Get More Business From Your Website By...

Playing with it!

Of course by playing, what I mean is changing it.

Look - you get the Google analytics report every Monday, right?   What do you do with that information?  You see the number of visitors (or sessions as it's now called,) you look at the bounce rate and then...

...what is it you actually do next?

Do this

•    Change the language on the page
•    Change the text of the call to action
•    Move the position of the call to action
•    Change how the sign up form works
•    Do this on the top 5 most visited pages

Do this yourself

If you have a Squarespace site you don't need to employ "Web Guy" to come in and do it for you.  Sure you might need a session with me to get up to speed, but once you see how small changes to your site can increase conversions, it becomes addictive.

And profitable.

So if...

•    You're not getting a weekly Google report
•    You don't have a Squarespace site
•    You'd like to start doing this

Email me or call on 310 980 2499 and let's get you some return on your digital investment

---

Written while listening to: Essay Writing Music - music2work2

Image Credit: Leona at play by Digimist on Flickr

Radiohead King of Limbs - Marketing and Design

This post is about marketing and web page design - the takeaways are:

• If you have something that people want, they will tell their network about you
• If you have something that people want, make it easy for them to find and purchase it
• Set expectations and then over deliver

Marketing (Part 1)

Radiohead are notorious for their lack of communication, they have the best signal to noise ratio of any band I know.  This means that when they do communicate, people comment on it.

The band announced the release of their new album with a simple blog post on their website on Monday.  I don't regularly visit Radiohead's website, but I found out about the record’s existence from a news aggregator on Tuesday.

Marketing (Part 2)

I read eleven music related aggregators and I receive three of them in email format, the rest are RSS feeds. I scan their headlines every morning and if something catches my eye I dig deeper.

Pretty much every one carried the story about Radiohead's new album and in every format I was able to click through to the band's website.  Once I had verified the information and pre-ordered the record, I then tweeted to my network about it.  Over the next two days I saw people in my own network going through the same experience and tweeting and blogging about the record to their network.

Design (Part 1)

When I arrived on the King of Limbs website I immediately knew that I was dealing with the band:

Band name (brand) is big and easily identified – the text is simple and straightforward and the graphic immediately funnels your attention to the purchase process.  Note how there is no menu navigation – there is only one way off this page and you choose it by identifying which market you are – brilliant!

Design (Part 2)

There are two products on offer – the higher margin one is presented first, but again – look how clean and simple the language is.  Look at the relative size between the title and the text and the information delivered.  There are only two visible buttons on this page – the pre order and order button – there is no doubt what the purpose of this page is.

Although menu navigation does make an appearance it is super simple – no drop down menus, no multiple options, simple and clean.  The rest of the purchase flow is just as easy – there are no “up sells”, no additional offers and no superfluous requests for information.

Marketing (Part 3)

When Radiohead announced the new album on the 14th, they said it would be available on Saturday 19th.

When I woke up this morning and looked at my network on Twitter I saw that people were already listening to the album.

http://twitter.com/thebluesage/status/38611832986025984

I immediately went to the site and saw that they had released a day early, I downloaded the album, started listening and immediately told my network the news.

By exceeding the expectations that they themselves had set, they delighted me and made me feel good about the whole experience.

Takeaways

If you have something that people want, they will tell their network about you

If you have something that people want, make it easy for them to find and purchase it

Set expectations and then over deliver

Simple huh!

lauren // associates

Last week saw the launch of the latest web site from Kilted Chaos:

lauren // associates - non profit consulting

For this write up we’re going to look at some of the key design elements that we addressed when putting the site together:

White Space, Use of Color, Navigation as Information and Images.

White Space

People scan your home page – they make an assessment of what’s there and what’s important in the first few seconds.  If it is busy with lots of text and flashy things, you’re making it harder for people to quickly identify what they’re looking for.

The approach here is to remove anything that can’t be represented through navigation off the front page and leave a simple core message.  The intent is to leave the eye free to take in the logo and tag line – and then wonder what the hell the green circle is for.

