Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Hi Juliet,

Which ever way you look at it, it's always going to be a large site. As a business you deal with children, so there's always going to have be a health and safety issue that you have to cover. On the flip side, you've installed more than 3000 playgrounds, so you must be doing something right.

Looking through the site, it seem that it was designed with multiple pages and text to enhance an SEO project, although in fairness most of the tagging is incomplete, missing or duplicated.

To be honest there's no point in discussing the existing site, because it's not doing what you need it to do.
There is only one route that you shouldn't take and that is to go back to the beginning.

Firstly you need a company that will actually listen to you and more importantly understand exactly where you want to be now and in the future, only if they understand your business model will you be able to work with them. Get them to create with you a complete spec for the site as well as various screen shots so you will see exactly what it will look like before it goes live.

If you don't have anyone in house who can create the text, then hire a copywriter, they are easy to work with and surprisingly affordable.

There are so many options that you can take to create a new site, but without the correct preparation you will run into issues. In reality, its no different that designing a playground, you start with a concept, create a plan and install it.

An ideal solution would be to hire a consultant to create the spec and designs, then get them to project manage the physical development, it will be far more productive and cost effective in the long run.

I expect there may be many here that disagree with this, but in a price versus cost scenario this would be the better option.

Hope that helps

Nev

Wow! There is so much content on the site, it's hard to know what to do.

You need to start by figuring out what the objective of the site is. What does success look like? What is it you WANT to happen when someone in the target audience lands on the site?

Once you figure out the answer to that question, then you can redesign the site to accomplish that objective. Anything that doesn't contribute to achieving the objective should go.

Dear Juliet,

Good lord! Holy crap! That IS at lot of copy, isn't it? And lots of it talks about the company, not about its customers. This isn't good, on which more at the end of this message.

OK. I'm with Phil: print it out ... ALL of it. Tape it all together and pin it to the wall. This way, you'll get a visual representation of what the site looks like.

Then you might want to put your customer hat on and say to yourself "OK, if I'm coming to this site for the first time, what information am I looking for?"

Agree a thousand percent on cutting the text. But, a way to RETAIN chunks of that text and still keep its informational value through short and engaging videos. Simple slide shows with a voice over will do, and it's that kind of content that could be used to pull people back, and to get them to bookmark the site and sign up for new video content as and when it becomes available.

And if all this video is YouTube video and connected to keywords, and stuffed with a wee link or three, it'll all add value back to your site.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
The Direct Response Marketing Guy™
Wilmington, DE, USA

P.S. If you'd like two free tools to check your new copy with, let me know and I'll gladly pass on the links via e-mail. As I mentioned at the beginning of this humble rant, I'm happy to pass on ways to look at the copy so that it can be made more user friendly. Send me an e-mail if I can help with this.

P.S. If the client wants to keep some of the information on the site so he/she can send someone a link, that's OK. Just don't link to it from the home page or any page that's part of the call-to-action.

To answer your questions, Juliet:

1) What would get visitors to stay in the website? You don't need to worry about everyone, just truly prospective customers. Currently the site is more of a catalog than a completed solution. Compare the site to a clothing store. (Good) clothing stores know that most people have trouble putting together outfits. So they assemble outfits on a mannequin to evoke a "look". So instead of selling the pieces, create playground galleries, and use them to highlight the offerings.

2) What would get visitors to sign up for a visit from a sales rep / play specialist? How about an over-the-phone interview of the school, with the prospect sending photos of the space, and the sales rep coming to present a 3D rendered drawing of some suggested options? That'll speed things up, get focused on budget and needs quickly, and create a real reason to move forward.

3) What would get visitors to revisit the site from time to time? A couple of ideas: 1) an online campaign to win a playground (or a discount) based on photos & essays from the kids and voting by the community and 2) updated white papers showcasing how new playtime has boosted test scores, reduced sick time, etc.

"They are really keen to reduce the amount of content, as well as add in more appropriate language. "
* Is this desire ("reduce the amount of content") being driven by gut feel or by visitor traffic / metrics derived from site? It has Google Analytics installed so the metrics should be easy to review.
* Whatever changes are designed must also have a corresponding measurement process in place, otherwise you will never know if the change was of value.

"At the moment the general feeling is that it is overly dense in content and duplicates information (with no benefit) in many places. "
* Again, is this being driven by reviewing real data or by=> gut reaction or a vendor sales pitch?

Some thoughts to consider when looking at a website refresh
* Is there a website visitor funnel (sales funnel) with calls to action?
* What are the product design, product support, marketing and sales goals and are they coordinated with the website visitor behavior & expectations?
* Consider engaging a user experience person like Karen McGrane (https://karenmcgrane.com/ ); someone who understands how people think and react to information organization and information relationships.

hope this helps,
John