tourists who hire you.

Mondonson,

Gary has given you good suggestions -- "...convince, persuade, compel and connect. Your message must mesh with people's emotions. Your information must be up front and easy to find." I agree with Gary's comments.

Evaanderson also correctly points out that links and spelling should get attention. You don't want to annoy your customers or let them see an error and jump to the conclusion that you're not a careful businessman.

As an example, recently a client asked me to edit and proofread the content on his business website. Although not asked to do so, I went the extra mile and checked the links. I was surprised that a number of them didn't work properly or go where the client intended. After several back and forths between the client and his graphic designer, the link issues were resolved and for him, it was worth the time. His website helps him to attract and keep customers. It's all part of ecommerce.

All the best.

Corpcommer - MC

One last comment. After you've thoroughly simplified your home page, consider adding a strong call to action button to your page. Something along the lines of "plan your adventure now" or the like would work just fine. (Your website is a little confusing to a visitor right now because it doesn't tell him or her what you want them to do.)

NB: a great article on call to action buttons is here: https://bit.ly/3Pig4Y.

Good luck!
Kelly Ann