Use of Color

Color is awesome – used sparingly it is like a policeman for the eye: “Go directly to here – do not look at anything else.”  Aside from the big green circle – we use green to highlight certain words: Lauren (the name of the company), Profit (something that everybody wants – especially people in non profit!) and Changing (‘cos if they weren’t looking to change something about their business – they wouldn’t be on the site!)

The purpose of the circle is to create an independent platform within the space that can be used to spotlight text information.  The circle draws the eye to the words running around it and a mouse over effect pulls the explanatory text into the space.  The interactive nature of the tool encourages the user to try out the other words and in doing so get exposed to a deeper level of information about the company.

Navigation as Information

Over the years I have found that I learn just as much about a site from the navigation as I do from the content.  Navigation will tell you very quickly what the site priorities are and shape how you as a visitor move through it.

The primary navigation on Lauren Associates presents a visitor with 4 options - in effect saying: this is what we do, this is what we think, this is what we are about, and you can get us here.  Nice and simple and no horrible multi-level drop downs that you have to scan in order to work out where you’re going.

Secondary navigation shouldn’t detract from the primary message but should make it easy for the visitor to get around the site.  We used the mouse over effect on the front page but you can only really do that once - for the inside pages, the icon driven “micro-menu” sits nicely on the top right, we could have used small font text but the icons just look cooler!

An Image says a thousand words

And those words are often “this site blows - I hate stock photography!”  Over the years we have moved away from stock photos – we’re not saying they’re bad in all cases – but the idea of showing a happy smiling man in a business suit next to your new credit card offer not only seems banal to us, it also feels fake.

No real human being gets excited about mundane stuff  – we’re big fans of the Kotex tampon ads – in a world of overhyped bullshit and  exaggerated product marketing, the minute someone tells it how it is – we’re hooked.

Instead of using photos that had no relationship with Lauren Associates we designed a set of icons that represented each area of work and actually felt like they were part of the site.

Websites are not dead

If your website hasn’t changed in the last couple of years then you’re doing it wrong.  Lauren // Associates are adopting a content strategy so there is always going to be new content added but we’re not just talking about the blog.

The design of Lauren Associates is very clean, very simple and doesn’t have any photographic images (Cindy’s bio pic aside.)  Going forward we think a couple of great shots of Cindy working with clients would really accentuate the site and give the service area pages some additional color and relevance.  However, the shots have to be great and make sense within the overall design.

We prefer to develop long term relationships with our clients – we don’t just drop you when the site is launched.  New technologies arrive, standards are developed, things that could make your website perform better come on stream faster than ever before and we want you to benefit from them. 

There is no better marketing for Kilted Chaos than a successful client with a successful website – just checkout hip Los Angeles Realtor - Smilay Properties. 

Lauren // Associates is ready to go, we wish Cindy and her partners all the success in the world and we look forward to continually improving and developing the site as she grows.

Let us know what you think - considered input is always appreciated.  If you'd like to chat with us about your own site - then...

3Gsignage

“So our designer just fell off the planet and we need to launch in 4 weeks and the budget is half gone – can you help?” 

Yes – we can help ‘cos we are Kilted Chaos and we are awesome.

Ok – so it didn’t really go down like that but it was close – either way – we think you’ll agree – the site turned out pretty nice!

3Gsignage are a European based technology firm that make it super simple for any size company to build and manage their own smart phone application and digital signage.  We’ve built a few iPhone apps here at Kilted Chaos; it kinda reminds us of the early days of the web – you’d hire a programmer to build you a site and then when you wanted to change anything it cost you an arm and leg and took four weeks.  3gsignage have built an easy to use content management system so that businesses can change information inside the app without spending a fortune – genius!

The key message for them was to get across that they deliver Content Management Systems for the iPhone and for Digital Signage systems, plus they then wanted to funnel the visitor by customer type so they could better shape the language.  They are just starting out with Social Media but they wanted a simple way to add blog entries and have everything hooked up to Twitter and Facebook.

We built on Wordpress using the Thesis theme - we had an outline of what the front page should look like - the font and the iPhone image but that was pretty much it.  Much of the design involved some subtle image and CSS work and we learned a few new things along the way.

