Question

Topic: Website Critique

Please Critique Our Business-to-business Website

Posted by bgilbert on 10/30/2009 at 1:19 PM ET 250 Points
Our company, PowerDirect, sells direct-to-door marketing services (primarily door-hanger advertising) to Fortune 500 clients and their ad agencies.

Our sales reps generate most of their leads through cold calling.

We don't get many customer inquiries from our site and our traffic numbers are low. We'd like to develop a plan to drive site traffic and generate customer inquiries that could be turned into qualified leads.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to improve the site's design, navigation, usability, readability, content and use by prospects as a research tool from a business-to-business SEO and lead generation perspective?

Our site address is: www.powerdirect.net.

Thank you,
Barry
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 10/30/2009 at 2:01 PM Accepted
    OK, this will be very blunt.


    First of all,

    LOSE THE FLASH INTRO!!!!!!
    It's scaring people! (I know it's Halloween, but....). If I hadn't been there to evaluate the site, I would have run away from my desk, screaming in terror.

    Second, the navigation buttons on top are way too small, and they seem to vibrate when you hover over them (gives me a headache, just looking at it).

    Instead of pictures of doors, how about some satisfied customers? Or bigger pictures of the door hangers themselves? Or some information on results customers got from the door hangers?

    Descriptive profiling? Data modeling? Lose the gobbledygook and tell me what I'll get if I sign up with your company.

    Some of the text looks like a link (underlined) but isn't. I clicked on the line about response rates, thinking it would give me examples, but got nothing.

    The orange text is hard to read against the green background.

    Rewrite to emphasize benefits. For example, instead of saying "demographic filters", tell me you can precisely target my ideal customer (better results, less waste, lower expense).

    Jodi

  • Posted on 10/30/2009 at 3:03 PM Member
    Barry,
    I have to ditto Jodi. The Flash is just overly distracting. The content of the site gave me no reason to take action.

    Today's web visitor are looking for solutions to their problems. How can you solve their problems with your service?

    I regards to building the traffic you say you don't have, may I suggest you google "Inbound Marketing" and consider giving that a try.

    Good Luck.

    Paul
  • Posted on 10/30/2009 at 3:11 PM Member
    I'm with Jodi and Paul on the flash intro - even when I thought it was over and I finally got to the site, it was still moving around at the top - nevermind I couldn't read anything to know what I was supposed to do next.

    I dont know what your resources are like, but a good SEO strategy (we've found) is corporate blogging. By selecting a list of keywords you think will bring qualified/interested people to your sales team, you can boost traffic. Inbound Marketing might be a good keyword for you. The idea is you're constantly writing content (a few posts a week) that get indexed, depending on how competitive the words/phrases you chose are you can quickly end up on the first or second page. From the blog you should have a strong call to action (that makes sense for your business).

    You of course still need to have a strong website. But the additional, relevant content should help with your SEO efforts.
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 10/30/2009 at 10:50 PM Accepted
    You have two problems.

    1) The site itself has a number of issues, as others have mentioned. Once people arrive, they're likely not to stick around.

    2) You're not getting traffic, which indicates that you haven't done your SEO homework.

    Before you improve the traffic, fix the site. Make it obvious what you do and for who. Make it obvious how to contact you. Make the entire purpose of your website to get someone to email you or call if they're your target audience.
  • Posted on 10/31/2009 at 6:45 AM Member
    Barry,

    There is so much to do on your site that you should seriously consider budgeting for a professional to help you.

    We are based in the UK but if you are looking for someone closer to home I would suggest that you get in contact with Garry Bloomer who is a regular contributor to this forum and is based in the USA.

    Best of Luck with the project

    Kind regards

    Nigel T Packer
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 11/2/2009 at 7:09 AM Accepted
    Dear Barry,

    Holy crap Barry! For the love of God, remove the seizure inducing Flash introduction. Yes, all of it because it's doing you no favours at all.

    You'd also benefit greatly from some kind of positioning statement, some way to collect names and e-mail addresses, some simple bullet list of "this is what we do, this is how we can help you", social proof in the guise of testimonials, and perhaps a short, customer-focused, benefit driven video.

    To buy from you people must feel they know you, feel they like you, and feel that you can solve their problems because you're trustworthy. The other opinions you've read, I agree with them 100 percent.

    Keep things simple. Think of your customer. What does this person want, what do they need, and how will you give it to them? All the image recognition, target acquisition, migraine inducing lights in your introduction are KILLING your visitor's desire to engage.

    I hope this helps.

    Gary Bloomer
    Wilmington, DE, USA
  • Posted by bgilbert on 11/4/2009 at 12:57 PM Author
    Thank you all of your insightful and helpful comments. We're going to consider making many of the changes suggested towards improving the site.

    Regards,

    Barry Gilbert
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