Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Your site would be much stronger if it segmented the audience based on its needs rather than on the names of YOUR suppliers. When I see "Carlson Craft" and "Stylart Studios" as options on your homepage, I know you're drinking your own wine and not focused on my needs.

It's great that you attempt to segment your audience right away on the homepage, but to be effective the segmentation has to be relevant to your audience.

I didn't get beyond the homepage because I couldn't figure out what you wanted me to do/click on. I hope your primary target audience doesn't do what I did ... which is hit the back button.

Besides having a hard time reading the text (tagline and names of each of the "buttons"), you're assuming that the first-time visitor knows exactly what they're looking for (an invitation by Birchcraft) and not simply a great-looking invitation.

Primarily, I don't know why I should buy from you. Wouldn't I be better served to go to my local stationer/printer and have them create or order my invitation. What can you do better/differently?

The second design of the home page is much more on target, in terms of customer orientation, organization and professional design. A similar customer orientation (“Talk about what I want and make it clear what I should do next”) on the follow-through pages will win the day. Obviously, some clean-up is necessary such as eliminating “Welcome [login]” and replacing your web address with something like “home” on the menu will also help.

However, this second website could do more to help you get new customers. Here are some ideas … pick one to start:

1. Offer a free report, ebook or newsletter in exchange for an email address – this will build your mailing list. (Top 100 wedding venues in South Florida? Top Florida wedding dress designers?)

2. Offer an incentive to existing customers when they refer a friend who makes a purchase over $X, because in your business, referrals are everything. (Exclusive savings on photo albums? Free scrapbooking tools? Discounts you’ve negotiated with a Miami-area frame store? Starbuck’s card?) To encourage this even more, post pages on your site that celebrate the happy couples – a digital copy of their favorite wedding photo, and the invitation they chose, plus a personalized “best wishes” message (“Best wishes to Casey and Tina, who found each other by roller-blading!”) – and then send them a link they can forward to their friends.

3. Add a blog to the site (use a link to a WordPress blog if the company providing your website can’t accommodate a blog on the website). Post original advice and news, at least once each week, and if possible include an image. This alone gives your site more value than many of your competitors, and helps establish you as an expert. If you need a separate domain to manage this, popular and inexpensive services such as GoDaddy make WordPress blogs easy. By the way, CottageCardBlog.com is an available domain.

4. Establish a company Facebook page and repost your blog topics, special promotions, and local wedding news, including pictures of happy couples and their invitations. Put a Facebook link on your site, and get your friends to “like” it to jumpstart the count.

5. Use your blog and Facebook content to generate tweets. Use the tweets to entertain and inform your audience (messages with value), and try to maintain a standard frequency … once a day, or once every other day, if you can manage it.

6. Somewhere on your site, invite your audience to text you, particularly where they’re looking at specific invitations and may have questions. This is how the present marriage-age audience likes to communicate. Be ready to answer on the spot. This will help your website draw new customers to you rather than to competitors.

7. If you want new visitors from search engines, trim down the keyword meta-tag on the home page to about one-third of its present length. It’s currently too long, and search engines will tend to ignore it. Keep only those terms that are priority search matches for you. For example, eliminate “wedding planner” in favor of “wedding invitations” or better, “Miami wedding invitations.”

Hope you’ll find this helpful. Good luck to you in your business!