Creating a couple of mockups for a site has some real benefits, and it doesn’t just effect the appearance. It can also enhance the code and navigation of a site. Creating two versions for a site may sound like an extra expense, a simple pain in the butt, seem pointless, but it helps a site out a lot. Continue reading »
Feb 112009
So what inspired today’s poll? A couple of things. I had just recently done a usability analysis on CSSLanding Pages.com, and after writing my three part post about parallel design it reminded me that this concept is even more effective when done on landing pages. If you are banking on a single, poor performing landing page, bummer. That’s time and money lost.
A Landing Page for a Landing Page Site, Yikes!
When I was first asked to do the analysis for this landing page templates site, my first impression was yikes! I would hate to have that job. No matter how effectively you designed the landing page, and no matter how wonderfully it works, you are just begging for scrutiny. I guess if you are into landing pages though, you understand the value of feedback, and use it to your favor. Point being, that is probably why the owner wanted the analysis. The more feedback, the better your site gets.
The Analysis
Overall, CSSLanding Pages.com, did very well on the analysis. Near the end of my review though, I noticed something huge. $19 didn’t buy you a template. It bought you a ton of templates. I’ve seen a lot of template sites, and have even done analyses on many. The usual going price is $50 to start, and that is for one template. This whole time I was thinking that they were selling one for $19. A good price, but nothing special.
The problem, fixed now, occurred because I saw two things. I quickly saw the site sold templates, and I quickly saw the prominent PayPal button to buy them for $19. What’s wrong with that? The benefits and significant details were hidden in the regular text. I skimmed content, like most visitors do, and missed the fine print. Knowing that I was doing a detailed analysis of the site, you can imagine what a first time visitor will read. The site page was selling ten templates with sixteen different themes each. Pretty huge difference, and a great deal. Interested parties will surely buy if they like some of the templates.
What I Missed
So would you rather order one template or get a package that has this for $19?
- All 10 Landing Page Layouts in every color and style.
- 15 Graphical Opt-In Box Templates
- 1,600+ Website Graphics Package
- The Landing Page Success Guide eBook
- Instant Delivery!
A deal like that makes a desiscion a lot easier, and the sale a lot more likely. Note to self: Don’t hide the significant details.
Feb 112009
If you missed my three part post about parallel design, it basically reviewed the advantage of testing multiple layouts at the same time for a website. Well the same can go for landing pages, and in fact, is probably more important to do with landing pages. Landing pages do a couple of things, they offer information (reference landing page), and can be made to persuade a visitor to complete a transaction (transactional landing page). Most of the time they are transactional landing pages, and this is what this poll is about.
The advantage of creating parallel landing pages is that it saves money and time. Having two or more landing pages makes it a lot easier in finding out what is working, and what is not. Finding these answers quickly can be very important when marketing dollars are being spent.
Here is the poll: Do you have more than one landing page to sell a certain product or service?
Feb 082009
This is the third of a three post article on a parallel design comparison. The first and second part of this article can be found here: Parallel Design Comparison, and Parallel Design Comparison Part II.
So here we have three sites, all three are about credit cards, all three are trying to drive referral clicks, but only one is really getting the job done. Looking at the comments from the previous posts, we have one vote for the first site, three for the second site (the second one was my first impression), and another vote for the third site. The second site wins?
A simple breakdown of the sites are as follows:
- http://www.nowcreditcards.co.uk/ (Link was removed, site appears to be down for good) – Content and ads below
- Credit Cards Comparison – Ads on home page, and content on other pages
- Compare Credit Cards – Content with banner ad on right
What Site Does Best?
The site performing the best is http://www.nowcreditcards.co.uk/. Why? Well apparently in this case, content is truly king. The site drives the best search engine traffic. The search engine traffic could also be influenced because of it’s double menu, making the site very keyword rich. I wouldn’t suggest having a double menu like this for usability reasons, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting the sites performance at the moment. Visitors are finding the site, and they are clicking on the referral links.
The second site, Credit Cards Comparison is ranking well for it’s main keyword, but it’s not making the conversion. This is due to the fact that though visitors are finding the site using secondary keywords, they are not landing on the home page, and not making the conversion. They are simply landing on the content pages, and then taking off. The only conversions the site is getting is when a visitor lands on the home page for the main keyword, and this is unfortunate because those visitors convert more often than the first site.
The third site, Compare Credit Cards, is way behind. Search engine traffic has not developed, and the referral links are simply not visible enough. I hate to say this, but they need more ads if they want to make this site work.
So What’s the Lesson
The lesson comes from seeing the parts that fail, and being able to compare.
- The first site failure – Not converting well because ads are hidden
- The second site failure – Visitors are landing on the wrong page
- The third site failure – Not showing enough ads, and not driving keyword traffic
What should the owner do? Here is the beauty of parallel design. If he had only designed one site there is no way of knowing what is failing, and what is doing well. All the owner could do is try to make the one site better one step at a time, and hope it works. Comparisons take a long time that way. Because he has three sites doing the same thing though, he knows what could use improvement, and what is doing well. In this case content is clearly important, add placement should be highly visible, and ads should found on every page.
He doesn’t have to make all of the changes at once either. Why mess with the best site? He could work with the second site, adding the ads to all of the pages, similar to the first site, and this time he could put them all on top. Then he would have two similar sites, #1 and #2, with only one real difference, ad location. Yet another opportunity to see what does better with parallel design. Do you see that advantage of parallel design?