We worked pretty much round the clock for a couple of weeks and hammered the site out.  We moved them from their existing host (who we won’t name but seriously – having to fax in a signed copy of your passport just to change DNS and waiting all weekend for it to happen seems ridiculous in 2010) moved them to a new registrar and reduced their ongoing monthly costs – nice!

If you would like to know more about 3Gsignage's services - you can contact them here.

If you would like some Kilted Chaos in your life – or maybe just on your website – give us a shout – although we’re out of here until the 5th – have a great holiday American people – we love you!

Your Music = Unique / Your Website = Derivative

Ask any band what they sound like and you can guarantee that they’ll tell you they’re unique. Sure they might give you qualifying reference points: Led Zeppelin meets the Eagles – Karen Carpenter on top of Diane Birch (Hmmmm!) but at the end of the day – when you listen to the band – there is no other soul on the planet that sounds like them.

So why would you want your band website to look like someone elses? I mean – you don’t dress like other bands do you?

There are loads of options for bands that are looking for a new site – companies are popping up every week with a new variation on the band theme template. However, when you look at the marketing that surrounds these solutions the one message that comes across very clearly is this:

“Spend your time writing and playing music and only spend a few minutes setting up your website – it’s Easy!”

Stop and think about that for a moment. Your website is your home – it is the place that the VAST majority of your fans will interact with you. Your website is international, no matter how many Volcanoes are hitting Europe. Do you really want the thing that differentiates you from the next band to be a different color background?

Here’s our view – your website is critical to your success and if you aren’t spending time learning how to use it and develop it then you may as well play your gigs onstage behind a black curtain. For every second that you spend on working out your stage plot, the set list – what the drummer’s going to wear…you need to double that on how you present on your website. We’re not saying that an awesome looking site is going to make up for lousy music – but a cool engaging site that screams who you are and makes it easy for a fan to interact with you and your music sure is going to help.

Now if you have the money – then you can skip that stage and hire us to come in and build a Kick Ass site for you – but we reckon that most bands starting out don’t have $550 lying around to blow on a website. But we reckon you do have time - learning tech is no different than learning an instrument – it all comes down to how many hours you put into it.

Kilted Chaos is working with DTF Works to build an affordable solution to this and yes – it involves you learning how to make shit work - more very soon.

Image Credit: Day 157 - Pasukaru76 on Flickr

One Track Mind - Music Discovery Made Easy, One Track at a Time

For the next couple of weeks in support of the #FreeChaos competition, we’re going to be writing about music sites that we dig and that offer resources to independent bands / artists / DJs.  One of my favorite sites for music blogs is:

One Track Mind – Music Discovery Made Easy, One Song at a Time.

The idea of the Music Blog has been around many years – getting featured on Pitchfork or even The Hype Machine can do you a lot of favors – but those gates often have ”Industry” keepers – so what’s a band to do?

Well – you could of course sit down with The Hype Machine’s List of Music Blogs and contact every single one of them or – you could contact One Track Mind.  In keeping with their tag line they sure make it easy to discover new music.  Sign up for the daily email or get the track delivered to your RSS reader and every day you’ll get a song that you can stream immediately and download with a knowledgeable write up that delivers useful information about the track and the artist.

Go to the actual site and you can see that Danny (the rather accomplished site owner) grades the track on three scales: Originality, Repeat Listen Potential and Overall Verdict.  Which I initially thought was a little weird but over time has really started to make sense.  You can rate each track on a scale of 1 to 10 and of course leave a comment if you’re so inclined – and the most popular tracks are promoted to the community – genius!

Whether Danny has some Scandinavian roots I’m not sure but he sure does dig northern European bands and my music library has some great music I would never have come across – check out this track from Friska Viljor – “Wohlwill Strasse” – if it doesn’t make you want to get up and move to Stochkholm right now – then I’m a Dutchman.

Of course – couldn’t let this post go without acknowledging the hip to one of my new favorite Scottish Acts – Malcolm Middleton – check out Red Travellin Socks - the build to the final chorus push at 4:20 is one of my all time favorites. I immediately went out and bought Waxing Gibbous as a result – who says the music business is dead?

Finally – if you’re in the Denver area and are looking for a photographer – check out the amazing work from Danny’s partner – seriously good work – Nina Barry makes normal people look like Movie Stars.