Feb 062009
This is the second of a three post article on a parallel design comparison. The first part of this article can be found here: Parallel Design Comparison
So if you have not voiced your opinion yet, only one of you have so far, it’s not too late to say what site will perform the best. I’ll be posting the answer in the third part. This post will give a basic review of each site, mentioning their selling points, and the steps a user would need to take to complete the desired goal. All three sites are credit card information sites that earn revenue by the visitors clicking on the optional cards they have listed.
0 Credit Card
The first site is 0 Credit Card.The site has two menus, one in the header, and left sidebar. Both menus link to the same pages so their may be some confusion for a visitor, but as the saying goes, all roads lead to Rome. When you click on one of the pages, depending on the visitors interest they are brought to a card information page. For example, you can look at their Reward Card page. The page offers a few paragraphs of advice, and then lists the available cards that offer the package.
So for this site to work, lets make a simple, easy for the site owner, assumption. Lets say that a visitor was looking for a Reward Card on Google. Google brings them directly to the Reward page, skipping the home page, and the visitor looks at it. What do you think they would do? My impression of the page would be that this is a credit card site, but it does not list any credit cards, at least at first impression. The cards are hidden below the fold. If this page is going to work, a visitor needs to get lucky finding the page, and then be lucky or intuitive enough to scroll further down. Most do not. My first guess for 0 Credit Card is that this site could be performing a lot better.
Credit Cards Comparison
The next site is Credit Cards Comparison. This site is in a blog format, offers similar information as 0 Credit Card, but starts out assuming that you are looking for a card. They have a great big side by side comparison of cards on the home page, and it is pretty much the first thing you see. Apply now buttons are right their as well so if a visitor came upon this sites home page all they would have to do is click one time, and the site could successfully convert. It could be a high converting site.
The downfall of this site is that if you were to Google looking for a reward card like the example I used for 0 Credit Cards, and you were directed to this sites Reward Card page, their are no cards to select. It is simply information about getting reward cards, and offers none to apply for. How will this site succeed? It will only work if the visitor is inclined t visit the home page.
Compare Credit Cards
The third site is Compare Credit Cards. This site would appear almost entirely as an advice site about credit cards. Their doesn’t appear to be any links to card sites with exception to just a sky scrapper banner ad on the right. The owner is still trying to fill this space, so a little hint here, this site is not performing the best, but to see an example, here is page that does have an ad: Prepaid Credit Cards. The idea that visitors will read the content, see that add, and then click it seems a bit dismal for me. I does have SEO potential though, so all is not lost.
Performance or Traffic
Looking at the three sites, all have some room for improvement. Some are performing better than others in regards to conversion, while some are performing better because their search engine traffic is superior. This is where the advantage of having a parallel design kicks in. Find out what is doing what, and you will gain the benefits of parallel design. These three sites could also very quickly transition from alright sites to great sites because the positives are found out quicker.
Part 3 of this post will reveal the real winner of these three sites, and some of the things they can now improve on. Have you told us what site you think is best? It’s not too late! Use the comment box below.
Sep 112008
Depending on your budget for building a site, an extremely worthwhile venture is to create an alternate layout, or parallel design. The benefits are almost endless, and features on the site quickly expose the good and the bad.
Parallel Design in Action
I recently wrote a post about a Dallas Real Estate website in how it made good use of its home page. Well the same company has another site, San Antonio Real Estate, that is parallel in design, but has clearly made different choices in regards to some of its layout. Most of the same features are there, but they have either selected to remove them or are testing the other with the design. Typically, creating a parallel design would be done before a site goes public, but obviously you could get a great deal more feedback doing it live.
The Benefits
Creating a, or a few alternate site designs can produce some fantastic benefits. When analyzing each layout, and then comparing to another, the good and the bad are quickly recognized. You then have the ability to include those good ideas from say, Site A, and then incorporate them into Site B. Very quickly you now have not one improved design, but two improved designs. After a few rounds of this, the designs should almost merge with only the best ideas shining through. Keep in mind that this isn’t just limited to the simple layout of the site, but all aspects of the site. Things like how a form is handled, or how search results are displayed, everything.
The main advantage of this is the overwhelming time it could save you. Using just one design, time and slow little tests are the only way to improve your site performance. Testing parallel designs will quickly kick out the junk, and bubble sort the best to the top giving you the best web design. It’s usability testing at an almost primal level, and it’s a great way to start your site.
No Budget
If you don’t have a budget to build a multiple designs, or you build your sites yourself it’s not the end of the world. This is where that time you spent doing your market analysis kicks in. When investigating your competitors, don’t just look at their sites, use them. Try their order forms, sign up for the mailing lists, and take notes on how they run their websites. Follow the money, and follow what ideas you like best. This is what your target market is most likely used to, assuming they have used one of your competitors sites already.
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Parallel Design Comparison
Tuesday I mentioned that I would be doing a three part post on three different credit cards sites. This is the first of the three. All three card sites are owned by the same person. All three have been designed to give advice to the user about selecting the right card, and offer links to the credit card companies. In this three part post I want to show how testing parallel designs can be beneficial to a site owner, and how being sold on just one layout could be a huge mistake.
The sites in comparison are: http://www.nowcreditcards.co.uk/ (link no longer seems to be working 2/2010), Credit Cards Comparison, and Compare Credit Cards.
Please Comment
Knowing that these sites are designed to educate, and then get visitors to visit the credit card sites, which site do you think performs the best? Specifically, when I say perform, I mean which site do you think sends visitors on to the credit card sites the most? Feel free to comment below saying which one and why. In the third and final part of this post I will reveal the best site, and yes I have spoken to the owner. I do know what site is out performing the others.
Part two of this post will review each site, their selling points, and the steps a user would need to take to complete the desired goal.